{"id":350,"date":"2019-01-05T11:34:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-05T17:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/good-bye-past-but-thanks-for-memories\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:16:11","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T16:16:11","slug":"good-bye-past-but-thanks-for-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=350","title":{"rendered":"Good-Bye Past, But Thanks for the Memories!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I randomly watched the televised Garth Brooks Concert at Notre Dame last week. Impressive, massive crowd to hear him as he was literally \u201csinging in the rain\u201d. When he sang, \u201cI Thank God for Unanswered Prayers\u201d, I\u2019ll admit I had to sit down and watch him AND the camera\u2019s crowd highlights of couples looking into each other\u2019s eyes, and even Garth\u2019s eyes tearing up. I knew they were thinking \u201cThank God for not answering my prayers because if He had answered \u2018yes\u2019 to those prayers, no telling what my life would look like today!\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe someone you really cared about broke up with you and now you look at them on Facebook and the life they\u2019re living and you fall on your knees and thank God for NOT answering those prayers. Now you can thank God they broke your heart. Look what could have been. Look what the Lord has done. Maybe we don\u2019t, right this minute, understand the reasons, but we can still praise God for the result. <\/p>\n

I thought about the prayers I prayed over the years, asking God for a miracle in the midst of some of the toughest times. Good thing \u201cHis ways are so much higher than my ways\u201d (Isaiah 55:8) because \u201cmy ways\u201d would sure have borne some uncomfortable results. Now, looking back at 2018, we may be assessing how much we enjoyed the high points OR despising the low points.<\/p>\n

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I heard someone say that our lives our made up of highs and lows and we are the summation of all of it. The good, the bad and the ugly. They said we shouldn’t judge our lives by the minute by minute experiences, because if we did that when we went to Disney World, we’d rate our experiences so low that we would never want to go back. You know, the long lines we stand in and all the heat we endure. So when we think about 2018, we shouldn\u2019t be so quick to call it a bad year, just because we went through some hard things. There were definitely some really good things that happened, too! By faith, we should accept whatever happened as part of God\u2019s way of choosing to not answer some of our prayers the way we thought they should be answered. It is far better for us to have a story of grace that carried us through in the midst of it all! <\/p>\n

Maybe, you think you\u2019re chained in a Roman prison right now (metamorphically speaking) when it comes to the \u201cstuff\u201d you\u2019re dealing with and the chains that bind you and the hopelessness you feel. Right while you\u2019re there\u2026.you can hear how the Apostle Paul handled his Roman prison when he says “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.\u201d (Philippians 4:4-7) WHAT? Rejoicing while in a damp, cold prison? Yes, rejoicing that he could write to us with the example of trusting that in EVERYTHING, God is working it ALL for our good! (Romans 8:28) <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say \u201cGood-bye to 2018 and every year before that, because the highs and lows are part of God\u2019s master plan to make us the BEST we can be for Him and for the lives of others that we get to influence! Let 2019 breeze by with absolute trust in our Father Who knows what\u2019s best for us \u2013 the Walt Disney experiences as well as the Roman prison ones! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I randomly watched the televised Garth Brooks Concert at Notre Dame last week. Impressive, massive crowd to hear him as he was literally \u201csinging in the rain\u201d. When he sang, \u201cI Thank God for Unanswered Prayers\u201d, I\u2019ll admit I had to sit down and watch him AND the camera\u2019s crowd highlights of couples looking into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[370,371,372,373,374,375,376,377,378,379,380],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-disney-world","tag-garth-brooks","tag-goodbye-past","tag-his-ways-are-higher","tag-isaiah-558","tag-notre-dame","tag-philippians-44","tag-rejoicing","tag-romans-828","tag-thank-god-for-unanswered-prayers","tag-thanks-for-the-memories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9000,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions\/9000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}