I am a planner.
When life worries me with its typical business, I tend to throw every upcoming event, test date, and deadline I can think of into the covers of an empty planner. Despite my finite humanity, I love having a sense of control over my plans and my future.
When my plans change? Instant panic.
Suddenly, some inconvenient circumstance is driving my life and my emotions refuse to hit the brakes. Why are things not going according to my plan? Is not my way the best way?
Today, I want to discuss life and how its sudden changes are not as sudden as we think.
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To begin, I have no idea what you are facing in this present moment. Loss, depression, or a Monday – big or small, your circumstances may have you happy or sad.
Secondly, I am not asking anyone to change their emotions at the flip of a switch. Even Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb, and He knows everything! (Grief, especially, does not indicate a lack of faith.)
Finally, I am asking you, dear reader, to simply consider the character of God in light of your circumstances.
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I want to go ahead and list a few thoughts for you and reflect on them as we move along.
- 1.God's character is not conditioned by circumstances.
When "life happens," our flesh rages. Our minds go to the worst possibility and the greatest height of our emotions. Our happiness, then, is based on the outward status of our lives. This is why someone who is rich would turn red over a spilled cup of soup, while someone who is poor would consider it a blessing to receive any form of food.
God; however, knows everything. Every circumstance, every "mistake," is within the mind of God. When a circumstance befalls us, God is constant. His mercy is forever, His justice is perfectly holy, and His sovereignty does not a miss a single bird in His divine preservation of heaven and earth (Matthew 6:25-34).
- 2.We think we know better than God.
Despite our humanity, we believe we know our own needs. We buy ourselves physical necessities, like food and water, and then we spend our efforts trying to buy our dreams, the image in our minds of our ideal lives.
What self-centered people are we!
When we focus on the picture of what we want our lives to be, clinging to it as an anchor for our decisions, we are simply making an idol and calling it an "aspiration."
Just as Isaiah 55:9 says, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (ESV). When God changes our preferred plan, we must trust God, whose plan is perfect! He is the eternal God who created galaxies with a word. When He says His ways are greater than ours, when He says to rest in Him, should we take those words as void the second a storm hits our lives?
- 3.While God never changes, we are crafted by our circumstances.
Just as a potter places his gentle hands on a lump of clay, molding it by extending some areas and shrinking other areas, so does God mold us throughout our lives (ESV, Romans 9:20-24). When we feel the pressure of life, we must remember that God is faithful; that, "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (ESV Romans 8:18).
Job learned the power of God compared to man through the intense trials and pain he experienced. Israel learned of God's faithfulness despite their own faithlessness as they were repeatedly taken into bondage and gracefully released multiple times in the book of Judges. And through Peter's denial of Jesus, he grew as an apostle to preach the gospel to a lost world.
The darkness of sin magnifies the light of God's righteousness. Our circumstances serve as a reminder of our salvation; of the hope we have for eternal life.
Life is difficult.
Jesus asks us to take up a cross and follow Him; to die to self and live for Him.
When things change, we get confused and anxious.
However, God has never left you.
When God changes your plans, trust that His ways are higher. Come to Him angry, come to Him weeping, and come to Him with your questions because He can take it. He'll take every doubt, fear and worry captive in love.
When your plan changes, God's perfect plan is just beginning.
Take heart; let yourself cry and fall into His arms.
He'll never let you go.
May God speak through these words.
With love and prayers,
Sarah Matherly
