{"id":35704,"date":"2023-09-01T03:30:28","date_gmt":"2023-09-01T10:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/?p=35704"},"modified":"2023-08-26T11:37:31","modified_gmt":"2023-08-26T18:37:31","slug":"september-1-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2023\/09\/01\/september-1-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"September 1, 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-builder-row-1 has-pattern-background has-mask-background nonhundred-percent-fullwidth non-hundred-percent-height-scrolling\" style=\"--awb-background-position:center top;--awb-background-repeat:repeat-y;--awb-border-radius-top-left:0px;--awb-border-radius-top-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-left:0px;--awb-flex-wrap:wrap;\" ><div class=\"fusion-builder-row fusion-row\"><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-0 fusion_builder_column_1_6 1_6 fusion-one-sixth fusion-column-first\" style=\"--awb-bg-size:cover;width:16.666666666667%;width:calc(16.666666666667% - ( ( 4% ) * 0.16666666666667 ) );margin-right: 4%;\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-flex-column-wrapper-legacy\"><div class=\"fusion-clearfix\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-1 fusion_builder_column_3_4 3_4 fusion-three-fourth fusion-column-last\" style=\"--awb-padding-top:40px;--awb-padding-right:10px;--awb-padding-bottom:40px;--awb-padding-left:10px;--awb-bg-size:cover;width:75%;width:calc(75% - ( ( 4% ) * 0.75 ) );\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-flex-column-wrapper-legacy\"><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-1\"><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-34966\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/2-2023-Sally-McClung-Logo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"863\" height=\"468\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/2-2023-Sally-McClung-Logo-200x108.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/2-2023-Sally-McClung-Logo-400x217.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/2-2023-Sally-McClung-Logo-600x325.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/2-2023-Sally-McClung-Logo-768x416.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/2-2023-Sally-McClung-Logo-800x434.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/2-2023-Sally-McClung-Logo.jpg 863w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 863px) 100vw, 863px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Unanswered Prayers<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u201cBeware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.\u201d<\/em> Hebrews 3:12<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In dealing with unanswered prayers, it was shared at her memorial service that Joy Dawson said, &#8220;I will not insult God with unbelief.&#8221; I&#8217;ve been &#8220;chewing&#8221; on that. It&#8217;s a simple statement, but a very profound one. God never promised us that He&#8217;d answer every single prayer we uttered, but He has promised us over and over again in the Word that we can have friendship, fellowship, and intimacy with Him. However, that relationship with Him will be hindered if our hearts are filled with any unbelief.<\/p>\n<p>One of my treasures from the last difficult years is the precious fellowship I&#8217;ve had with the Lord.\u00a0I&#8217;ve had to cling to Him in the midst of the difficulties and challenges.\u00a0He has been my Rock, my Anchor, my Shelter as I&#8217;ve walked through the storms.\u00a0He has held my hand, He has whispered encouragement into my heart, and He has guided my steps when I&#8217;ve not known the way to go.\u00a0His mercies have been new every morning.\u00a0His power has been made perfect in my utter weakness.\u00a0His grace has been more than sufficient for every need.\u00a0He has filled my heart so full to overflowing with His goodness that there is no room for doubt or unbelief.\u00a0He has been so, so good to me!<\/p>\n<p>When we don&#8217;t see immediate answers to prayer\u2014or even more importantly, answers to prayers that we have lifted up for months, even years\u2014the enemy loves to come and whisper his lies in our ears.\u00a0Lies that God doesn&#8217;t care, and that He&#8217;s incapable of answering our prayers.\u00a0He&#8217;ll say it in subtle ways, but he&#8217;ll do his best to lure us away from the Father.\u00a0That&#8217;s why we have to continually press into the Lord in our relationship\u2014come what may! We can&#8217;t allow any opening, any foothold for unbelief to enter in.<\/p>\n<p>A powerful protection is proclaiming the promises of the Word, declaring them to ourselves and to the enemy.\u00a0I have found that singing songs of worship of who God is lifts my emotions and my spirit when I&#8217;m feeling low.\u00a0Speaking and singing the truth of who God is defeats the whispers of the enemy, and fills any crack where unbelief could enter in.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t honestly say right at this moment that I would willingly go through these last difficult years again\u2014the pain is a little too fresh.\u00a0But I can say with absolute sureness that I wouldn&#8217;t have wanted to miss the richness of fellowship that has come as I&#8217;ve had to press into the Lord over and over again in the midst of the pain.\u00a0The intimacy with Him is a precious gift that I wouldn&#8217;t have wanted to miss.\u00a0I am beyond grateful for His closeness.<\/p>\n<p>With all of God\u2019s promises, there is no room for any unbelief in our hearts. God is good and faithful and will be by our side whatever we face!<\/p>\n<\/div><div class=\"fusion-clearfix\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-9hS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35705,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35704\/revisions\/35705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}