God is already in your tomorrow

Tomorrow – This is something I rarely thought about, as I went about my daily life, helping my husband try to build his third Spanish ministry for the glory of the Lord and work a secular job. It’s something that, quite honestly, I took for granted. My husband and the Lord always took care of the details in my life, and I was quite happy to let them do so; I didn’t have to think about tomorrow.

Then, it came. The phone call you never think will come to you.

“Mrs. Hernandez? I’m sorry to inform you that your husband has been in a very serious car accident.”

To this day, I’m not quite sure how I got from my house to the emergency room at the hospital that night. All I know is that I went from having spoken to my husband just a few hours before, to making flautas for his lunch, to sitting in an emergency room lobby, waiting and praying for the nightmare to be over.

It’s funny how a simple phone call can change the course of your life forever. Since that fateful night, I have been on a constant roller coaster ride that, at times, seems to have no end in sight. Some days, I am up and feeling on top of the world, and other days, I am overwhelmed with the ever present fact that I am a widow, and en route to living and planning my life alone.

There have been many “firsts” that I have had to encounter during this past year and a half since my husband went to be with the Lord. It has not been easy doing the things that he always did for me, but I have come to find that I am not alone. God has surrounded me with many good friends and a loving family that have all helped me to cope and get through all of these “firsts” in my life.

One of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make on my own is deciding where I should ultimately live now that there is really just my youngest daughter and myself. After months of prayer and counsel, I made the decision to stay in the home my husband had chose for us to live and the one in which we had celebrated many happy occasions.

So, content with my decision, I planned a mini-vacation with two of my daughters and a friend on Memorial Day. I had won a gift certificate to the Dillard House during our church’s spring program, so we made the short drive up to Dillard, Georgia to spend the day. We had a fabulous time and were on cloud nine. It had been a hectic month of May with two graduations, and we were grateful to have had some down time to enjoy each other’s company and relax.

Shortly after we returned home from Dillard, I received a text message from my landlord. He wanted to stop by with his wife to speak with my daughter and me. I told him to plan on coming over around 7:00pm. So, they came over and sat down in my living room, and after a few moments of pleasantries, he proceeded to inform us that he had been without a job for 10 months, and had to put his home on the market, and that they needed to move into our house. They were very sorry, and they had wanted us to stay in their home for as long as we needed, but circumstances had forced them to make this decision.

On May 30th, 2016, we found ourselves facing the insurmountable task of looking for another home. I was in shock, to say the least, as I hadn’t seen this coming. I mean, after all, it had taken me months to finally decide that I would be comfortable staying in this home where I had shared the last few years of my husband’s life with him, and for the first time in many years, I found myself worrying about tomorrow.

And although I was heartbroken and shaken, and my daughter had to see me break down in tears again, I picked myself up, grabbed my computer, and proceeded to look for a new home, all the while pondering about what would happen tomorrow. I had also texted my pastor’s wife, Shannon Reed, and proceeded to tell her everything that had happened. I asked her and our pastor to pray about the situation, and if they knew of anyone that had a home for rent, to let me know, as I needed to be out of my home by June 30th.

She told me that they would pray, and she said this, “Don’t worry about anything. You will not be homeless. There is plenty of room at the church for you to stay, if need be, until God provides.” I had never thought of myself as being homeless, but here was never any doubt in her mind that God would provide.

The good news at the end of my story is that, within 24 hours, my pastor contacted me and let me know that a gentleman in our church had a property that had recently been vacated, and although he was looking to get out the landlord business, after he heard of our situation, he was willing to let us rent his home for the same price I was previously renting the other home, with no security deposit required!

On top of all of this, he allowed us to paint the interior of the home as we saw fit, and he also installed new wood flooring and carpet throughout the home. The home definitely needs some tender care and there have been obstacles to overcome while there, but all in all, going from thinking that I might not have a place to live, to having a new home, I couldn’t be more pleased!

