Acknowledge Him

To Be GREAT In God!

To be great in God, one must be a servant

(G)uard Your Heart
(R)est In Him
(E)ncourage Others
(A)cknowledge Him
(T)hankfulness

Lesson #4  Acknowledge Him

I was thinking the other day how it is so easy for us to acknowledge God in something great that happens in our lives but when something bad transpires, we are left wondering where God is.  The truth of the matter is, He never leaves us.  He is just as involved in the bad as He is in the good. (Isaiah 41:10)  No, God does not bring the bad upon us but He is always there to work things out for the good, even though what God considers good might look bad to us. (Romans 8:28)

One of the hardest situations that my family and I had to go through dealt with my Dad.  My Dad and his wife (ex-wife now) were having problems which led to him being arrested for domestic violence when she was the one who was violent.  This led to them separating, then divorce and she filed a protection order against him.  During this time, she kept following my dad around, then calling the cops on him and he would be arrested for breaking the protection order.  To make a long story short, he ended up being incarcerated from February 2010 until January 2011.  It was so unfair!  Prison was not the place for a 75 year old man who had been unfairly judged and sentenced!

When I heard the outcome of my Dad's hearing that day, I was not happy.  I cried and was angry and even disappointed with God.  There had been a lot of people praying for my Dad.  But as it was with many other times of confronting God with the things that confused or disappointed me, His reply to me once again was simply, "Trust Me".  THEN, my sister said something to me that I will never forget.  It stuck with me and I knew that it was from God.  She said, "Connie, I do not believe that Dad was put in prison for her protection.  I believe he was placed there for his protection FROM her."  She is an evil person, very manipulative, a habitual liar and ruins the lives of people that she comes in contact with.  You had to know the state of mind that my Dad was in during this time to understand why my sister's statement brought comfort to me.

During Dad's prison time, God did some miraculous changes in his heart. Sometimes we do not know the place that God has to take us until we are finally willing to let Him in.

It is hard sometimes for us to accept the things that are happening around us that look bad because we are in capable of seeing the reasoning for it and what the outcome may bring.  But God knows the beginning to the end.  He sees the whole picture and sees the very hearts of the individuals involved.  God knows what He is doing.

Life can seem so unfair at times but we must trust that God has a better purpose for all that happens.  Think about the life of Joseph.  He was falsely accused of things and ended up in prison plus a number of other things happened to him that was unfair.  But he had a dream from God that he held on to.  He knew what his destiny in God was but he didn't know what all he was going to have to go through to get there.  That is why it is so important to trust God no matter what, and He will guide our steps.  We go through things for our own growth in God and so that we can help others.  I had to believe that my Dad's life and what he was going through had a greater purpose.

When we come up against some things in life that are perplexing, we cannot assume that our human understanding of things is always a perfect guide.  Human understanding is limited by a person's knowledge and experience.  But as I said before, God sees the bigger picture and knows the beginning from the end.  Sometimes we need to look past human wisdom and allow the Spirit of God to direct our lives.  Our human reasoning wants an explanation, but the Spirit of God says, "Trust Me!"

You see, once we began to acknowledge God in all that was happening in the outcome of my Dad's situation, a peace came and God continued to work and we began to see the changes in Dad.  I remember afterwards my Dad asked me if I would help write a story about his injustice because he wanted the people to know about how bad the judicial system was.  But my thought was, why fight against something that God was part of?  But instead, we needed to acknowledge God in it, knowing that He was working all things for the good.  And He did just that!!  I didn't want to be part of fighting against something that God worked out for the good.

It can be difficult at times to really trust God when you are IN the storm but if we really truly believe that God loves us so much and goes through the hurt with us, then we can't help but know that He also doesn't like seeing us have to deal with situations that bring us pain.  He wants us to bring all our hurts to Him so that He is able to work all things out for the good.  That is where "trusting Him with all our heart" comes in.  We just have to trust Him whether we understand it all or not because He knows what He is doing. The acceptance of trials and acknowledging God brings blessings that far outweigh all of the trials.

"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding; in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5,6

For us to be a servant which makes us GREAT in God, we must learn to fully trust in God in every situation no matter how it looks to us or even if we do not understand.  Acceptance or acknowledging God in the situation is a very important attitude that we must have in order to incorporate our trust in Him.  We are to accept God's involvement in our lives and the way we express this to Him is by having a grateful heart which will be taught in our 5th and final lesson.

Maybe there IS a greater purpose for what you may be going through right now?

Acknowledging Him,
Connie Schmoll

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