Some time back, Jackie and I decided to start checking out various auto dealers for a used SUV-type vehicle for Jackie's home-care work. Some of the roads she navigates are remote and pretty rough, so we needed something higher off the ground than a car.

After praying about this, we checked out our local places, then took a trip to Kamloops. We spent pretty much the whole day looking at and test-driving various vehicles, none of which had the right combination of price, visibility, and comfort for Jackie's back.

As dusk was settling in and we were thinking we weren't going to find anything that day after all, we drove to the opposite end of town and happened to notice another dealership.

As we strolled onto their lot, a salesman mentioned that they had just received delivery of a used vehicle that had been driven in from Alberta, which had actually arrived ahead of time. The asking price was in our ballpark, so we decided to take it out for a test drive with this fellow.

As we were driving around, Jackie knew that this was definitely going to be our best bet. The salesman asked us where we were from and what we did, and when we mentioned that I was a Christian pastor, he surprised us by saying that he himself was a new Christian, and that his brother had just recently led him to receive Jesus into his life as Lord and Saviour.

We then had a really good chat together with this new brother in Christ, getting to know him a little better in sharing things from the Lord in our lives. By the time we got back and made the deal for the vehicle, it was past closing time at the dealership. After we had signed all the paperwork, our new friend, Murray, told us that he had been praying for a desperately-needed financial boost, as he and his family had really been hit hard. He then thanked and praised God (and us), because it was the last day of the month, and this sale was just enough to qualify him for their monthly sales bonus.

Talk about God's perfect timing in answering prayer! A place we had no intention of bothering with, a vehicle arriving ahead of time, a Christian in need, the right thing for us at the right price, and desperately-needed bonus money for Murray and his family for which he qualified on the last day of the month and after business hours. Just before we left, he phoned his wife with this great news as to why he was late getting home. Murray thought that he had run out of time for this to happen, but for God, it was just another display of His perfect timing in all things.

Not all of our prayers are answered in such dramatic ways, but it is encouraging to know that our God is a God of love and power, and that He does have miraculous ways of providing for our needs. We just need to trust Him.

Prayer: Lord, help us never to forget that You are in control and that You love us. Help us to trust Your timing in the working out of Your will in our lives and in all things. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

The Gibeonites were one of the nations that Joshua and the Israelites were commanded by God to eliminate or drive out of the land of Canaan. Chapter 9 of Joshua tells us that the people of Gibeon, fearing for their lives, sent a delegation to trick Joshua into making a peace treaty with them by pretending to have come from a distant country with worn-out wineskins and clothes, and mouldy old bread. Joshua did not inquire of the Lord, and the covenant with these people was not at all in obedience to God's will.

But the interesting observation that is highly relevant to our own walk with the Lord is this: because Joshua messed up Plan A does not mean that God then had to resort to some sort of secondary, inferior Plan B, which somehow tied His hands or hindered Him from still fully accomplishing His purposes in Joshua's life and for Israel.

As we keep reading, Chapter 10 tells us that as a direct result of this treaty/covenant, all five of the Amorite kings of the hill country of central Canaan gathered together to punish Gibeon for making peace with Joshua. To honour the covenant, Joshua undertook an all-night march, and God gave Joshua a huge victory over all of them in one climactic battle, by hurling down large hailstones and stopping the sun in the sky! This is one of the greatest miracles in the Bible. "There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!" (Joshua 10:14 NIV 2011) Even though this covenant was originally a "mistake", God still took it very seriously and expected Israel to honour it.

I find this immensely encouraging to remember when I mess up. And I hope you do, too, because, let's face it, we all mess up, and sometimes royally! But the beautiful thing about God's sovereignty and control is His amazing patience, grace, love, and perfect wisdom for us within that. It's like His Plan A is always being accomplished, one way or another, for us who love Him, because even if we are not always faithful, He is always faithful, for He cannot lie.

So here's the thing: if the Lord takes a man-made covenant this seriously, then how much more absolutely infallible and iron-clad is any covenant that God Himself unilaterally initiates and makes by His grace! And therefore, how much more totally guaranteed is our security and salvation forever in His hands, in His new covenant, which has been eternally written for us from the foundation of the world in the blood of Christ Himself!

So we can take heart, that no matter what this world throws at us, and even in the face of our mistakes and many imperfections, the Lord keeps re-working the clay — and never into something inferior, but only somehow more and more in the image of Christ.

Prayer: Thank You, Lord, that You are who You are, and for never giving up on us! You are always faithful and merciful in Your working in our lives, in spite of our many weaknesses and imperfections. Amen.

Psalm 19 beautifully reminds us of how God speaks to us daily and nightly through His creation, in the heavens and the firmament. There really is something wonderfully peaceful, serene, soothing, and faith-building for many of us, in gazing up into the heavens on a clear starry night.

But as I sit here looking out my window on this wintry day, the only things that I see are millions of snowflakes falling, and a wind with them that is piling up the snow faster than it can be shovelled, and no sign of it stopping for days. We're in the midst of the biggest blizzard of the winter here so far, and it seems so wild and uncontrolled … anything but peaceful. Or maybe it's just the attitude that I'm bringing to it, because, as we all know, when these conditions get bad enough, schools, buses, businesses, and everything else pretty much shuts down. That means postponements and/or cancellations of personal plans and agendas. When that happens, most people, including me for sure, just tend to get frustrated, vexed, and impatient, because my plans have been disrupted! That seems somehow so … well … outrageous to me personally.

