About this morning...

As I backed out of the driveway with my 13 year old daughter, Audrey in tow, the brisk morning air saluted the last sighs of winter. I usually play worship music and pray while driving, but this morning, there was something off-putting, disconcerting, taking precedence. I started to merge onto the interstate. As I looked over my left shoulder, there were cars and trucks in both lanes. I looked in my rear view mirror. My eyes widened. The car behind me wasn’t slowing down at all. I felt my neck jar forward as it hit us into the oncoming traffic. My first thought was to steady the wheel to keep us from flipping as we fishtailed in the other lane. I remember thinking, “This is it, and it’s going to hurt.” I was waiting for the other cars to hit us. We spun back around into the other lane and landed in the ditch. I immediately looked back at Audrey. She was shaking but okay and always dives in head first with her dry sense of humor, “I guess I’m not going to school today!”

Even though the car is totaled, we are thankfully unscathed. I’m not sure how the other cars didn’t make contact with us, or the lady who hit us. It was a miracle.

As I got back home and tried to center my thoughts, I kept asking God why have there been so many challenges lately directly related to His purpose for me? Why must we be stripped of everything from health to finances to relationships? Surely there must be something bigger at play. I thought about Ephesians 6:12. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

That is indeed true, but there is much more to the story. Looking in my rear view mirror, I see the principalities or the past racing up quickly, but once being shoved into the storm, it is there God uses it to build our character and faith in Him. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are called according to his purpose” Romans 8:28. He uses times of suffering to teach us to surrender, so that we may die to self, to worship Him more fully. And when I do make it safely to the side of the road, I am restored and washed fully in the blood of Jesus. What the enemy means for evil, God will create in it, a beautiful moment to breathe in His love straight into our spirits.

This afternoon I was numb, lethargic almost paralyzed. I certainly didn’t feel like working on the documentary. As I prayed, God showed me, again, to stop looking at the rear view mirror and go forward. So, I got in another car, the only one that is not wrecked at this point, and headed down the same path, the same way I had driven this morning. As I approached the ramp, I began to feel a lump in my throat. I glanced in the rear view mirror, but didn’t stay there, I merged into the traffic safely and headed to my destination. I am now home and comfortable with my new poster and newsletter handouts for Revelation of Hope. The more the enemy tries to take us down, let us remember he’s just in the rear view mirror. God is before us, within us, and for us. How can we lose?