As a child of God, I have the full assurance that only God determines if and when I wake up each day. I have no doubt whatsoever that as long as God keeps me here on earth, it is because there is a good purpose in my still being here. I also believe that when He decides to take me away from this earth, it will for the very best. The Bible says in Psalm 116 verse 15: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. He Only can make my life meaningful here on earth, and He alone guarantees my entrance into heaven. And not only will He admit me into heaven, but He will perfect the many great Promises that accompany Eternal life. As Apostle Paul so succinctly puts it, For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
The Bible states more than once that our Lord Jesus Christ went apart to pray very early in the morning as was His custom. I have found morning to be my best time to communion with my God. By this I mean worship (praise, thanksgiving) and prayer (intercession), and Bible reading (fellowship), and not necessarily in that order. This is commonly referred to as Morning Devotion or Quiet Time. I of course know God is always available, and can get my attention (and sometimes does) any time He wants. However, quality time very early in the morning has always worked wonderfully for me, and I would recommend it to any child of God whose job or responsibilities do not conflict with morning hours.
I consider it a fortunate development that with age, my sleep is now broken at least once in the night by the call of nature. Retirement has therefore further enhanced the possibilities of morning devotion for me. If I sleep early enough, I would wake up invigorated at dawn after a refreshing sleep. On such occasions, I would drink in the calm and silence of dawn. Depending on how early it is, I would use the time to read, research on a biblical topic that I have been procrastinating on, or start my morning devotion. I must however confess that I occasionally drift off back to sleep when my body needs it without any sense of guilt whatsoever. I laughingly refer to it as the ‘second round’.
This is my normal pattern, but there are those special dawns when I have what I refer to as my awe-filled dawn experiences. On these special dawns, I wake up with very strong promptings. It is either that an idea that solves a problem I’ve been brooding about for a while, jumps at me! At other times it would be a thought giving me a new perspective about a frustrating experience and showing me how it has worked out for my good. At other times, I get a strong urge to do something unusual. Let me try and explain better by sharing two examples I can immediately recall with you.
I still marvel at the day I woke up very early in the morning and the first thought that came to mind was to proofread a legal document relating to a Christian NGO I am involved in. I resisted this urge quite strongly for a while because, not only was it not the kind of activity I usually filled my early morning hours with, but most especially because I had had my fill of the document.
You see, in the previous days, I had had to proofread this rather voluminous document, going back and forth with the lawyer so many times to correct and update so many details. But we had finally reached an agreement on the final draft to be submitted and it seemed very strange that something was pushing me so hard use this beautiful, calm quietness to go through it one more time. However, I had been robbed of my inner peace so I reluctantly decided to flow with the prompting rather than prolong the discomfort.
The next question then was how I would approach this final proof-reading. And while trying to figure this out that, wonder of all wonders, the thought popped into my head to check the names against the positions. And, please allow me to repeat this expression: wonder of all wonders. I almost immediately discovered to my shock, that the names and positions had indeed been mixed up!
That certainly woke me up to the need to go through the document one final time. It turns out everything else was okay. The way I see it till today is that if I had started checking anywhere else, I might have gotten tired mid-way and stopped proofreading before I got to the part that needed to be corrected. My Great Helper wanted to spare me the frustrations of registering the wrong details.
Well as you can imagine, I spent that special dawn-of-awe sending messages to the lawyer to correct the error, still awed by God’s faithfulness even in the very little things. I don’t know if you would consider it an effrontery to compare this my small experience with that of Apostle Peter when he was sprung from prison jail by an angel. But I somehow shared a similar feeling at discovering just how much aggravation I had been spared! I remain ever grateful that the error was corrected at the nick of time. Otherwise, more time and money would have to have been expended to correct the small error!
Here’s another experience of my dawn-of-awe experience. I had been trying to make an online transfer the previous day. Not only could I not find the bank concerned, but the amount, which was less than half of my authorized limit was giving an error message that I would need authorization to complete the transaction. I called my Bank Manager to complain. He is usually very pro-active but he didn’t pick or send a message to call be back later as he usually did. I sent him a text about the issues and he responded to one and not the other. I repeated the question but he did not reply.
