It’s guest post time on Love and Grace! Enjoy!
Shannon
Written by Ron Mumford
While attending the 5th Anniversary party of Dallas Christian Singles meet up group with over 200 attendees at a local bar and grill venue with a back room reserved for us, it was a long wait to order anything to drink. I went into the bar area and tried to get the attention of a young man to order my diet Coke and lime. His attention was more focused on the young ladies sitting at the bar.
I wedged in between a man talking to his friends and a young lady with her back turned to him talking to her friends. Still no luck in getting the bartenders attention. I accidentally nudged the young lady who spun around and offered to flag down the bartender and help me secure the diet Coke. When it arrived, I gave her a book mark with information on my new publication entitled, Finding Your Soul Mate, God’s Way. She introduced herself as “Shannon,” (thirty-something) and upon reading the title on the book mark, her eyes filled with tears…
“I’m recently divorced,” she said, “and I know what mistakes I’ve made. I talk to God sometimes, but there are things that I don’t want Him to know and things that I don’t discuss with Him. I can learn from my mistakes and do things my way…”
As if God doesn’t know everything going on in our lives. I told Shannon “good luck” with her life and that if she ever wanted to learn a better way or needed some solid wisdom, she may want to talk to God about it. I never heard from her again. This brief encounter reminds me that when we are young, nine-foot-nine and bullet-proof, we depend on ourselves most of the time and as life becomes more difficult we sometimes search hopelessly for strength and guidance. God uses circumstance to build our character and re-direct our paths. He is always just a prayer away.
We all get two phone calls every day. One from the world, the other from God. Our path is determined by which call we answer and which one goes to voice mail. It’s never too late to go back and listen to that voicemail we didn’t answer. Then, we have to ask ourselves, “Who do we trust with our life, our love and our future?”
In Matthew 6:33, Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you.”
All things means all things like peace, joy, love, happiness and prosperity. We all like the last part —”and all these things will be added unto you”—but we skip over the beginning. In this promise from God, and there are 8,000 promises in the Bible, Jesus tells us to do four things: 1. Seek — talking to Him and reading His Word 2. First — making God a priority in our lives 3. The Kingdom of God — becoming one of His Children, and the hard one, 4. And His righteousness — keeping His laws…and then, all of these things will be given to us—but not before we do our part.