Clouds

The other day I was doing my Bible study and thinking, "Seriously, Beth Moore, I HATE when you make me look up 9,000 random verses. And this will probably not have that great of a point." However, I was wrong because God had other ideas. We looked up a lot of verses on clouds. Why? Because apparently God shrouds Himself in a cloud a LOT in the Bible, to hide His glory but make His presence known. Anyway, she quoted Oswald Chambers and it hit me right in the gut/heart/soul/whatever.

"We'll be greatly helped when we accept that clouds are not signs of His absence. Indeed, within them we most often find His presence...It is by those very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were no clouds, we should have no faith. Through every cloud He brings, He wants us to unlearn something. His purpose in the cloud is to simplify our belief until our relationship to Him is exactly that of a child-God and my own soul, other people are shadows....Unless we can look the darkest, blackest fact full in the face without damaging God's character, we do not yet know Him."

This came at a time when I needed to hear it. I've been in a cloud of confusion due to some circumstances and God saying no to a few prayers that I know He asked me to ask. And finally He has given that above clarification. God can say no and His character remains unchanged. God can say no and He will still want me to ask Him for things. God can say no but it doesn't give me the right to stop trusting Him. God can say no and He alone can still give me confidence to ask Him boldly for things. And most importantly, God can say no and I can actually end up loving Him more after it.