Once you begin to hear God’s voice,
you hear it EVERYWHERE.
Once He opens your eyes to see His goodness,
there’s not much you can’t see at least glimpses of it in.
{Some things are obviously more glorious than others, but God is always there, even in the hard stuff.}
But a funny thing has been happening to me lately, and after about the fourth or fifth time, I decided to give this phenomenon a name:
God’s “Trash Talk”
Now- I will start by saying, for those who would just glance at the title and assume I mean that God talks “smack.” Yeah- I’m not talking about that.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
How God can use ANYTHING & EVERYTHING to speak to us.
Even trash.
That’s right.
Actual garbage, like from a garbage can.
Or- garbage on the road that should have been in a can.
My realization that God can use trash to speak to us, intentionally, happened a year or two ago when I really needed to hear from God about something.
Actually it wasn’t about a THING,
it was about a feeling.
A feeling of discouragement I was sensing that didn’t make sense at all.
I had read through the Bible searching for an answer, but sometimes we need more than that. Sometimes we need the Spirit to examine our spirit and tells us what’s off. And sometimes He highlights our issue in the Bible, but we can’t limit God’s ability to speak to only that book.
(We CAN and should, though, understand that His isn’t the only voice that tries to speak to us, and so we must hold what we hear up to the Bible and what we know from it to be His character, so that we are not deceived or led astray, and we don’t fall prey to today’s mixed-messages.)
But anyway- that particular day, I decided to take a prayer walk, and as I was persisting in my asking Him for clarity- like the Bible tells us to- I caught a glimpse of some trash on the side of the road, right in front of me.
Now, normally we take specific walks for picking up trash on our road, and we are gloved-up for such occasions, and if we aren’t we don’t pick it up, we go back for it later.
But on this day, for whatever reason, I bend down, ungloved, to examine it closer.
What was it?
It was a page out of a burnt book.
Why would someone burn a book?!
I have no idea.
Plenty of lending libraries to give them to.
That probably would have been a better thing to do with it, especially since it was a faith book.
How did I know it was a faith book?
The page must’ve blown away before the fire had finished consuming it, and it had left the bottom intact- with the title there.
Here’s the more shocking part.
The part that still makes me smile,
Just thinking on it again:
The burnt-edges framed a paragraph, and that paragraph answered the exact question I had been asking God about!!!
Isn’t He INCREDIBLE?!
Had they donated that book to a cabinet I may or may not have found it, been led to it, got to that page…I’m not saying it’s impossible. Or He may have spoke another way to me. He’s got so many creative tools in His bag!
BUT everything- anything- even a blown-away, half-burnt page from who knows where- can be used by Him to provide for us.
It doesn’t get much more personal than that!
(Ok, He does! He has! But how cool is that?!)
Since then, I always closely examine trash as I pick it up.
—
Once I found a toy fish 🎣 and He whispered to me :
Keep this as a reminder, that it’s more valuable to teach someone to fish than to just feed them the fish…
and more important than teaching your kids to fish like the world does – seeking after money and pursuing happiness…it’s WAY more valuable to teach them how to fish for Jesus when they feel those needs.
How to go to Him for JOY
which is better than happiness,
and for His type of security
which is infinitely more secure than money’s.
And then to teach them how to be fishers of men- not for what they can get out of it
like direct sales once taught me-
but for how they can give little “bites”
of His goodness to them-
whether or not they don’t know him yet
or they do.
Even when we know him, aren’t the gestures He sends through people still wonderful?!
—
Sometimes I find kids’ drawings, and I pray for the children who drew them, and their family. Their generation. I pray how I’m able-in a general way- because of course I don’t know who they are. But we all have the same basic needs, don’t we?
—
Recently I found a note, clearly a spouse had written to their partner-
“Put $50 for gas on this credit card and the rest on this one”.
Ouch. I can relate to being tight.
Some seasons have been better than others.
We are all blessed to live in America.
To have food and gas and shelter.
But that doesn’t negate the fact that it can be hard and naturally stressful when the economy is a wreck and dollars don’t go as far.
So I prayed for the writer of that note.
And for everyone feeling the strain.
And I thanked Him -again-
like I have to do to get myself in the right mindset EVERY time I get gas or go to the grocery store and see that tab add up.
I thank Him that He provides, and that He frees us mentally to be able to find peace in Him- so we don’t have to live with “paycheck to paycheck” mentality, stressed. We can live, gratefully aware of how we are blessed: “Provision to Provision.”
—-
This morning, I looked outside and saw birds pecking at our garbage can that I had put by the curb because it’s trash day.
Had I not already been dwelling in gratitude with God for hours while doing chores, I’d have been SUPER grumbly- to have to pick up that garbage they knocked onto the ground. But I felt super peaceful, and just proceeded to do what needed to be done.
As I picked up and examined what they “chose” to pull out, I laughed.
A diaper that I had bagged up and took straight out because it stunk. Eew. 💩
A snack-bag, removed from my car and tossed because it had contained apple slices and goldfish crackers that got left in the hot sun, baking under my seat for a few days before I knew it. And cleaning my car out yesterday, I’d found it.
And a Sunday-school paper, brought home by the sweet boy also responsible for the stinky diaper and the ditched snack.
A paper that I normally wouldn’t have thrown away right away (because I love his papers and rotate them out on our bulletin board)…
But also, it was a paper that — to be honest— I would not have c.l.o.s.e.l.y inspected. Because we get one each Sunday. And “I’ve heard all those stories a thousand times”, right?
But as I picked up this paper,
On THIS particular day,
it contained something that guided a prayer for a friend who had just reached out.
A perfect word for her.
How divine is that?!
Wow!
I can’t get over Him!
Even God’s “trash talk” is the best!!
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