Learning from Beth

Honestly, there are few things that give me greater joy than doing a DVD study with Beth Moore. The Word comes alive through her teaching! And I just love the discipline that comes from working through the daily homework. Through her studies, I experience so much growth and learning.

My study guide is full of scratched out phrases and verses, and I have a need to jot down a few from this past week. Just to put it in context, this entire study has been about destiny (how God has a plan for our lives), and how He will use all the circumstances of our lives to fulfill that destiny.

God can't turn a table that was never set against you.
If we don't encounter enemies along the way that are working to discourage us, beat us down, and wear us out...if life flows smoothly and nothing ever seems to go wrong...that leaves no work for God to do. The best way for Him to display His glory is to turn the tables.

How will we ever know victory if we never face anything difficult enough to experience God turning it around?

and

Seeing purpose in tough scenarios increases the trust required for a turnaround.

Beth also shared many wise words on deliverance from those tough circumstances, so that we can walk into our destiny.

God's grace is given according to our need, NOT based on our vain imaginations.
What she was talking about here is fear - feeling God's strength during a battle, but living in fear (of going down that road again) after the battle is over. Beth shared of how God delivered her from fear in areas of her life just when she needed it, but later that fear returned. And as she pleaded with God to deliver her she felt Him telling her that she was not in need of deliverance, for what she was going through was all in her head and of her own making (a vain imagination). Make sense?

and this little gem...

Big battles are won by teams... We remain in bondage when we keep our struggles to ourselves.

What about you? Have you walked through seemingly impossible circumstances to find that God did have a plan for them, and they did play a role in your destiny?

I'll share first. :)

Several years ago, my marriage seemed like a lost cause. Completely hopeless. No chance for improvement. What had started out as a couple "rocky years" had been growing more and more difficult. I was growing in faith, and he didn't believe in faith. In fact, he held any faith (but in particular my faith) in contempt.

Insert a number of other difficult circumstances here: child with a disability, husband working away, two people in a marriage who had come from broken families, add more children - very close together, a big move, post-partum depression, another big move, a trashed house, and on it goes...

Today, those tables are turned. We are a couple firmly committed to sticking together, raising our children in our faith, and walking where God calls. Of course we still argue; it's not perfect. But it is good. A complete turnaround. And I can look at each one of those circumstances now and see how it played a role in Pat's turn to faith and the restoration of our marriage. Each and every one of those circumstances played an invaluable and incomparable role in our destiny. And because they were all so crummy, so insurmountable, so impossible, the only explanation left is God. He did the turnaround.