Amazed by His Sovereignty

I’ll begin with a disclaimer, similar to the opening statement of my first book; this story is not about me! I have in fact hesitated to publicize it, for fear that it might be misinterpreted. This story is about the sovereignty of God who owns “the cattle on a thousand hills” (Ps. 50:10) and who uses the gifts and resources stewarded by His people to glorify Himself.

I cannot tell you where this story begins. The Lord our God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, so history really is His-story. I know that "in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Col. 1:16-17) I can only tell you where this story begins from my perspective. I do, however, know that I am only one small cog in this giant wheel of God redeeming His people unto Himself.

For me it begins when a couple of colleagues at Jefferson State Community College asked if I would be a guest speaker at a youth leadership conference they were helping to organize. I’ll stop right here to tell you that this kind of thing is not exactly my cup of tea. Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly comfortable speaking in front of large groups and I teach students every day, so the size or demographic of the crowd didn’t bother me. It was the particular topic that I was unsure of.

I have, for the most part, gotten away from the motivational or inspirational speaking genre to focus on Biblical teaching. However, a few months before I was approached by my colleagues, I was invited to speak at a church on Father’s Day. I taught from the Old Testament book of Nehemiah and talked about “Rebuilding the Wall”. I decided that I could tell the story from a historical perspective to the students, and use it to teach sound leadership principles like facing adversity, teamwork and motivation.

Little did I know that God was already at work in this endeavor. At a planning meeting a few weeks before the conference I announced my topic - “Rebuilding the Wall”. I wish I had a picture of my colleagues’ faces! Their jaws literally dropped. Unbeknownst to me they had already named (and had T-shirts made for) the conference - “Scaling the Wall”. I knew then that God was at work. I just didn’t know, and may never know this side of Heaven, to what extent.

I was scheduled to speak at a Friday mid-morning session, which was perfect. I could drop Anna Morgan off at Mother’s Day Out, drive to the conference a half hour away, do my thing and be back in plenty of time to pick her up. However, just a few days before the conference I was asked to swap with another speaker and do the afternoon session. Aaaarrrgggghhh!

Nobody wants to be a speaker on Friday afternoon. Everybody’s got the weekend on their minds. Plus, I’d have to make other arrangements for Anna Morgan to be picked up. It was, or so I thought, bad news all around. But as a favor to my friends/colleagues, I agreed. I would eventually realize that everything I’d ever taught about Romans 8:28 was still true.

When I arrived at the conference, I learned that I would be the key note speaker at the closing assembly. This is it! The big finish everyone had been waiting for! It was also a larger crowd than any other session because parents and sponsors were there. Now, generally speaking, high school students don’t spend their money on books…but their parents and sponsors do! I was warmly received, the talk went well, the crowd laughed in all the right places, and I even sold a few books afterward. All in all it turned out to be a pretty good afternoon.

On the way home I stopped by the bank to deposit the checks I received from book sales, but I kept the cash knowing that I’d need some for the weekend. That night I took the family out to eat cheap Mexican food (a Fisher family favorite), and used some of that cash to pay the bill. I even set aside some cash that I was going to contribute as part of a love offering for a couple in our church Life Connection class who were moving away.

The next night, at the going away party there was food, fun and fellowship. As the party was winding down, I overheard another lady in our class talking about the upcoming mission trip her and her family were going to participate in. She was asked about all the particular costs of travel and food and lodging, etc. She said that the family had steadily been raising support, but time was getting close to leave and they were still short. Then another member of the class asked, “So how much more do you need?”

Now, I’m gonna go ahead and tell ya’ll…I was already planning to contribute to the mission trip, but it would not have been a significant contribution. And while I certainly understand that “every little bit helps” and “many hands make light work”, I was not prepared for what was about to happen. In the brief instant it took my friend to answer that question, I must’ve said a thousand prayers. They all sounded something like, “Lord, please let it be a huge number!” “Please let it be like $5,000 or something so that I can’t possibly be expected to give it all.”

But wouldn’t you know it; this family’s mission trip fund was short exactly the amount of cash that I had in my wallet! Ain’t that just like Jesus? I told my friend this story and gave them the money. They cried, we hugged, and we were simply overcome by God’s grace, and provision, and timing, and love.

2 Corinthians 9:7 reads, “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” I must admit, if someone had told me that God would require all of the cash I’d received from book sales that day, I would probably not have been very cheerful. Even though I’d seen God’s hand at work from the planning of the talk, to a change in speaking time, to the increase in crowd size that led to an increase in book sales, I was still a bit reluctant to hand over all of my cash even to this missionary endeavor.

The point I’ve learned, and the one I must share is this; it’s all His anyway. From the job (where I met the colleagues who invited me to speak), to the gift of gab I’ve been given, to the ability to write and publish and sell books, to the van I drove to and from the conference, to my family I took out to eat cheap Mexican food…it’s all His. It all belongs to God! We are simply stewards for a short time.

