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.