Thursday, January 13, 2011

Message from Shannon Geiger, West Valley 3rd Grade Teacher

The LORD truly works in mysterious ways to teach us and continue to grow us in His ways. Last week, my husband and I experienced a difficult situation within our family. We prayed, asked others to pray for us/with us, and I sought out God's Words. However, for whatever reason, God did not answer my prayers in the way I thought they should be answered. I remember thinking, "God, did you hear me? God, why did you allow this to happen?" Throughout last week and this week, I felt the Holy Spirit minister to my heart to teach me through this situation. God's peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7) and a strength that I know could of only come from God (Isaiah 40:29) fell upon me. The LORD reminded me that His way is always perfect and good (Jeremiah 29:11).




It is truly funny the way that the LORD works because the first lesson I taught in Bible this week happened to be on how Jesus teaches us how to pray. The timing of this lesson was so Godly appointed that the lesson helped to continue to minister to my heart. Throughout this lesson we read a story about a boy named Jonathan. This story described the struggle that Jonathan experienced as he prayed for his dying Grandfather. The lesson he learned was that God is faithful to answer prayer, but also sovereign to answer as He chooses. Sometimes when we pray, God's answer is YES. On the other hand, God can also say NO, or Wait until Later. Sometimes God will even say Yes, and I will give you much more than you asked. We can never really fully understand why God answers as he does, but that is where we have faith and trust in the LORD. God's answers can be trusted because He is all-knowing, and He knows what is best for us even if we don't understand His answer at the time.



Throughout my lesson, the Lord gave me a picture (as He often does because that is how I seem to learn best). I immediately ran over to my game shelves and pulled a puzzle box out. I randomly picked a piece from the puzzle and held it up for my class (without showing them what the picture of the puzzle looked like). I asked the students, "Who knows how this piece fits in the puzzle? Where does it fit? Which way does it go? What part of the picture do you think this piece shows?" Everyone had a different answer of course. I then went on to explain that this is similar to us and God. All we can see is one piece of the puzzle. We aren't sure where it goes, how it fits, or maybe why it doesn't fit somewhere, etc. However, God sees the whole picture and knows exactly how that piece of the puzzle is going to work into the big picture. We might eventually understand how that puzzle piece fits in the big picture, but we only get there by trusting that this piece is part of the puzzle and working through the situation. The Holy Spirit showed me that I can truly do all things through Christ who gives me strength (Philippians 4:13). I hope this situation can help you in your prayer life. Know that prayer is important and essential to understanding God, but also know that God gives us GOOD things that can be different than what we thought was best for us because ultimately God knows what is best. God is good all the time!

1 comment:

  1. Terrific blog Shannon. Thanks for sharing it with us. I've been reminded many times over the years that it is God that truly knows best. It always works best when I remember that the Lord's prayer states that "Thy will be done" not "My will be done." Praise God.

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