All of this to say that I am a strong believer in God already being in all of my tomorrows. I cannot take the time to share all of the many times that God has provided for us in our tomorrows, but He has proved himself faithful, time and again, each and every day since my husband passed away. He is always with me, and I am never alone.

As I thought about the word “tomorrow,” God gave me a few thoughts which I have tried to apply to my life, and which I believe are applicable to the Christian life. I have found these things to be helpful as I try to remember that God already knows what’s going to happen in my life today, AND tomorrow, even though I do not.

TRUST in the Lord.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

This is a very common verse, and one that is often quoted by preachers when they want to convey to their congregation the importance of trusting God with their life. But, applying this point to my life personally, I would have to say it is easier said than done at times. I think all of us could say this, and be telling the truth.

So many times when things happen in our lives, we want to take things into our own hands, and try to make everything right in our own strength. However, all too often, when we do this we fail miserably to get a good result. It is so much better to trust in the Lord, and in the fact that He knows best, no matter what happens. My daughters often remind me that “God’s got this,” and I do not need to worry.

One example of this is my husband’s funeral. As we planned the funeral, it was my desire to do things that would please him, from the music right down to who would preach. I had an idea of who he would have liked to have preached his funeral, and tried my best to make a way for this pastor to be at the funeral to preach that day. However, I did not realize at the time, that the person my husband really wanted to preach his funeral was someone else completely. And so, God made a way for my husband’s choice to come to the US and preach his funeral that day. I found out as this man preached my husband’s funeral that my husband had already asked him years ago, to be the one to preach.

Why is it that we can trust God for our salvation, but when it comes to our life and our future, we have a hard time trusting Him? We can trust God to work things out because He already has things planned according to His sovereign will.

Whether you feel like it or not, OPEN your Bible daily.

Deuteronomy 4:29 says, “But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.”

Again, I could give you many verses that tell how we should seek after the Lord, and we should do this on a daily basis, especially if we truly want to know His will for our future. However, sometimes, I don’t think we fully understand what that means. God looks down from Heaven every day, according to the last to see if any of His children are truly seeking Him. So, how do we seek? We seek Him through opening our Bibles and reading His word, and I don’t mean just a few short minutes a day; I mean every single day, for at least more than 5 minutes a day. We often don’t find the solutions God has for our problems because we don’t continue faithful in our daily Bible reading during the rough times, just as we do during the easy times.

After my husband passed away, within two days, my home was full of family members - my parents, my daughters, their families and my sister and her family. I could barely think straight and found myself without a quiet place to wrap my head around what was happening. I found myself frequently grabbing my Bible and going out to our small patio to sit alone. I would look up at the sky, cry and talk to God. I even talked to my husband, telling him everything would be okay, even though I couldn’t see how it would be at the time. Then, I would take my Bible, read at least one chapter and be ready to push on with whatever the day had in store.

The only thing that kept me grounded after my husband passed away was staying faithful in the things that really kept me close to God. I continued to pray to God, even though I didn’t understand what was happening, or why, and I continued to read my Bible, even though sometimes, I didn’t get very much out of it. A quote I recently read states, “DON’T SAY GOD HAS BEEN SILENT WHEN YOUR BIBLE HAS BEEN CLOSED.” Don’t expect solutions to your life situations if you stop reading your Bible and praying for God’s guidance.

Big or small, MIRACLES still happen.

Job 5:8-10, “I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause: Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number: Who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields…”

Often, when we go through rough times as Christians, we harden our hearts and, especially if God doesn’t do a miracle right away to straighten things out, we forget about the miracles that God has already done in our lives. A miracle can mean different things to different people. It can be something spectacular or something small that a person has prayed about forever.

To me, personally, I consider it a miracle that I am even able to share my personal testimony without breaking down in tears every five minutes! It hasn’t been easy, but God has shown us His faithfulness in even the tiniest ways. In Psalms 37:25, the Bible says, “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.”

