Posts Tagged With: teeth

God Intended it for Good

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Mrs Knochel

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Genesis 50:20

The morning after Gabe chipped his teeth at recess, I called and left a message at the school to let them know that he wouldn’t be in that day because we were going to take the day off to rest and recover from the excitement of the day before. I let them know that their prayers were being answered and that God is taking care of Gabe. His new teeth looked almost better than the first ones did and that the thing we needed to be praying for now was that his two front teeth do not fall out! Now when I left the message I was thinking that only the school secretary that prayed with him would hear it and maybe the other ladies in the office. Little did I know what God had planned for that message! The ladies in the office did all hear it, but so did the principal and he called me to let me know that they were so sorry that Gabe had gotten hurt, they were glad to hear that he was feeling better and that the principal himself was praying for him. He just “happened” to call at the same time that my house started filling up with people bringing over soft foods for Gabe to eat (no solid foods for TWO Weeks for a nine-year old boy is NOT cool). There were 2 Bible study sisters, one of their daughters, and 3 kids when another Bible study sister called on the phone (immediately after the principal) with some news. It was a mad house around here! Women chatting loudly as to be heard over the literally screaming children, ahhhhhh….. my dream come true! I love when my house is filled with LIFE and laughter.

When I took Gabe to school a couple of hours later to pick up his homework and say “Hi” to his friends, his teacher let me know that she had heard the message too! The kids in his class were pretty shaken up by his accident, so she had her assistant play the message on speaker phone to all the kids in Gabe’s classroom. Now I have to point out that the me you read on this website is the me I really am. I am like this all the time. As in, I talk up God and what He’s doing. I see Him working in ways that most people don’t see or understand, and I call it as I see it. So when I leave a message on the absence report line at school sharing an update on how my son is doing I’m going to share about the prayers being answered, and how God kept him from being hurt more than he was. It was amazing, his lip didn’t even get swollen! How in the world do you partially chip one front tooth and practically break another front tooth in half vertically and NOT bust your lip open, bruise your cheek or even get a concussion? I mean really!?! How does that happen if you don’t have a guardian angel watching over you assigned directly from the throne room of God? To be completely honest with you, considering what all came from this incident I am reluctant to give the Enemy any credit for what happened. Why? Because too many amazing things came from it to be anything but straight from God.

Anyway, as I was standing there listening to his teacher tell me about how she could see and feel the tension in the room leave as those kids listened to how God was answering their prayers and that He is taking care of their friend. I even used the word relax in my message and when I said it, it was as if they took it as permission to relax and stop worrying. There are kids in that room that have never stepped foot into a church before or heard God spoken of in that way before… until my son was injured. (Luke 12:3 What you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.) You know what God whispered to me while I was praising Him later about bring used in such a powerful way? He told me that after hearing that message some of the kids in Gabe’s class prayed for the very first time!!! Now I’m sorry, but I have a really hard time giving satan credit for that! I am actually going to go so far as to confess to you that I believe that it was under direct orders from God himself that the “accident” occurred. I’m sure there are some of you out there absolutely squirming in your seats right now wanting to disagree with me. But look at the facts people! Look at what all happened BECAUSE he got hurt. Not in spite of it, because of it. There are so many people praying for my son, that is one of God’s main goals for us in life, to PRAY. To reach out to The light from our darkness. But adults weren’t the only ones reaching out to God for help through this, children, Gabe’s friends were praying for the FIRST times in their lives! I can’t tell you how many times I have prayed for those children asking God to draw them into an intimate relationship with Himself. And He did that through my son!

