God can work WONDERS

Keyword wonder (noun): a cause of astonishment or admiration; a miracle, a surprise 

You are the God who works wonders... Psalm 77:14 CSB

Psalm 77 doesn’t hold back. Real feelings and hard questions are directed to God–some of them almost coming across as disrespectful:

God, I don’t understand. Why haven’t you answered my prayer?

I don’t feel like praying or going to church or anything right now.

Are your miracles just for other people? What about me?

Is it okay to talk to him like this?

This psalm of grief and struggle reassures us that it is. Even if we don’t say these things, God knows when we feel and think them. He is not offended or threatened by our honest cries as we open our hurting hearts up to him.

But the psalmist shows us how to walk through the hopelessness to the other side. We can learn from him here:

He starts by pouring out his feelings and asking his questions, and then halfway through the psalm, he switches it up. 

He begins to praise and remember. Even though he is consumed with grief, he focuses his mind on who God is and what he has done. He describes the miraculous way that God rescued the Israelites and led them out of Egypt.

v. 13-14 God, your way is holy. What god is great like God?

You are the God who works wonders… 

God is holy. God is great. God can work wonders.

Oh, that’s right.

Recently I spent some time looking back through twenty years of prayer journals. Page after page, notebook after notebook brought tears to my eyes. There were so many prayers that I forgotten about that God had been faithful to answer. Prayers for big and small things, prayers for people, and prayers for myself. Vulnerable prayers, discouraged prayers, expectant prayers, and grateful prayers.

There were answers in these journals, too. I found answers to prayers I hadn’t even voiced. I realized as I flipped through the pages that several of the gifts God had given me were things that he knew I needed, but I didn’t know I did.

Some of the answers looked very different than what I thought they should look like. Some answers haven’t come yet. I still don’t understand God’s plan in these, but I guess don’t have to.

What I do understand is that I can come to him just as I am–with my questions, my disappointments, my confusion, and my hurt.

And then I can switch it up.  

Because I trust who he is and what he has done. I can begin to praise him and remember all of the good, all the surprises, all the unexpected ways he has answered my prayers for all of these years.

He never stops loving us or listening to us. He is a God of miracles and surprises, and he is always working everything together for good. 

He is holy, he is great, and he can work wonders.

He will help us find our hope again.

Dear Jesus, thank you that I can be real with you. In my hopelessness, please help me to focus on your holiness and greatness. I will hope in you, my wonder-working God. Amen.