A few of the things God has done for us is provide for my daughter to finish her senior year in a Christian high school when we weren’t sure if we had the finances to put her through on our own. Being her senior year, He then provided for her to be able to have her senior pictures taken without any cost to us through the love of a good friend. More recently, He provided a home for us in less than 24 hours when we didn’t even know what we were going to do. And I can go on and on. We just need to remember that even miracles take a little time; they don’t always happen overnight.

OBEY God’s prompting.

1 Samuel 15:22, “And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.”

If we want God’s blessing on our future, we will obey what He tells us to do, WHEN He tells us to do it. As Christians, we often feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit in different situations, yet we fail to obey what He tells us to do.

In my situation, I must honestly confess that, months after my husband passed away, I felt the urging of the Lord to move from the house we lived in, into something smaller and not so spacious. However, because it has only been a few short months since he passed away, I was uncertain of what to do. I was comfortable in my home; it held many memories of the last years with my husband, but God had other plans, and since I made no move to obey His prompting, He had no choice but to PUSH me out of the house, almost literally. I really have no one to blame but myself, but He knew I was going to do what I did, and He still provided a new home for me.

D.L. Moody once said, “There will be no peace in any soul until it is willing to obey the voice of God.”

Sometimes, we think we know better than God, and we disobey His voice. We often think that we cannot do what God has asked us to do, but God will never prompt us to do anything we cannot do. He will always give us the strength and wisdom to follow through with whatever He asks of us. He already knows our future - It is our job to simply OBEY.

No matter how rough it gets, REST in the Lord.

Psalm 37:7, “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.”

Many times, after we have gone through a hard time, we feel exhausted and do not know which way to turn. We tend to be anxious about the path we are on, sometimes doubting whether it is the right path. We wonder about what God’s will actually is now for our lives, now that everything has changed.

One of the things I struggled with shortly after my husband’s home going was where to go to church. My husband had been a pastor and I, a pastor’s wife, for more than 25 years. My whole purpose and position in life had changed the moment he went home to Heaven.

When I was struggling about which church to attend, I prayed long and hard about it. I discussed the options before me with my daughters, and after attending an evening service at Peachtree Road Baptist Church and hearing a sermon titled “Fight To Be Stable,” God confirmed for me that this was the church I needed to attend at this time. I was fighting a daily battle of staying focused, of finding a purpose or reason to move forward, and this sermon helped me tremendously, and I knew that this church was going to help get me back on track in the Lord’s service.

This may sound a little strange, but my husband had a list of things that he taught Esther every morning during their commute to school, and on the back of this 4x6 card was written the name “Jay Reed.” We had never seen this before, until after we started attending this church. Finding this on the back of this card, gave me a peace about attending and becoming members of Peachtree Road Baptist Church.

I know I will continue to struggle with unrest about certain things in my life right now, but during the first year after my husband’s passing, as I struggled with what steps I needed to take next, my pastor’s wife told me this: “Do ONE THING at a time. Take ONE STEP at a time. God is not going to judge you if you’re not ready to do something; He already knows what your limits are.”

REALIZE that God will answer.

Genesis 35:3, “And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.”

It is so easy for us to get caught up in our problems, and even though we pray and pray and pray about something, it just seems to take such a long time for God to answer or respond. Again, we need to remember that God is in control, and even though we don’t see how things are going to work out, we need to trust in the Lord and know that they will. God hears and knows about our distress. God is with us wherever we go – especially in the trials. I cannot begin to tell you the many times I have felt His loving arms around me during the loss of my husband.

When I was driving to the hospital the night of my husband’s accident, I prayed for God to spare his life. I couldn’t bear the thought of this being the way that God had decided to take him home to Heaven. I cried and prayed all the way there. When we arrived at the hospital, we were met by an emergency room caretaker, and shown to a room with a lot of medical personnel. They sat me down and told me that my husband had just been taken up for emergency surgery. I barely heard a thing they said after that, and as they proceeded to give me his personal belongings, I had a feeling in my heart that he was not going to make it. But yet I prayed. And although I felt in my heart that he was gone, I had a type of peace.

