During this winter storm we had we did a little prep work and went grocery shopping and to the library for movies and books. One of the movies we got was "Soul Surfer". It is a christian movie. Except for the bikini clad girls, it was a great movie. This teen girl, who was home schooled, wanted to be a pro surfer. She would go practice during the day and do her school in the afternoon. As the movie progresses you see she gets sponsored and she is supposed to practice for an upcoming competition, but she had also told her youth leader she would go on a Missions Trip. Now the missions trip didn't interfere with any competition, just the practice for that competition so she backs out of the missions trip. She didn't go. She went practicing with her friend and their coach and while they are practicing a shark comes and bites her arm off. Her friend and coach save her life. She tries to compete again but fails. So she deicides to go on another missions trip. While on that trip she teaches some kids to surf and she says, "Who would have thought that teaching others to surf was going to teach me that surfing was not all there was in the world." She goes on to do this wonderful thing of surfing with one arm and they end the story by a reporter asking her a question: "If you could go back and do it over again, would you have not gotten in the water that day?" She replies, "Yes, because I can never have the opportunity to embrace as many people with the two arms I have with just one." Which is true, God gave her a lot of influence. Her faith didn't shake, she remains steady. Part of that was good parents instilling God and His word in her life.
But what struck me about this story was that if she had been on that missions trip she wouldn't have had her arm bitten off at that particular time. Maybe another time, maybe that was ultimately God's will for her life. Maybe she wouldn't have learned there was life beyond surfing any other way, I don't know. I do know it wouldn't have happened at that particular time. I feel that sweet Bethany, the girl in the movie, was putting surfing above God and God had to prepare a fish. Yes, it seems hard and bad, but I can think of another person God prepared a fish for, Jonah. He got swallowed whole, left for 3 days and 3 nights but isn't it amazing?! God used him in a POWERFUL way . . . thousands came to know Jesus as their Savior because of Jonah.
What amazes me is that we as christians do mess up, we sin, we make mistakes, we miss God's will for our life . . . yet God doesn't throw us away and say, "That's it, you missed it, you don't get to serve me at all!" He still uses us and sometimes in a greater way than before . . . That's not to say we should all go around sinning and see how God wants to use it. No we need to obey God right away, all the way, and with a good attitude! But I'm really thankful that when we do mess up, God prepares fish for us to get us back to where we need to be and use us in a greater way than even before.
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