Be Strong and Courageous

Although the last few posts have been about God speaking to me, I have to admit, it sometimes scares the heck out of me when it happens. Why is God, the Creator of the universe, even noticing me? Really, I try to maintain a reasonably low profile, hoping to blend into the woodwork as much as possible, so when the Great I Am singles me out to send a message, it often makes me a little nervous. This is about one of those times.

I used to work for an interior designer. One day I was going through wallpaper books marking samples for a client. As I turned the pages, a song kept running through my mind. It was a song I had taught kids in Preschool Worship several months before, but we had only sung it a couple of times.

Be bold and be strong

Banish fear and doubt

For the promise of your God

Is to bless your coming in

And to bless your going out

I continued to go through wallpaper books, using a stack of bookmarks to mark the pages, and starting to sing out loud along with the song that was playing in my head. Finally, I had marked all the appropriate samples I could find. I looked down at the one remaining bookmark on the table. It had a scripture on it:

Be strong and courageous for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:9

I had an uneasy sense of foreboding. Was God trying to tell me something? I knew I should find comfort in the words from the song and the bookmark, yet I had the dreadful feeling something bad was about to happen and God was preparing me.

A couple of days passed, and nothing happened. I convinced myself that it was nothing.

Then on the third day, my boss came into work. It was his birthday, and after I wished him a happy birthday, he told me he had something he needed to tell me. He had decided it was time to retire. He was giving me just over two months notice, which meant my last day on that job would be on my own birthday.

My mind immediately went to the song and the bookmark. This time they comforted me, because I knew that God had, indeed, been preparing me, and He wanted me to know things would be alright. I had no idea what I was going to do for a job. Although working for an interior designer had been in many ways a dream come true, it also taught me that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in design. Over the next two months, I only had one meltdown as I wondered what the future held. After sending out numerous resumes and going on a few interviews, I was offered a job just a couple of weeks before my boss's retirement. It's the job that I have now, a job that I love.

As a reminder of God's promise to be there for me, I framed the bookmark and put it next to my front door to remind me that He is with me wherever I go.

It still brings me encouragement me every single day. =)