Chronicles of Scripture Prayer--Day 13

This has been a very busy day for me. I was up at around 9:45 and out of the house at 10:30ish running errands before the weather got really bad. I got in prayer after I got home, somewhere around noon. And was able to get through all my prayers. I did some housework, went to work and ran a few more errands afterwards.

This has also been a very blessed day for me. I received a raise from my job today. A raise I didn't ask for(and I don't say that arrogantly), wasn't expecting--needed, but didn't see coming.

It's simply the goodness of God. And sometimes His goodness brings me to shame.

Afterall, it was just 2 days ago that I was talking to the Lord in prayer (and it wasn't pretty)about being frustrated with a particular problem I was experiencing on the job. The next day, Tuesday, the issue was resolved and today, Wednesday, I find out that I've gotten a good size raise. I'm so thankful to God for this blessing and at the same time I feel idiotic for acting asinine. Asinine because of my response to the problem, not because of the problem itself, which was none of my doing.

But, our God is so faithful that He does good things for us even when we're not being so good. I often hear people say something like, "God is good to us, even when we don't deserve it." Let's be honest. We never deserve His goodness. He's good to us for one reason. It's because He loves us. That's it. He loves us. Salvation, grace, mercy and all of His blessings come into our lives through His love for us . The first part of John 3:16 says, 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son....' He gave because he loved. He gave His Son because He loves us. And He gives 'us all things' with Christ because He loves us. Not because we're worthy. And not because He has to.

If you don't believe that, think about this. If the Lord blessed us according to how good we were or how deserving we were, we'd all be shirtless, jobless, homeless, starving and on our way to hell. Every single one of us. Because none of us are good. Not one of us is deserving of His goodness. It is His love for us that brings good things to pass in our lives.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to please Him. On the contrary, He's our Daddy. What child doesn't want to please mommy and daddy? As a kid, a lot of the things I didn't do was because I wanted to be pleasing to my parents, and so it should be with the Heavenly Father.

But, at the end of the day, it comes down to this, it's not about my goodness, it's about His goodness to me.

Thank you for allowing me to share this testimony.