Are you all in?

 

On a drizzly morning we were getting ready to leave the Oregon coast and head home. I got out a rag and started wiping off some of the grime that was on our vehicle. There was no point in trying to dry it as a light mist was still coming down. I immediately I recalled a car wash that our family and some students put on to raise money for a young man who had cancer. Though it was cloudy on the day of the carwash we joined hands and prayed for the sun to come out and for many people to bring their cars to be washed. When we said amen, it started drizzling. I was devasted; how can you have a successful car wash

in the rain? God didn’t You hear our prayer? It was a great learning lesson for me which I will never forget.

Isaiah 55:8-9 states, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than yours.”  God didn’t need sunny skies to raise money for a young man dying of cancer, he just wanted willing hearts to serve and allow Him to take care of the details and the outcome. The people started coming; we washed a few cars, dried no cars and many just came by to give money. God doesn’t need anything or anyone to accomplish His plans and purposes.

In the aspect of our Christian faith, it has to be all or nothing; we need to be all in. We either believe everything God says in His word or there is no point in believing anything. We must have confidence and trust in God during the gloomy, drizzly and difficult days of our lives as well as the sunny, blue skies and easy days.

We need to be all in like Job. Job said, “naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked shall I return there.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Ephesians 1:11 says, “In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.  We must be all in because God works all things according to His plan and how He will accomplish it.

 

Pastor Marty