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Coming Up trumps 16/1/11 I have a word of encouragement for someone who thinks they may have been dealt a dud hand or has been thinking that they don’t have much in the way of gifts. Lately I have been playing a card game called 500 with a computer-generated partner. Sometimes I am dealt what looks like a pretty poor hand, but if I work with my partner, then the smallest of my cards can bring down the best our opponents can throw at us. Like the biblical account of the shepherd boy David, who after being anointed became a man of renown and brought down a nine-foot-tall soldier from Gath... giants can be brought down with a small stone (1 Samuel 17). Over the past few weeks I have had three signs that God is watching over me and making up for many of the lacks in my life. I want to share them with you to encourage you not to worry. The first lack was in the area of my memory. On the way back from Melbourne after Christmas, we stopped at Morrison's coffee shop in Holebrook for a drink and I accidentally left my bag outside on the chair. About 2 hours of travelling later, we discovered it missing so it was too far to go back for it. Miraculously one of our daughters phoned Peter a short time later and was able to look up the phone number of the shop and make contact with them, while we continued driving home. An honest person had found my bag and handed it in. Miraculously again, it was returned to me about a week later with all the money, camera, phone and credit cards still safe inside. God had made up for my lack of memory. The second lack was in the area of common sense. I was cleaning out the area behind the fridge ready for the new fridge we had just bought. I didn't turn the power off before wiping the freezer cord. I was surprised to see a black mark on the cloth but didn't get around to investigating where the black mark had come from, as I had other things to do. When the men brought in the new fridge it touched the cord and large flames shot out. Mice had gnawed part way through the underside of the cord. Miraculously no one was electrocuted. God had made up for my lack of common sense. The third was a loss in the area of finance. I had bought a ticket to Sydney, a flight to Brisbane, and I thought, a flight back from Brisbane. When I checked my tickets I discovered I had paid for a flight back from Melbourne, not Brisbane and the bus tickets was on the wrong day! To top that off the floods in Brisbane meant that I had to cancel the whole trip and so was a bit out-of-pocket. However in the mail came two free tickets in the Magpies, members money draw. We went down to Magpies and I said to the Lord that it would be nice if I was reimbursed for some of my loss. God was very gracious and my name was drawn out from the barrel and I was given $100. "Every good and perfect gift comes from God" (James 1:17). This was a perfect gift. It made up for some of the lack in my finances. God wants you to know that no matter what kind of lack or loss you have or how small you think your gifts are, with God as your partner you will end up as they say “coming up trumps”. Expect a miracle! Don't look at yourself and what you can supply or as they say, “bring to the table”, but train your mind to think about all that God has in His hands. “Keeping your eyes on Jesus”, means retraining your thought patterns by thinking about who God really is. There is a reason God is called “Almighty”, “strong deliverer” and Jesus is called “prince” (Isaiah 9:6, Psalm 140:7). This is who our partner is. This is the one who watches out for us and makes up for our lack.
References in brackets come from the Scriptures. |