{ The next time you see a sunflower }

 

The temperatures keep rising, and we keep waiting, sometimes not so patiently, for God to move in this moment.  For Him to send us the rain we desperately need.  The rain that will put out all these wildfires we are having in our State, some very close to home, to quench the dying vegetation, and to help the wild animals that are really struggling to live without water around.

 

There are times in our lives, where we feel a little left out, like in a friendship or around coworkers, sometimes even in our churches.  We feel like we are invisible, like no one is seeing us, our needs or wants are being ignored, and it tends to leave us in a vulnerable state.

 

I have tried very hard to be completely transparent here on my blog, and in my life in general, about my struggles as a Christian woman.  My ups and downs, my battles and trials, the tests I feel I fail or the tests I think I actually excelled in.  There is nothing I am ashamed to admit, especially when it comes to falling short in my spiritual journey.

Sometimes, life gets in the way (because we let it), and we find ourselves not reading the Bible as much as we should.  *raises hand*

I was reading the Bible daily, and even read it whole from the very first page to the last.  Then I decided at the beginning of the year, that I wanted to read it again.  But I should have known that it would be hard to get through the old testament again, it is after all a pretty dry first few books, a lot of information, numbers and tribes, names and names and names that seem to never end.

I should have just picked a book, like I am doing now with Isaiah, and read it, not tried to do it from the beginning to end again.

What ended up happening was that it didn't last long, before that dreaded *life*, got in the way, and I found myself going days and sometimes a week without picking up my Bible.

And so the guilt set in.  The guiltier I felt, the less I read, and the less I read, the guiltier I felt.  Just like that, a constantly spinning circle of guilt holding on to my mind and heart.

I also used to pray constantly, throughout the day.  I sometimes felt like I was in constant prayer, and really living the phrase "pray without ceasing".

But again, life, and then I fell back to praying every morning and every night, then the past week, I've been so busy and so tired, that I fell asleep one night, woke up the next morning and realized I didn't pray at all.  Or, there's those days I would start praying, then fall asleep, wake up and try to continue only to fall asleep, then wake the next morning knowing I never finished my prayer, never said my Amen.....then question myself over the effectiveness of that prayer, if I never closed it off *so to speak*

See how my mind just went completely off the rails?

You're probably wondering where I'm going with this, or why I'm babbling on about it, wait, there is a reason for this whole backstory.  It's something I want to share with you all, in the hopes of bringing you a smile and some hope for your own lives as Christians.

 

Needless to say, I was starting to feel extremely guilty about myself.  I felt that God wasn't listening to me anymore, I mean, why should He?  I wasn't exactly living the life I should be.  I wasn't praying as I thought I needed to, wasn't reading the Bible every day.  I felt so guilty and so sure that He must be just downright upset with me and so disappointed.

 

But God has a way of reeling us back in, and He often uses things He knows will get our attention, like music, or tv or a book, or someone you usually talk to.

 

I was scrolling through Youtube yesterday afternoon, looking for a video to pop on to listen to, while I went about my housework.

 

I stopped on a video that just caught my eye, it was an interview with Donna Rigney.  Donna is a book author and a pastor, who has actually been taken to Heaven and loves sharing what she encountered and what she saw.

She told a story of an encounter she had with Jesus, where she was taken to a field with huge sunflowers.

 

How he told her that many times, the enemy will makes us feel that God is displeased with us, that we have fallen short, that we don't spend enough time with Him or read the word or meditate on it long enough.  But that is the furthest thing from the truth, because God sees our heart, He sees how much we love Him and how much we want to do His will.

 

The enemy will make us feel like we are not loved, we don't deserve to be heard by God because we are not faithful.

 

You guys, that hit me so hard.  It was exactly how I had been feeling.

 

She continued to say that what the enemy is trying to do is to put out our light, make us back away, shy away from being who and what we want to be.  If we do that we no longer talk about God to others, and we no longer shine that beacon of light that brings God's love to others who many not yet know Him.

 

Jesus' last words to Donna were "Whenever you see a sunflower, let it remind you of our smile, our satisfaction and our pleasure with you.  No matter what men say or think, we are well pleased, and you bring delight to us and a smile, not just to our face, but to our heart." 

That was so needed for me to hear, at that moment.  It left me speechless, and I knew that once again, God was pulling me back in, and giving me what I needed to push through this fogginess the enemy had sent over my mind.

 

 

A few hours later, I was out with my husband running errands.  All of a sudden, a car passes us on the highway, and on the back of the car, is a huge sunflower decal.  I have never seen a sunflower decal on a car, ever, in my whole life.

 

I stared at the car in total disbelief and immediately thought of the video I had just watched earlier in the day.  How Jesus said to remember how much we are loved, the next time we see a sunflower.

 

We got home, and I went about my day, totally forgetting about that car.  As I was laying in bed waiting for hubby to come and sit down, so we could watch Mad About You, I popped on a youtube video of a Brazilian girl I have watched for years.

When out of the blue, she pulls out her oven mitts and they are brown with yellow sunflowers.  What?!?!?!?

I have never seen these oven mitts.  At this point I started to laugh, because God has a sense of humor, He has done things in my life at many times, that made me burst into laughter.

I finished that video, hubby came to bed, we started the next episode of Mad About You, and I don't think I need to even tell you what was on the first scenes.

Yeah......a vase with beautiful sunflowers, on their table.  Hahahahaha

Message received loud and clear.  

So moral of the story.  I am no longer feeling as I was, and I am trying my best to get back on track with my prayer and Bible reading, without feeling that overwhelming guilt, or that God is so angry with me over it.

I really do hope that if you have also been feeling this way, you take some peace from this post.  That it may relieve you of any negative feelings you may be feeling.  We are all doing our best, and there are days that we will fall short of our own expectations, but no matter what, we have a God that loves us, that sees us, sees our heart and our true intentions and above all, never leaves our side.

So get back on that horse.  Pick up that Bible and start reading again, pray when you can and share with others.  In the end that is all that matters.

Oh and I think it's safe to say, "Not today, Satan."