The night after Gabe broke his teeth, he got up from the couch and his teeth chomped together accidentally, causing him great pain. He ran into his room sobbing and upset. I followed him and asked him what had happened and all he would say was “I don’t want fake teeth! I don’t want fake teeth!” I reminded him that only half of one tooth was fake and a small chip of the other. But that didn’t really help him either. So I took him next door into the bathroom and made him smile into the mirror. I said, “Gabe I want you to look at your teeth, really look at them. Now I want you to think about everything that God did because you broke your teeth. Because you broke your teeth, some of your friends talked to God for the very first time in their whole lives! People all over the place have been praying for YOU and your mouth, which is drawing them closer to God all because you broke your teeth. Because you broke your teeth your friends got to hear about how God takes care of us, and how much He loves us, they may never hear that again. These teeth are BEAUTIFUL! I want you to remember all those things every time you look at your teeth in the mirror. Every night and every morning when you brush these fake teeth I want you to remember how God used YOU and your pain to teach LOTS of other people about how much He loves them! Don’t you DARE be ashamed of these teeth! Not ever! They are too precious for that.” No matter how pain comes into your lives, please please please know that God does NOT allow (or cause) pain in our lives simply for the sake of having us experience pain. He loves us too much for that. Pain is in our lives to mold us into the vessel that God wants us to be. We ARE always in the potters hands, there isn’t a moment when we’re not. There are times in our lives when He is turning us on His wheel and applying soothing water and light pressure to form us in a certain way. But then there are other times in our lives when He picks up a tool that was created to “wreak havoc” and carve out a beautiful pattern or design into the clay of our flesh. The tool may be the one doing the “damage” but ultimately, it’s the potter’s hands holding the tool to do the work that He created him to do. Carving the pattern according to His will, not the tool’s. Personally I find it comforting to know that no matter what is going on in my life, GOD is the one in complete control. That God has the Enemy in His hand, in complete control of him the WHOLE time. At no point am I at the Enemy’s mercy, but at God’s mercy.

Isaiah 57:1-2 The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart; devout men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.”

John 9:1-5 “As He went along, He saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the words of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the words of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’”

2 Corinthians 12:7-10 “…because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Categories: The Crazy Mom Blog | Tags: , , , ,

It’s a Blessing. Period.

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Mrs Knochel

I have to apologize that I haven’t been on to blog much this week. Things have been… well, a little extraordinary. It started Wednesday, I was hosting Bible study at my house and we were just finishing up when I got a call from the school. You know one of those mom moments when you see the caller ID and your heart drops to your stomach. It was the school nurse calling, my son was out at recess playing tag with his friends when he ran straight into one of the poles holding up the slide and chipped his two front teeth! Of course I left my daughter with my beloved sisters in Christ at the Bible study (who were already praying for the situation) and rushed over to the school to pick up my poor scared son. Now in all this you need to know that we don’t have dental insurance, or a regular dentist. So on my way to the school I called the local dentist’s office to see if they could fit him in right away and if they would be willing to work with us financially (especially since I had no idea how much it was going to cost to reconstruct two teeth). By the end of the phone call I was fairly certain that I wasn’t supposed to go there. (Not that there’s any thing wrong with them just I could tell it wasn’t God’s will.) Our phone call ended just as I was pulling into the school parking lot (thank You God for cell phones), turned off the truck and allowed myself to briefly dissolve into tears. My baby had been broken and I had been powerless to stop it or even comfort him after it happened. I was crushed. I pulled myself together and went into the school to collect my tearful boy. The secretary told me that when he first came into the nurse’s office he was so scared and shaken up, so she went in and prayed with him. Now I have to tell you that of all the spectacular things that happened this week this was the thing that touched my mother’s heart the most. That in those moments where my baby was hurt and frightened and most likely in absolute shock about what had just happened God had made sure that there would be someone there to comfort him in the best way anyone can be comforted, with the comforter Himself the Holy Spirit. Now you need to know that this is not a common practice in our school, but rather the secretary knows us and knows that praying with my son would be absolutely encouraged and not scorned as it would be in some schools. Anyway, I collected him from school, asking the secretary if she knew of a good dentist. She gave me a name but the office was really far away and I didn’t feel like that was the right place either. As Gabe and I walked out of the school holding hands I could feel him trying to be tough and hold back his tears, so I turned to him and said “Honey, it’s OK to cry, Mommy is already crying.” And we walked to the truck hand in hand sobbing the whole way. Just as we were buckling up to head back home I got a text from a friend of mine who used to be a dental hygienist. She had just walked past my house and one of the Bible study ladies noticed her and told her what had happened so that she could pray too. In her text she told me the name of the dentist that she takes her kids to, their phone number, and that she “would never take them anywhere else”. Finally something felt right! When we got home I called them and the receptionist was great, detailing a good estimate and willing to work with us to split up the payments too. But I was still unsure of going with them, you see at that point I was terrified of dentists and so I was doubting the Holy Spirit leading me there. But then the receptionist mentioned that they are normally closed for lunch at the time I called, but that day “just by chance” they were still behind the desk and answered the phone. That was all I needed to hear! This WAS God’s will!

