“For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Romans 11:29
6 years ago, I lost about 70% of my hair following an entire Summer of not being able to have any communication at all with my daughters. My body underwent extreme conditions due to stress that I’ve never faced before or after that time. Over the span of a few months, clumps of hair began to shed until there was hardly any left.
3 years later, I came up out of the revival waters of baptism to the Lord telling me He would restore many things the enemy had stolen. He gave me a list of specific things He was going to return - some of which I had asked for and others I didn’t even know I’d lost. Several things He said excited me and a few perplexed me, because without His intervention it would be impossible to believe. One mention was the restoration of my hair.
A handful of His promises were fulfilled instantly and I’ve written about a few of them here over the years. About half of them are still drifting my way from Heaven. But the hair came upon me full force this morning as I was reading the story of Samson to my daughter. When this verse met my eyes, the Word of God erupted in my living room.
“But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.” Judges 16:22
As the tears began to fall, I saw the beautiful illustration of a man with a powerful gift from God, who for a moment opened the door of his heart to the enemy, and thought he lost it. The Bible says a few verses before this that Samson woke up and didn’t know the Lord had left him (Judges 16:20). But as he is laboring, now blind, in captivity, God sheds light on a truth we must never forget … that His gifts and calling are irrevocable for us all. For Samson, for me, and for you there is a moment when the hair begins to grow back.
While I’ve been checking the alarming number of gray strands popping up over the years, God has been counting another set of hairs in my life. It is so clear to me today that He was speaking then about the calling He gave me that I let go of in moments of weakness and darkness. He was letting me know that He is the God of second chances and the good Father who never forgets the perfect gifts He gives.
Let us consider what God has spoken to us in tender, intimate moments and constantly surrender those holy and precious words back to Him, especially as we read the Bible and minister unto Him. He doesn’t just know the actual number of hairs on our heads, but He knows the exact moment when the irrevocable gifts and calling will sprout up like a spring of everlasting life in us. And I think He smiles as we sometimes wait upon a word in our own ignorance or caught up in our own interpretation of something so far from what He was communicating. He lingers in that window of time knowing that we’ll soon hear His heart and step into the fullness of the desires we now share together.
For those of you who stopped searching for the stolen dreams God gave you, know that they are not forgotten by the One who generously gave them to you. For anyone sadden by a gift no longer evident in their lives, trust that His hand extends it to you right now, because He wrote your name on it. And to those of us who have opened the doors of the sacred treasures of our hearts to the untrustworthy, know that the locks have been changed and His word remains true yesterday, today, and forevermore.
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