How Big is our God?

​As I sit here in my dining room at 4am, everyone else in the house asleep but me, the only sounds are some music playing from my iPad and my keyboard. I fell asleep a few hours ago but woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. I initially planned for this post to be done Sunday, but my writing schedule is off and I have yet to get back on track.
 
 
It is my personal philosophy that you have to remember where you’ve been to both know and appreciate where you’re going. That being said, I was working on an assignment for my Christian Ethics online class and was thinking about what I wanted to do for my final paper. I decided to pull content from a paper I wrote for a class at NSU back in 2012, which made me think about the past 4 years of my life.
 
 
This week is extremely sentimental to me for a myriad of reasons. 4 years ago this week, my life was changed forever. I had a triple compound dislocation in my right ankle and my injuries took me to a place so dark and deep that it took me a solid year and a half to climb out of it. These were some of the darkest, most physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally grueling, painful, and hellish days ever in my life. There were days and nights where I would lie in bed, unsure how or even IF I’d make it to the next morning. Conversely, it was the turning point that forced me to grow up and realize that I needed to step my game up and start getting my life together. Somewhere in the post-op, physical therapy recovery process, I realized that I wasn’t a little girl anymore and that it was time to grow up. As painful as these injuries, surgeries, recovery, and later re-injury, and recovery again were, I wouldn’t trade a second of it for anything in the world.
 
Throwing it back to the story of Lazarus from Sunday’s worship service, when I think of the worst time ever in my life, this is the central event in my life that I think of. What I always try to keep in mind is that it was never my own strength that got me through these brutal few months—I’m not that strong. The only way I was able to make it through was God carrying me through it.
 
I say all this because just a couple of years later to the day of this event, I talked with the head of Bacone’s Center of Christian Ministry and said I was ready to come back to the  Christian ministry program. I say all of this because I feel that without this event, as traumatic and catastrophic as it was, I probably would not be in ministry today. I wouldn’t have the strong faith needed to be effective in ministry if this situation hadn’t of happened.
 
While my injuries were serious, this event forced me to come to a place where I was essentially forced to give up my own strength and put my full and trust in God to carry me through. I admit to having a certain level of strength but I couldn’t have made it through the pain on my own. It was God. 100000% it was God. No one is that strong.
 
I share this story because I think every post from now until my licensing will have some element of my ministry journey to it as I prepare my sermon. I share this because in my worst day, I didn’t die. I survived, God didn’t leave me. He never abandoned me. It for all intents and purposes was a dead situation. God brought life to it, made me whole, and shaped me into a better, stronger, and healthier person.
 
In our women’s ministry, we start out the evening with a workout of some sort. I tend to be a little whiny and fuss a little bit but in all reality, I feel so blessed and so thankful that I’m able to work out. I thank God each time I play stickball and I give thanks to God every time I hike at Sparrowhawk or hit the running trail.
 
I share this mainly to encourage whoever is reading this. Don’t tell God how big your situation is—tell that situation how big your God is. He moved in my life, He brought beauty for ashes and restoration and He’ll move in yours.
 
I’ve often asked Him why this situation happened. He never gave me a straight answer but as I’ve gotten older, progressed in my relationship with Him, and understand things now that I didn’t understand back then, I won’t say I needed this specific thing to happen but I needed something to get my attention with no other option but to put my full confidence in God.
 
In closing, like I said before…it’s never about how big your situation is but how big your God is. The question now:: How big is He?
 
Until next time,
 
Love and light,
 
--S. 

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