We made an appointment for an hour later, dropped Anna off at the library with a friend so she could play instead of sit in a waiting room, and then headed over to the dentist office. On the way I called our church office to let them know what was going on so that they could pray for Gabe and our finances, a few short minutes later I got a call from my mother in law to check on Gabe and to let us know that they had been talking about giving Gabe some money for braces and that we could use it for this if we needed to. Answered prayer times two!!!

Now to help you better understand just how terrified of dentists I was, the last time I walked into a dentist office it wasn’t even for me, and I was still shaking like a leaf! When I walked into this office is was filled with such a tremendous sense of peace and calm that none of my old fears even came close to surfacing. God had gone before me and met me there, thank You Lord. They took Gabe back to get x-rays and fix his teeth and almost the entire time I was on the phone with people who were calling to check on him and let me know they were praying for us. When the battery on my phone ran out however, I was suddenly alone and the fear started creeping in. I started fervently praying for Gabe that God would be with him and that he would not be afraid of dentists like me (certainly not the first time I’ve prayed that). I do NOT want to pass my irrational fears onto my kids! I just kept praying over and over “Lord, please don’t let him be afraid” when God’s voice broke through my stream of pleas, “He was afraid when it happened, your prayers over the years asking Me to make sure that he wouldn’t be afraid like you, are being answered. The dentist is the one who is making the fear flee. I am acting through him to fix the things that were broken. He will never be afraid of dentists now.”

As we were driving home from the dentist’s office, were listening to our favorite Christian radio station and I was praying asking God what had caused the incident. I had just posted a salvation message the night before it happened, so did that mean that this was a counter attack from the Enemy? Was this a pruning lesson? Had I done something disobedient? What was the REASON behind my poor son’s pain? I was wracking my very exhausted brain trying to figure out what was going on. And then Laura Story’s song “Blessings” came on the radio and God said to me. “Does it really matter WHY it happened, or where it came from? It’s a blessing. Period.” And that was enough for me. So many times in our Christian lives we stress ourselves out trying to figure out WHY something “bad” happened, or how we could have avoided it. What we could have done differently, or should have done differently. We spend so much time trying to figure out where the pressure is coming from that we fail to realize that it ALL comes from God ultimately. Whether things come from His fingers or through His fingers, they all come from the potter’s hands. So why waste our time worrying about where they’re coming from and just realize that at some point we must yield to the pressure from the potter’s hands and do our best to learn whatever lesson God is trying to teach us, whatever the means and purpose is. I know that this is not a message that most people will agree with, and that’s fine. It’s just the message that God has given me to deliver, and it is my job to deliver it. Whether you accept it is between you and God. Right now, we live in a world filled with unspeakable horrors, does God allow them, or does He cause them? Really, in the end, does it make a difference? If it makes you feel better to think that He allows them, so be it. It makes me feel better knowing that He causes them. Why??? Because it proves to me, that HE is in complete control of the life that I have so lovingly given to Him to care for… mine. It helps me to know that when I’m facing a dark and difficult situation in my life, that it’s not because the Enemy is getting away with something that the Lord doesn’t know about, or has allowed him to do. But rather, I like to look to Isaiah 54:16-17 “‘See, it is I who created the blacksmith who fans the coals into flame and forges a weapon fit for its work. And it is I who have created the destroyer to wreak havoc; no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from Me’ declares the LORD.” God created Satan to wreak havoc, it is his purpose on this earth to be the cause of our “bad” situations so that God can work His miracles through them. Light shines the brightest in the darkness. What would God’s goodness be if there was no evil through which it could shine? It’s a blessing. Period.

Categories: The Crazy Mom Blog | Tags: , , ,

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