Gaining Favor

 There are times in our lives when we do not have control over what happens to us. It is a helpless feeling when we realize that is the case, but we should not get discouraged or give up. The Lord can always intervene in our life to get us out of a bad situation. One way the Lord does this is by giving us favor with another person who does have the power to help us. This is always a huge blessing, sometimes in a very unexpected way.

Jeremiah was in a terrible situation because of the anger of the people against him. He had delivered the words of God about Babylon destroying Jerusalem, and the people put him in a prison in the house of Jonathan the scribe, planning to kill him. (Jeremiah 37:21) However, King Zedekiah intervened. He did not send Jeremiah back to Jonathan's prison, but he kept him in the court of his prison and fed him to keep him safe. Jeremiah was made secure by gaining favor with the king.

I have experienced this blessing from the Lord so many times in my life, and I am so thankful for each one. I have been on mission trips where I had to get the favor of the local officials to allow our bus to enter the country. One time, I thought we were going to be arrested because my friend did not have his passport with him, but he gained favor from the officer who let us go. Another time a man with a bulldozer came and cleared a lot for us to build a church, and he did it for 2 bottles of soda. God is so good!

At our church here we were going to have to add another septic system on our property for the new worship center. We already had 3 of them, and they were a constant source of problems. God led me to contact a lawyer to help us, and it turned out that he looked on our church with favor. He got the approval for us to run a sewer line from our property to the school behind us and hook into the city sewer system there. Now we have no problems, and we can use all of our land without avoiding the septic lines. I pray that we will all thank God for all of the times He has granted us favor with other people to help us.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read Jeremiah 38-40.