Living by God's Timetable...Not Our Own

 

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6

 

 

 

     It says in the Bible multiple times that God knows what's best for us, and that He has our whole lives planned out. It says to give up, and trust him whole heartedly with our lives and our futures. Yet, if you're anything like me, you often fail at this. I know I do. All the time. I always find myself questioning why things happen in my life. I mean, God says he knows the desires of your heart, and if you live for Him, he fullfills those desires, right??? So, why don't things that I often want to happen, happen? I mean, at the time, I truly think they're the "desires" of my heart. But then...I realize, what am I thinking. I often make the common mistake of thinking God's plan will always unfold the way I think it should. The truth is, God works according to His own predetermined timetable, not the one we think He should work by. And the truth is, God's intended pathway for us often involves a companion named suffering.

     As a teenager, life gets hard. I'm going to be really honest because I guess there's really no reason to sugar coat it, but I was really hurt by a relationship coming to an end. And honestly, at the time, I did not understand at all why God was putting me through that pain. It straight up was terrible. And I questioned God so much because I felt like being in that relationship was what my heart most desired, and didn't understand why, when I was living out what I felt like was a good, christian life, I had to feel so low. It took me quite some time, but I finally realized,  yes I had no idea why God was allowing me to be in this situation, but I couldn't rely on my own understanding of the situation, and I knew I had to trust that He was going to use this painful situation in some way. And now, 5 months later, I look back and am amazed how God has changed my life for the better, in a way, that would have never happened had I not experienced that. Honestly, before it, I thought I was a strong Christian. But, I wasn't. I didn't understand the true love  of God and didn't trust in Him like I needed to. But he led me back to church, where I found community. He brought me to meet someone who I consider my mentor now. But what I'm attempting to say, is that I reflect upon the last 5 months, and I finally see the amazing, amazing ways God used that painful situation to bring me closer to Him., and bring me closer to so many others.  I wanted to share my story to show you that God is bigger and wiser than our situations. But... we're often too dull to see it. It's crazy to me that he promises us so frequently that he has amazing plans for us, yet we often get so wrapped up in our difficult situations, that we forget to have that trust.

The Lord declares in Ecclesiastes 3:1-22 "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing..."

For everything...there is a season. God's going to take us through so many seasons in our life. Seasons of singleness...seasons of breakups...seasons of stressful school...seasons of lonliness... but we will also experience seasons of joy, and love, and peace. But to me, its crazy, that even when we go through those seasons (yes I've said that alot :p) of hard times, we can always find that joy, love, and peace in Him.

God is bigger than our situations. He will get us through them. He knows the true desires of our heart. He is going to use every single event in our lives to make us stronger. With him, we can withstand anything. I want to end this with my absolute favorite verse. God is our light, our protector.  His grace is enough. He promises us that if we walk uprightly with Him, making Him always our priority,and living every second for Him, then he will withhold no good thing from us.

That alone, should be enough to make us want to surrender every second of our life to Him.

 

Thank you for reading :)


P.S.  I drew a lot of inspiration for this post from Pastor Dennis's sermon last Sunday at EFCC.

 

Calm Chaos

"Peace I leave with you;my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." John 14:27



First off, this is a portion of the lyrics from the song Whatever You're Doing by the band Sanctus Real (I blended the lyrics with a "chaotic" picture of a sunset and pier :p) and there's just something about these lyrics that is so relatable.

Throughout my day, and I'm sure yours too, it seems like there's not enough time in the day to get everything that you need to get done, done. For me, it's often school work. Feeling like I'm going to be crushed under the stress of school and the pressure to get all of my homework done, or get a good grade on the exam the next day, (when there's still like 5 more left that week), or to raise my grade because my current one "isn't going to get me into those good colleges". Whatever it may be, my weeks feel absolutetly chaotic. Staying up late to study, but not being able to catch up on sleep the next night because yet again, I'm staying up late to study, so I just get more tired. I feel like this happens to all of us. Then on top of school, we all have lives, where we go through times that quite frankly, suck and are hard. Maybe it's that you can't quite forget about the boy you used to be with, and he keeps popping up in your life, and you're tired of hurting, and don't quite understand why you have all of this on your plate, or how you're going to push through it all and not break. Or you're dealing with issues at home on top of the stress of school. Whatever it may be, it simply comes down to the fact that as a teenager in high school, life is hard, and we sometimes feel like no one understands the pressures or why He allowed us to be hurt or stressed like this.

However...

I've recently realized that through all of this, when I look to Him for my center, and completetly trust in him... I'm overcome with this crazy sense of peace...even admist the chaos. With school, I've realized, doing our best is all we can do, and it's all God expects us to do. He has a plan for us, and if we fully understand that, then we can find so much comfort in it. Heck, if we don't get into that "perfect" college, that just means it wasn't perfect for us. I think...when we understand the simple fact that God promises to provide us with what we need...not what we want...but what we need...there really isn't a reason to stress. And with that guy you can't forget about...there's a reason he's not in your life anymore, God is working inside of you, you may feel hurt and like your insides are just gonna burst out because you can't take it anymore, but I guarentee, if you fully trust that He does everything for a reason, that chaos, will turn to peace. It's scary to "surrender to what you can't see", I struggle with this way to much, but I guess all we can do is fully trust, and with trust, comes the ability to free yourself of worrying, stress, and lastly...chaos.