Surprises. You may love them or you may hate them. Surprises. They remind us that we don’t, in fact, have everything neatly planned out and figured out. God, I think, likes doing things to us like that. You know, putting us into positions of awe, amazement, and humility.
He sometimes shows up out of seemingly nowhere. We pray for God to do something big and we lose confidence in Him answering that prayer because it’s been weeks and He hasn’t delivered. Weeks. We are so short-sighted. Or even years. Still, we are short-sighted. God doesn’t always say yes to our prayers because He has the bigger picture.
Surprises for His Glory
For years, our leadership at the church I get to serve at (The Crossing) have been looking and scouring our community for potential meeting space. We looked in everything from storefronts to former beer breweries (they didn’t leave the beer for us, though). What worked for our growing congregation? None of it.
We knew that God wanted us to move forward and trust Him through it so we decided on a piece of land that we could develop right along state route 32 on the east side of Cincinnati where thousands of cars travel every day.
We learned a lesson through this all… Show your faith in Him with what’s in front of you and He may just decide to show you even more. We decided to simply trust Him with what we had to work with. His response? Check this out, children. I’ve got something better!
A phone call went to our lead pastor, Kenny White from another pastor in the area. Would you like to buy our church campus?
More than double the acres. Buildings are already built. Land is already developed. And we’re saving millions of dollars and catapulting our vision timeline forward exponentially.
The surprise phone call was a God-thing. He was at work in their pastor and he was obedient to what God was leading Him to do. 3 weeks later a deal is in place and we’re moving forward.
God does things like that. He gives us a surprise. He takes our prayers and then compels us to look to His word because of the amazing things He has done.
This specifically:
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us – Ephesians 3:20
To Him who is able to give us a surprise for His glory.
When you’re faithful to Him with what’s in front of you He may just change what’s in front of you. Be faithful today with what’s in front of you.[shareable]When you’re faithful to Him with what’s in front of you He may just change what’s in front of you.[/shareable]
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