Bible Text: Psalm 119:67, 71 | Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words | Her name is Carol, and she is 81 years old. The thing that impresses me most about her is her walk with the Lord. Every morning during her quiet time with God, after Carol reads some scripture, she writes a letter to Him. In this letter she thanks God for His goodness to her and asks Him for her needs. And she tells Him about the circumstances that she doesn’t like, too. After she finishes the letter, which is really a prayer, she tears it up and throws it away. She is then ready for her day.
Carol is a volunteer at our Guidelines Ministries office—has been for almost 20 years. So many times when she’s going through some difficult circumstance, I’ve heard her say something like–“The Lord is so good. If necessary, He wakes me up at two o’clock in the morning to talk to me. He loves me too much to let me go my own way. So if I know what’s good for me, I’ll listen to Him and learn what He wants to teach me, so He doesn’t have to keep trying to get my attention.”
My Mom used to say something similar. She’d say, “I want to learn the lesson the Lord is teaching me the first time so I don’t have to take the test over again.”
Yes, Carol, God has interesting ways of getting our attention. Some times He speaks softly in our hearts. Other times He stops us in our tracks with a roadblock so big we have no choice but to turn to Him. Either way, His motivation is love. As Carol says, He loves us too much to let us go the wrong way.
The writer of Psalm 119 said, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.” “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Psalm 119:67, 71). Thanks, Carol, for being a living example of that truth.