Unexpected Answers

Have you ever prayed for something and expected God to answer it in a certain way and then found yourself thrown when he does something totally unexpected?

God is giving me the desires of my heart, but the answer did not come as I thought it would. In my last blog I was expressing my longing to have the time to minister to fellow cancer fighters and He answered my prayer. He took my job away! On April 1st (no kidding) my Superintendent and Principal called me in and told me I would only have a 50% contract next year! Our district is losing many students and they are having to cut the budget. I was very upset because they took my Health classes and are going to have another teacher teach them! I am the only teacher who has taught them these past 8 years so I was initially very hurt and upset. The next day I got on a plane and came to New Mexico to spend time with my father and family. I was able to share my cancer journey with my sister-in-law's father who was recently diagnosed with acute leukemia. Bill has been promised another Christmas with chemotherapy. I was able to pray with him and hopefully encourage him in his fight. I feel as if this is part of why God allowed cancer to touch my life in the first place. It is part of the good that He promises in Romans 8:28 for everyone that loves Him.

Sewell and I are facing yet another giant as we consider how we are going to manage on a 50% cut in my income. I reminded myself that I have already faced and conquered the giant that could kill me! The loss of my Health classes will be challenging but it doesn't have the power to destroy my life.

In my devotions I read this verse from Isaiah 24:15, "Glorify the Lord in the fires." It goes on to say, "We are to honor the Lord in the trial-in the very thing that afflicts us. It is precisely there, in the heat of the fire, we are to glorify Him. We do this by exercising perfect faith in His goodness and love, that has permitted this trial to come upon us. Even more, we are to believe that out of the fire will arise something more worthy of praise to Him than had we never experienced it. To go through some fires will take great faith, for little faith will fail. We must win the victory in the furnace. A person has only as much faith as he has in times of trouble. The three men who were thrown into the fiery furnace came out just as they went in -except for the ropes that had bound them. How often God removes our shackles in the furnace of affliction. This is the real triumph-triumphing over sickness in it, triumphing over death in dying, and triumphing over other adverse circumstances in them. Christ's triumph was in His humiliation. And perhaps our triumph will also be revealed through what others see as humiliation." Margaret Bottome

I encourage you to trust God in your trials. Go through them with great faith. The answers to your prayers may come in unexpected ways. Your heavenly Father will take care of every need you have. Allow Him to remove the shackles in the furnace of your affliction. Remind yourself that out of your fire will come something more worthy of praise than if you had never experienced it. Face each and every giant with a God-saturated soul! He is in the giant slaying business!