Celebrating God's Love and Grace Concepts Learned
This is to remember a significant event in my life on this date twenty years ago.
Having suffered through a failed marriage and ministry, and in the deepest discouragement, I was pushing to perform my job responsibilites in a downtown High Point, North Carolina business. I was also being called away by sights and sounds and new fragrances to places I had never been before.
But on this day, in one seemingly chance occurrence, I turned to catch a visual, hear a sound, and smell a fragrance as refreshing (may I say it) as an early morning run on a North Carolina country road. Dressed in modest business attire, Carole stood before me asking a question. Her voice and smile were perfect. Her eyes and hands were perfect. Her conduct was perfect. Then she was gone - forever I thought. But a month later, I saw her again. This time, she did not get away
I celebrate the occasion, but also the grace concepts I have since learned from it
1. God is intensely interested, committed, and attentive to our lives, like the caring shepherd for his sheep - both for those safe in the fold, but also for the one wayward sheep that is in trouble.
2. His care is not based upon our deserving, but upon our need. Had God not looked beyond my faults on that day to see my need and to intervene, I think I could have been lost to a different world.
3. Usually, God provides for us as we wait on him, but apparently, he also sometimes chooses to act sovereignly in order to rescue us from the brink of our destruction.
4. God will bring into our lives exactly what and who we need. Only Carole could have tolerated my growth out of legalism into grace, from being a user to becoming an investor. Never once did she ever react to attack my stupidity when she had good reason to shoot me. This is the reason I can say with confidence to wives that there is hope if by God's grace they will not react in anger and discouragement to a husband who is embracing the concepts of investment leadership and is committed to living them out in their marriage.
3. Usually, God provides for us as we wait on him, but apparently, he also sometimes chooses to act sovereignly in order to rescue us from the brink of our destruction.
4. God will bring into our lives exactly what and who we need. Only Carole could have tolerated my growth out of legalism into grace, from being a user to becoming an investor. Never once did she ever react to attack my stupidity when she had good reason to shoot me. This is the reason I can say with confidence to wives that there is hope if by God's grace they will not react in anger and discouragement to a husband who is embracing the concepts of investment leadership and is committed to living them out in their marriage.
Don Loy Whisnant/Journey Notes 8J10