God help us to be generous with what we’ve been given so that in due time we might hear the words of our Savior recorded in Matthew 25:21, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!”

Lessons from the Snowpocalypse - by Dana Fountain Mostashari

Dateline: January 30, 2014. So, we've had a little problem with the weather here. My one-year-old and I were on the way back from Bible Study Tuesday morning when the snow hit. Black ice had already formed on the roadway, and when my tires spun out and I got stuck on a patch of ice, I knew I had to get off the road. Cate and I began to pray and sing. My heart was pounding as traffic began to build up behind me. Then I saw the memory card for my son's Upward program stuck to my dash: "The end of a matter is better than its beginning. So it's better to be patient than proud". "All right, Cate," I said. "We're gonna take it slow and not get flustered by the people behind us."

A nice man rolled up beside me, gave me some instruction on how to get unstuck, and after 20 minutes of spinning on the ice, I pulled into the next parking lot and shut off the car. That's when the cars which had been behind me on the road all slipped sideways at the same time. Five cars wrecked together in the place where we had been five minutes before, and blocked the road way. (The next morning, the wrecker who came to pull them out also slid on the same patch of ice, and ended up just like the cars he was trying to rescue.)

I bundled up my daughter, told her, "we're getting inside somewhere," and went to knock on the obviously closed office building's door. Luckily, the man who ran the small document processing business opened up the door, turned on the lights, and told us to stay as long as we needed. I don't know if he realized at that point exactly how long that would be.

There were 20 people in and out of the building that night, and eight of us spent the night. The others spent the night in their cars or walked for miles to get to homes. I knew where my daughter was, but my kindergarten son had been on a field trip and I had no idea where he might be. Several calls and an hour later, I found out that his bus had not made it back to his school, and he was still on the road somewhere. Another hour later, I knew that ONE of the two busses had made it to another elementary school to spend the night, and that that bus was not the one he was on. He was still out in the storm somewhere. It took several hours to find out that the bus his class was on had made it to the other elementary school, but I still wasn't certain he was there and had not been able to talk to him.

My husband, who was coming from the opposite direction to try to pick him up, got caught in gridlock and had to spend the night in a college gym. So we were all separated. And even though I assumed we were all safe and warm, I didn't KNOW it. And a mama's heart can't take that.

They closed the road where I was, and it sank in that we weren't going anywhere. I made a bed for us out of lawn chair cushions, and a supper out of Fritos and water.

Cate and I lay down on our cushions, which kept coming apart. She cried for Daddy (so did I) and eventually went to sleep. I had made our bed in a corner by a glass wall, and as the night went on, it got colder and colder. I curled my body around her and watched over her obsessively. All of a sudden, I became fearful of the people who were my sole support a few minutes before. They were wonderful and, if you had to get stuck in a storm, they were probably the best people to be stuck with. But I didn't KNOW them, and I had brought my child in to spend the night with them. What was I thinking? My mama-heart sank.

I stared at the ceiling and thought about my son. Worried if he was warm, was fed, was safe. I knew that he was out in the world somewhere, and I hoped that he wasn't confused or scared. Tears started down my face, dripped into my ears, as I prayed a prayer that ran through every word I had and devolved into an empty echo: my son, my son, my son, over and over. My mama-heart could not handle it.

Then I began to pray for others. There are mama-hearts out there who sleep on floors every night. There are mama-hearts that break because they can't keep their children warm at all. There are mama-hearts that don't even have snack machine suppers for their children, hearts that ache as much as their children's empty stomachs. There are mama-hearts out there with no clue where their children are.

And there is a Father-heart, who lost His son somewhere out there in a cold world. A Father-heart who lost sight of His son because He could not look at what the son had become. A Father-heart that bled and cried like mine. I cannot fathom the amount of space and darkness that made up the mammoth castle of His pain, but during the snow storm I crawled into one small corner of the pain-closet in the front hallway and lived there for a while.

We got home the next afternoon, after many hours of figuring out how to entertain a one-year-old in a document processing company, and figuring out how to make diapers out of office supplies (give me a couple of binder clips and a scarf and I will fix your baby up). Later that afternoon, after many phone calls and lots of logistics, my husband pulled up in the driveway with my son. I have not let him get more than five feet from me since.

My mama-heart healed the moment I saw my son. But I can remember what I learned in the dark of that night: There is nothing as deep and complex as the love and pain of a mama-heart. But there is also a Father-heart out there looking for your heart. A Father who loves you, and worries about you, about whether you're safe and warm and fed.There is a Father waiting on you to get home. He is calling and He is waiting. Sometimes He cries out in the dark and He is sure that you can hear Him. And He rejoices when you work through all the logistics and obstacles and just come home.

Visit Dana's blog at http://valleydale7.blogspot.com/2014/01/lessons-from-snowpocalypse.html