By far one of my favorite verses is Jeremiah 1:5
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
Long before Gene Hardway and Violet Spencer , became Gene and Violet Hardway, God knew me. That alone blows my mind. But greater than that is the fact that He knew “me.” The bad, the good and the ugly. And actually Christ says there is none good but God (Luke 18:19); so that just leaves the bad and the ugly. And yet He still chose to save me, use and free me in this wicked world. Amazing.
You too can stand amazed, because He has an amazing message for us in those 31 words. One for each day of any month. There is not a day that goes by that God doesn’t haven a plan. We may choose to ignore it, or perhaps you’re not even in the place to discover it because you’ve never accepted Him as Savior and Lord. But regardless, He has plan.
In a few weeks I’ll turn the double nickel. Where did 55 years go? Much of it wasted, but much of it was in preparatory times for days like these. Even the bad and ugly days have created me to be who I am. The hurts of the past help me love the hurting. The mistakes of the past helped me forgive the mistaken. The brokenness of the past… well you get the picture. Everything has purpose. I won’t say it was all of God, because there were times I was doing anything but listening to God, but He used it. My mistakes didn’t catch God off guard. He did not say, “Oh my stars! She’s beyond anything I can do.” No, He knew me, He loved me anyway and He uses me any way.
He Knew Me
Somewhere in the portals of time, I was. I don’t have a clue as to what form I was, body or spirit. But I was. I was who God created me to me. The drawing I doodled last night that began this thought was a caricature of me as a child. Weird child that I was, speaking into hair brushes, pretending I had an audience of ten. I really didn’t have too big of dreams about it then. But God did. I wasn’t singing, like other little girls. I was speaking. I had important things to say that I was sure the whole world needed to hear. That experience had all but left my mind until a speaking engagement a few years ago when it flooded back into my soul and God said… this is what I created you to do. That’s amazing!
He Loves Me
Long after the hair brush in the mirror days, I had a lot of ugly times. I didn’t know God until I was 34 years old. So that left a lot of years of just me. And I messed up a lot of those years. From 34 to 55, I’ve walked with Christ, but many of those days I’ve walked ahead and had to retrace my steps back to Him and ask once again for Him to take the lead. Life is tricky. But even with all the mistakes, getting off track, feeling frustrated and failure upon failure… He loves me.
He Uses Me
That’s the most amazing thing of all! That I’m on staff for God. Have you ever thought of it like that? That’ll blow your mind away! We all like position in life and recognition, but we take the greatest position in life for granted. That we work for God. That we have a position, a job and goal in life that He instilled in us as a children, and many people just throw it away like it was yesterday’s newspaper. Perhaps you’ve not even discovered yours. Today would be a good day to look backward and see forward