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God's Words For US
by Cecelia Lester
“The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise Him.” Exodus 15:2 (NIV)
As a child, whenever I felt weak, I wanted to give up. I found myself just ignoring things that pertained to the particular activity I had been pursuing; I craved lots of encouragement.
As a young mother, I attended an area meeting of the church I attended. My church hosted the sister churches in the county and one or two in the next county to the north. The meeting was set up with small workshops. One of the titles referred to a Spiritual gifts survey.The title drew me in. I answered a series of what seemed to be unrelated questions about how we viewed certain situations. We then scored the surveys.
One of my gifts was that of encouragement. At that time, I didn’t do anything with these results. A few years later, the Sunday school class I was in studied all the Spiritual gifts and I took the survey again. My scores showed basically the same results.
A few years later, I found myself repeatedly asking a question, “Where does an encourager go when they need encouragement?” All at once, I realized I had answered my own question. The answer to my question-“An encourager gets the encouragement he or she needs when they go to God.”
With my Fibromyalgia, when I find myself stressed my limbs begin to ache and I feel weak. I recently began a project that caused me worry and resultant pain. I sent a prayer SOS to a group of people who pray for my writing ministry. I posted a response on the Facebook page of a writer/editor/speaker who is in my ‘friend’ list. His question that day was, “How can I pray for you?”
A dear friend once told me she had her heart broken by someone fairly close to her. As she told me a little about it on the phone that day, I heard her husband say he was right there with her.She asked me to pray for her. She kept the particulars between her and God. A mutual friend of ours asked me if I had noticed any difference in the way she acted. I had.
This friend receives prayer support from me and our mutual friend to this day two years after being confronted by someone whom she and her husband called a friend. Recently, she shared with a group of us that when we pray about a situation the change we have is in us.
God, through His Word and His answers to prayer, gives us strength to face the difficult times we encounter in this life. Also, God sometimes places people in our path to help us through times we don’t understand.
Dear Father God; Thank You for being my strength, for standing beside me as I encounter things of this fallen world. I thank You for the encouragement found in Your Word. I praise Your name. In the name of Jesus, I pray. AMEN
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Cecelia Lester has been serious about her writing for over two decades..
She composes Christian essays and posts them to her blog quietspirit-followingmyking.blogspot.com/
She has served in a faith-based organization, Grace In Action by writing two newsletters and searching for possible grants.
In July 2017, she published her first book, 'Times of Trouble Bring Rays of Joy.'
She and her husband of 54 years live in central Indiana. They have one grown son.
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