A Cozy Cottage, a Spacious Place

This week, our eldest daughter and her husband reached an agreement on buying a home. We are so excited for them. After several difficult years, the Lord has blessed them with a cozy cottage in which to nest.   Here is a peak at the exterior:

When the two of them were enduring some extremely difficult trials, on several occasions as I was reading the Bible, promises seemed to leap off the page with their names inscribed over them. Have you ever experienced comfort like that from God's Word?

The particular verses are in Psalm 18:16-19. They were penned by David when he was delivered from the hand of King Saul.

David's Camp at Engedi by William Brassey Hole

"He reached down from on high and took hold of me; 

he drew me out of deep waters.  

He rescued me from my powerful enemy, 

from my foes, who were too strong for me.  

They confronted me in the day of my disaster, 

but the Lord was my support.  

He brought me out into a spacious place; 

he rescued me because he delighted in me."

When I find a promise especially applicable to a situation, I note the name of the person it is for and the date in the margin.  Beside this particular psalm, I grabbed a pen to write April 2010.  Imagine my delight when I noticed our daughter's name and the date November 2009 already there.  

What is more, on another occasion when her and her husband's path seemed particularly steep, I opened my Bible to 2 Samuel 22:17-20. What do those verses say?  Exactly the same thing!  Now, June 2010 joins the other dates in my Bible's margins.  

Incredibly, on a fourth occasion, in November 2010, when I was particularly anxious about their situation, the same passage was the theme of an article read aloud to me by a friend. 

How comforted I am when God repeats a promise.  If he says something once, we can rest on it.  When he says it again, we can tether our hopes to it.  But when he repeats it a third and fourth time, he is setting his promise in concrete! 

credit:www.faithcanada.com.

Last night, as I was preparing a talk on Job called "Climbing Life's Walls Clinging to God's Merciful Rock Holds", these verses  in Job 36:15-16 again bolstered my confident faith: 

"But those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; 

he speaks to them in their affliction.

He is wooing you from the jaws of distress 

to a spacious place free from restriction..."

How good the Lord is to deliver in suffering, in affliction.  Somehow the distress frees us from ourselves and brings us into a spacious place. 

 I will always look at this cozy stone cottage as a spacious place, but depth of character, spiritual maturity, and freedom from self-centeredness are truly the spacious place!