I decided to open the Scriptures, and the Lord drew my attention to the book of Job. It's like He guided me straight to some words from Elihu's speech to Job:

Job 37:5-10 – God's voice thunders in marvellous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, "Fall on the earth," and to the rain shower, "Be a mighty downpour." So that all men he has made may know his work, he stops every man from his labour. The animals take cover; they remain in their dens. The tempest comes out from its chamber, the cold from the driving winds. The breath of God produces ice, and the broad waters become frozen. (NIV)

This prompted an attitude adjustment that I needed, and continue to need. Notice that God is basically saying that He disrupts our plans and agendas ("stops every man from his labour") through snowstorms or anything else that He chooses, and whenever He chooses, so that everyone whom He has made "may know His work".

And when the Lord Himself takes over from Elihu with His speech to Job in chapters 38 to 41, isn't it something how He continues to emphasize those parts of His creation that are symbols of things so mysterious, powerful, and so uncontrollable, like the huge reptiles — the behemoth and the leviathan?

So the Lord stopped me from travelling to do certain things on my list this day, but then gave me a chance to write down these meditations this morning instead — to Him be the glory!

We need to see the beauty of the Lord in His unfathomable sovereignty speaking to us, even through disturbances like snowstorms! We need to think of each one as yet another point-blank reminder that He is in control, and not we. Then we need to pray for more and more trust and radical dependence on His sufficiency and His grace in our lives — and His agenda. Period.

Prayer: Lord, help us to trust Your sufficiency, Your grace, Your agenda, Your sovereignty, and Your love in every physical circumstance and situation in which we may find ourselves. Thank You. Amen.

Now this sounds straightforward and easy enough until the time comes when one actually has to do it. I remember flying in to land at the little airstrip in a neighbouring town, and during my approach on this occasion, some thick fog blew in and totally obscured my visibility. Fortunately, it didn't last too long, because I almost immediately began to experience some very uncomfortable and then scary spatial disorientation. This is the kind of vertigo that has been identified as the direct contributing cause of many accidents. It happens because your vision is cut off from the earth, horizon, or any other fixed reference at the same time as your body is exposed to certain angular and centrifugal forces which you simply cannot distinguish from gravitational forces.

I began feeling more and more certain that I was steeply climbing, and it was like my body was screaming at me to level out by pushing the wheel forward. Of course, actually doing that would have resulted in crashing nose-first into the ground. That result would have come from taking matters into my own hands and not keeping my eyes fixed on my instruments and really trusting them.

This reminds me of our absolute need to fix our eyes on Jesus.

Hebrews 12:1b-2a – Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. (NIV 2011)

No matter how we're feeling or what the circumstances, He is our fixed reference point, our horizon, our "sun of righteousness". We need to remember this, no matter how tempted we are to take our eyes off Him by not bothering with prayer, not bothering with worship, not bothering with His Word.

2 Corinthians 5:7 – For we walk by faith, not by sight. (NKJV)

In this context, "sight" must somehow include the feelings and emotions that can so strongly urge us in certain situations to take our eyes off the only things that can help us. Praise God for His love and commitment to us through it all, to complete the good work He has begun in us!

Prayer: Lord, our hearts are so prone to wandering. Please keep our eyes fixed on You and our hearts fettered to Yours. May Your strength be made perfect in our weakness. Amen.

When I was very young, we lived in a small cabin out on the family homestead some miles beyond the small village of Forest Grove here in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, Canada. There was no electricity or such utilities back then.

I grew up in a secure environment with good parents. The earliest memories I have are from about the age of four. Some of those involve waking up in the night afraid, either from strange noises, a bad dream, or just worrying about a monster or something under my bed. I remember sometimes working up the nerve, jumping out of my bed, running scared as fast as I could into another room, and hopping into bed with mom and dad. What a refuge! Whew! There, I felt safe and secure right away, and I could just snuggle in and sleep safe and sound. I'm sure that lots of folks can identify with something similar.

In bed with my parents, I would be "anxious for nothing". But why? It must have been because whatever frightened me did not seem to frighten mom or dad one little bit. Whatever felt threatening to me, certainly did not threaten them.

1 Peter 5:7 – Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. (NIV)

In this Scripture, God is reminding us to run to Him, and not only to prayerfully give our worries to Him, but to leave them with Him. He wants us to remember that whatever threatens or scares us does not threaten or scare Him! We need to remember that not only is He immeasurably bigger than our circumstances, but He is also bigger than the feelings and emotions of worry or fear that we may experience in the midst of those circumstances. Because He promises us that He is sovereignly working out His good purposes in our lives through everything, we are safe and secure in His hands, and nothing and no one can ever separate us or snatch us out of His hands or thwart His purposes — ever.

I need more of this to permeate me, because trusting God surely is one of those essential, child-like attributes that Jesus must have had in mind when He told us to "become like little children" in Matthew 18:3. My feelings of security and peace in my parents' bed as a kid came from somehow knowing that any "monsters" couldn't really get to me without having to go through them first. And if anything could actually get past them … well, then it couldn't possibly be anything worth being afraid of. No wonder the Lord is so often called our refuge, our fortress. No wonder He tells us so many times throughout the Scriptures to "fear not".

Prayer: Help us, Lord, to remember how many times, in every kind of situation or trouble, You tell Your people in Your Word, "Fear not, I am with you!" Amen.