On weekdays during Advent we are posting the daily reflection from our Abundance Advent booklet here on our blog. You can download the booklet in its entirety here.
My family and I started attending City Church in October of 2013. Little did I know, this slight change in our lives would be very significant. We had been stuck in a rut where we weren’t regularly attending a weekly worship service. This was mostly my fault, as I just didn’t feel like getting up on Sunday mornings. I’d been working a job overnight and life was just easier for me to sleep in. However, God knew what I needed and when I’d need it, and He placed us into the life of City Church at exactly the right time—His time.
The past two years since we started attending City Church have been two of the most difficult years Amber and I have spent together. God, knowing what was coming, placed us here because of all of you. Just two months after we started attending City Church, my mom suddenly passed away (just ten days before Christmas). We then lost our house and then I lost my job and didn’t get a new one for several months. We finally got settled and back on our feet before I recently lost my job again.
Despite the hardships, God has had a plan for my family through all of this. He placed us in City Church just before we would begin to suffer most, because He knew how much we would need our new family. We wouldn’t have made it through the past two years without all of your encouragement and support.
God’s providence and sovereignty touches every aspect of our lives, and He’s had a plan for us since before He made the world. Ephesians 1:4-5 says, “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons [and daughters] through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.”
God shows us His love for us in abundance, even when we don’t see it. I certainly had no idea the impact that attending City Church would have on the life of my family. Yet, God knew and placed us here at just the right time. Which is something He’d been planning since before the earth was even made. Through Christ, God adopted us as sons and daughters and has taken a personal interest in each of our lives. That’s the beauty of our God. He has entered into our lives and gotten His hands dirty taking everything that happens to us, even the real crappy stuff, and making it for our good (Rom 8:28). It’s comforting knowing God’s abundant love has always existed and, because of the grace He’s shown through Jesus, we can endure any season of life.