Frustrated, I decided to try another bank. I encountered problems again and got in touch with one of their staff to find out if their portal was down. Meanwhile, tried again and everything worked just fine, and I found the bank I wanted on their portal. I proceeded to do the transfer, and after entering the account number, the name that appeared looked more like an individual’s name than that of the institution I was supposed to credit although their initials did appear somewhere. It seemed suspicious to me especially since the payment I had finally decided to make was surrounded by a lot of dispute. I got in touch with a forum where I expected to get a quick answer as to whether this was the correct account and only one person replied partially. Nobody answered my follow-up question so I decided to delay the transfer until the following day when I hoped to get some answers.
Having slept earlier than usual, I woke up the following day at about 3am, and the first thing that popped into my head was: Yesterday, you were going to transfer TEN TIMES what you were supposed to transfer to the agency!!! Can you just imagine what would have happened if I had transferred that disputable amount to that questionable government agency???!!! Then I fully understood that there was a reason for the obstacles of the previous day. And they were for my good! Yet another proof that our Lord watches over His children all the time just as He had promised. How I pray that would sink deeper and deeper into my heart and mind! I remain awed-filled and thankful to my Awesome God.
Here’s another one. The Lord intervened in a matter that has been a source of frustration, and about which I had been praying for years, wondering why the delay. It involved a 3-year debt by a tenant who claimed to be a pastor. Over this period, I did my best to respect the rule of law, going through the time-consuming legal process required for eviction. This only added to my frustration since follow up and feedback was often not forthcoming until I pushed for them. And when I did get an update, it was usually disjointed at best, and generally confusing. But short of doing nothing, I had no choice but to keep at it, while holding to my faith that I would recover at least some of the debt owed. By the way, I still have not given up! ☺
During this period, as you can imagine, I vacillated spiritually and emotionally between gratitude that it hadn’t wrecked my finances, and anger at such wickedness. I did a lot of soul-searching in my bid to understand why I was going through all this. Other times I embarked on spiritual warfare, convinced it was a demonic attack. And this is not far-fetched considering that I was made to pay twice for supposed Eviction judgments. And it would seem that the second lawyer actually died in the midst of the process!
However, I dug n my heels when the hint of a third payment came up. I made it clear I would not be paying anything anymore. It was at this point that the real estate person handling the property claimed to have finally managed to get the tenant out of the property. He sent me videos of the state of the property. It was disheartening to see them. I could not rejoice. And then I felt guilty for not being able to do so in spite of the fact that God had finally answered my prayers. This in itself was a spiritual attack and I was well aware of it, and thank God I could still pray.
Then on this beautiful morning at dawn, as I asked Him for forgiveness and help, His voice finally broke through my darkness. The Lord said to me: Why are you so downcast about it. That property belongs to me, not you. Let go of the burden. I’ll handle it. And suddenly I finally got it and His Peace and Joy filled my heart and mind. All the reasons I had to thank God flowed into my spirit… and then and only then could I hear the Lord tell me what I was to do. Alleluia!!!
As I pursued the revealed Will of God on the matter, I was linked up with wonderful children of God who shared the vision and were eager to partner with me to move the vision forward. It turned out to be the beginning of a great breakthrough for me in ministry, and I still can’t get over it. And I was reminded of the following verses in Hebrews chapter 12, verses 7 to 11: Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! 10 They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
I thank God I have been trained by this experience. Nevertheless, I keep asking myself, how long will it take me to get it through my thick skull that God is ever faithful, and spare myself the aggravation and anger and frustration and confusion that usually follow my doubts. And then again, I wonder if I am ever expected to reach that level on this side of heaven. Will I not need to have reached sinless perfection to become like that? And will that not suggest that I will no longer need God’s discipline? God forbid! Going by the above verses, methinks it would be delusion to expect or even desire that…
This is why I would rather rejoice at the present victory, and pray for strength and stamina for the next challenge. And that is why I will pray every day Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth… until my struggle ends here and I see Him face to face…
MARANATHA!!!
