Let God Take Care of the How

By Pat Hodges –

Have you ever experienced times in your life when God seemed so distant and far away, you wondered if He was even remotely interested in you or your situation? I know I have. I can think of numerous times when He surprised me by His unmistakable intervention in the midst of crisis both big and small.

I remember one time when my wife and I had traveled to India on a ministry trip with a friend of ours who had been to India numerous times. We had endured a twenty-six hour train ride from Delhi to Shiliguri, a very remote area of eastern India, located in the Sikkim Province between the countries of Nepal and Bhutan. Exhausted from the arduous journey, the lack of air conditioning, and constant movement of the train, which we weren’t used to, we just wanted to get to our destination so we could catch up on some much needed sleep.

There was one little problem that came up. On the train ride, we realized we could not contact the pastor who we were supposed connect with to take us to Mong Poo, our final destination up in the foothills of the Himalayas. Shiliguri is a city of one million people, and without being able to contact him, he hand no way of knowing what day or time we would be arriving.

I remember praying and asking God to supernaturally intervene and allow us to connect somehow. Once we arrived in Shiliguri, we decided to take a motorized Rickshaw and look for our East Indian contact, not even knowing where to start. We hadn’t been in the Rickshaw for ten minutes and there he was walking down the street.

A wave of relief swept over us seeing how the Lord had placed us all at the right place at precisely the right time.

You know, the Lord works like that. He won’t always tell you the details ahead of time. We question how God is going to answer our prayer, or how He is going to work out something for our good. What we need to do is put our trust in Him and leave the ‘how’ up to Him.

“In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:6 KJV).

A Dime for You and A Dime for Me

By Pat Hodges –

Sometime ago my wife told me a testimony of when God came through for her in an amazing way for what seemed like a trivial want. She was at work and wanted a soft drink during her break. She counted all the change in her pockets, which came to forty cents. The soft drinks in the vending machine cost fifty cents. She described that a little voice spoke to her and told her there was a dime in the change slot in the vending machine.

She went over to the vending machine and put her forty cents in. She then reached into the change slot searching for what the little voice had told her would be there. Sure enough, her fingers touched a coin, but to her amazement, she didn’t pull out one dime, but two. After getting her drink, she wondered why there had been two dimes instead of just one. She went back to her work station and found out her co-worker was also a dime short of getting a soft drink. With a big smile on her face, she handed the co-worker the dime.

God is not somewhere off in His own world, totally out of touch with our wants, desires, and needs as we might feel at times. We tend to think our wants and desires are too trivial for God; that He has no interest in them. We need to remember He cares about the small things, not just the big things, in our lives.

An example of this can be found in Luke chapter five when Peter and His brother had been out fishing all night and had come up totally empty handed. Out of frustration, they were ready to throw in the towel and call it a failed night. But Jesus showed up and told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat. Peter protested, but went ahead and obeyed the instruction. To their stunned amazement, there were so many fish their nets broke.

I’m quite certain that if we could go back and interview Peter before this occurrence, he might very well have had the same opinion that a lot of Christians have. God is too busy to pay attention to me and my wants and desires. But here, we see that even though Jesus was about His Fathers business, it was in the heart of the Father to bless Peter and his brother and to give Peter the desires of his heart.

Can you think of times when you might have dismissed praying for something believing your Heavenly Father wouldn’t be interested or would not want to take the time to listen to your heart’s desire? He’s more interested than you know.

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