It’s important, especially when we go through extremely difficult trials and try to make important decisions, that we realize how close God is to us. He is right next to us and will not let us fall. He also may not always answer right away, or in the way that we prefer to have Him answer, but He will always answer. A quote that has encouraged my heart along these lines is: You may not understand today or tomorrow, but eventually God will reveal why you went through everything you did. Realize, and trust, that He will answer, and He will.

OPEN your heart and delight yourself in the Lord.

Not only do we need to open our Bibles daily, but we need to open our hearts daily. It is so easy to become BUSY and BITTER about our situation, and think that God has forgotten us; maybe He has no further use for us, or at least, we can begin to think this way, as day by day, we let ourselves wallow in our sadness and difficult circumstances.

The Bible says in Acts 16:14, “And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.”

It’s so very important that, although and when, we go through difficult times that we seek and strive to be of help to others. I love to study about Lydia in the Bible. She was such a servant, and I’ve learned from her how important it is to put aside my own troubles and strive to be a help and blessing to others in the church.

I can truly say that my church, along with many other friends and families across the nation and the Spanish world, have been a blessing and encouragement to me and my family during this past year and a half since my husband passed away. I have felt the prayers and welcomed the encouraging words and support from everyone. But, it would be so easy to never come out of my house and sit in a corner, wallowing in my own grief, and never go out again.

Honestly, how do you go from serving the Lord for over 25 years alongside your best friend, to not having the sense of purpose that you had before?

I can only tell you how I try to move forward. First, I open my heart to God’s word and His people. Don’t stop going to church, and don’t blame God for your problems. Second, I open my heart and eyes to the fact that I’m not the only one suffering in this world. There are others all around me that are going through the same thing.

After a sermon that Pastor Reed preached a few months back, I took my pastor’s wife aside and sat her down in the pew, and told her, with tears in my eyes, “I want you to know that, even though I am not ready to be fully involved in everything in the church, I totally support you and Pastor Reed, and the vision you have for the Lord’s work here. I will do my best to be a blessing to your family and help in any way I can.”

You see, I’ve been where she is – a pastor’s wife with a young family – and the encouragement that the church members give you can mean a whole lot. So don’t be afraid to open your heart and get involved and be a help to others. God’s people are supposed to encourage and support each other. If all I can do is invite a family over to eat one afternoon, or babysit while the pastor and his wife go out to eat by themselves, I need to do it. I need to open my heart to whatever the Lord wants me to do to be a blessing to others.

Lastly, WORRY NOT about tomorrow.

Matthew 6:33-34, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

So many times, we let our circumstances get the better of us. We fret and worry about the littlest things. We forget that God is in control. We need to learn to take a step back and TRUST in the Lord. Everything will work itself out in His time; not in ours. That’s what we always forget, don’t we? We think that we are in control, and that we know best, but it is really the Lord who knows what’s best for us.

When my husband’s life was slipping away in the hospital, I thought, “Lord, if you take him, what will I do without him?” And although I couldn’t see the answer then, God has answered that question every single day that he allows me to live. He says, “You’ll do just fine. You’re doing just fine, April.”

Is it the way I would like it to be? No, and there isn’t a day that I don’t sit and think about all the plans my husband and I had for when my children were all off on their own. And, although we did spend a lot of time together even when our children were all home, we had plans to travel and serve the Lord together in different ways. But it didn’t work out that way – God had other plans.

And, honestly, I believe I have been guilty of doing my fair share of worrying about things this last year or so, but I have just come to find out that it was all a lot of wasted time and energy. God has worked everything out as He has seen fit. And, I don’t know what the future holds or even how I will handle what comes my way, but I do know that I need to trust the Lord in every step I take and remember that He knows what is best for me. After all, the Bible does say in Psalms 37:18, “The Lord knoweth the days of the upright; and their inheritance shall be forever.”

So, I have strived, day by day, to put these things into practice in my own life, and though it hasn’t been easy, nor do I expect it to be, but day by day, I’m learning to concentrate on the here and now, and to let God take care of my tomorrows because He knows what lies ahead – He’s already there.