OUR AWESOME GOD . . .

OUR AWESOME GOD . . .

"But Moses said to the people, 'Do not fear! Stand by and see the
salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today; for the
Egyptians you have seen today, you will never see them again forever.
The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent." (Exodus 14:13-14)

My nature is fix things. And sometimes there are things that are just
not fixable. I am a slow learner -- but I am learning that rather than
my trying to fix things and messing them up, I need to keep silent and
allow the Lord to do HIS work.

A number of years ago when we lived in Maryland, we received a notice
from the State that we owed a significant amount of money for taxes
because of an error that we were unaware of on our income tax return.
Our accountant who had prepared our forms had inadvertently missed a
major detail on our form and now we were being asked to pay a
significant amount of money.

The problem was that our accountant was no longer in business and so
another accountant friend said he would take care of getting the
situation resolved. There were a series of letters written, and we
thought that everything was fine. Several years later we were attempting
to open a credit card account and were denied. After checking, we found
out that we were denied because of our back taxes. Not only did we owe
the taxes, we were also being assessed a penalty which now had mounted
up to a very large amount.

We didn't have the funds to make the payment and were quite distressed
about the situation. It was at that time that I was reading through the
Bible and came to these verses in Exodus. I had been trying to figure
out how to FIX this on my own, but knew that the Lord wanted me to allow
HIM to take care of the situation. But how? Didn't he need my help?

I committed the matter to prayer and purposed to "stand still" and "keep
silent." Several weeks went by and nothing happened. As I was praying
one morning, the Lord spoke to my heart and directed me to check out the
State's website. I thought that was odd, but decided to act on His
prompting. When I opened the site, the headline was that the State was
providing tax amnesty for the next three weeks which would enable people
to pay their back taxes without the penalties being assessed.

I called the office so that we could set up a payment plan and God led
me to just the right person. As I laid out my case, she said, just a
moment. The error on our form was because half of the year we had lived
in PA, and the other half in Maryland. We were renting in Maryland, but
still had our home in PA and were commuting. What we needed was proof
that we still maintained residency in PA. She told me that if we could
provide copies of our telephone, electric and gas bills, they would
waive the ENTIRE amount.

Within 24 hours, we went from this huge debt, to having our account
wiped clean! When we shared this with several of our accountant friends,
they said -- this is absolutely amazing! God is awesome.

Are you facing an obstacle in your life? An impossible situation? One
YOU can't fix? GIVE IT TO GOD -- then stand still and see the salvation
of the Lord! Good words for your consideration this morning.