Navigating this Life
This is my sweet granddaughter, who has been here with me for the last few days. We did girl stuff together and on Sunday, enjoyed family stuff with Uncle Ryan and cousin, Karlei. Precious time with my girl. Alexia will be leaving in a few weeks for Nashville where she will be attending Legacy School of Ministry. Oh the plans God has for her!
She lived alone when her mom and dad moved to their acreage in East Texas. She had an apartment of her own, a great job, hung out with wonderful friends and certainly proved she was responsible.
But, after a while, she missed her family and moved to the ranch and has successfully been working for her parents in their ministry and business.
I enjoy encouraging her and reminding her of all the potential that lies within her and, with God’s help, will scale every mountain and charge forward in every terrain that lies before her. I speak to her about the plans God has for her – plans to prosper her, and not harm her, plans for a future packed full of amazing possibilities. Sounds like Jeremiah 29:11, doesn’t it?
That’s what we should always be saying to our youth who are wondering about what the future holds. And that is what we should be speaking into anyone who is in a place of decision-making.
Here’s the thing about life. It is NOT a series of random, freak accidents. Life is not totally unplanned. Life is not without meaning. God, our loving Father, knows what’s going on.
God is weaving the tapestry of our lives, and it includes light, pastel threads and interweaved are dark threads. There are happy and sad times that produce richness and texture and color. Nothing can come into the life of a child of God without God’s permission. Everything is Father filtered.
I’m not saying that everything that happens to us in life is God’s perfect will. If we go out and sin, that’s not God’s will. If somebody sins against us, that’s not God’s perfect will.
But God does have a permissive will. If I go out and overeat, I pay the consequences. If I don’t get enough sleep, I reap the harvest of weariness. God does not cause evil, and God does not cause suffering. But He does allow those things because they have a purpose. God permits them, and then He uses them.
God is an expert at bringing good out of bad. He could have kept the Apostle Paul out of prison in Philippi, but instead He let Paul go to prison, and the jailer became a believer as a result. God could have kept Jesus from the cross, but He let Him go. He let his own Son suffer and die. Did God bring any good out of that? GOOD is an understatement!
God turns crucifixions into resurrections. The things we most wish were removed from our lives are often the very things that God uses to shape us and make us into the believer He wants us to be. He wants to use our problems for good in our lives. There’s something more important than our pain. It is what we are learning from that pain. God is in control.
So how can we respond to challenging situations? Paul says, “Never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!” (2 Corinthians 4:16-17)