I received some very disappointing news the other day. Not totally unexpected, but I really was hoping for a different outcome. It has threatened to plunge me into an abyss of hopelessness. But I keep clawing my way back up. I don't want to go there.
I read this verse from a daily devotional this morning:
"The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me." (Psalm 138:8)
The reading was about how God uses suffering to bring us into a place of peaceful submission to His will, after which He will do a great work in us. To quote:
"Oh, the blessedness of being absolutely conquered! of losing our own strength, and wisdom, and plans, and desires, and being where every atom of our nature is like placid Galilee under the omnipotent feet of our Jesus."
Sounds glorious, doesn't it? I can read those types of quotes on a good day and agree with them. But when I am in the midst of a struggle, I say to myself "just wake me up when it's over!" Do you ever feel that way?
Still, we are in His hands, no matter what the circumstance is. We are in process. Just like the young cardinal above, who has a long way to go before he is a glorious red color, we are growing in Christ-likeness. God is doing a work; not outwardly to make us a brilliant crimson against a blue sky, but to perfect in us a sweet smelling savor that will draw the lost, and an inward brightness to be lights in a dark world.
1 comment:
I think it's an easy thing to "trust" God when all our ducks are in a row. It is not so easy to trust God in times of adversity. No one enjoys pain, and when it comes, we want it relieved as quickly as possible.
It seems more difficult to trust God than to obey Him. The moral will of God given to us in the Bible is rational and reasonable. The circumstances in which we must trust God often appear irrational and inexplicable. The law of God is readily recognized to be good for us, even when we don't want to obey it. The circumstances of our lives frquently appear to be dreadful and grim or perhaps even calamitous and tragic. Obeying God is worked out within well-defined boundaries of God;s revealed will. Trusting God is worked out in an area that has no boundaries. We do not know the extent, the duration, or the frequency of the painful..adverse circumstances in which we must frequently trust God. We are always coping with the unknown. Yet it is just as important to trust God as it is to obey Him. In order to trust God...we must always view our adverse circumstances through the eyes of faith...not of sense! And just as the faith of salvation comes through hearing the message of the gospel....so does the faith to trust God in adversity comes through the Word of God alone. It is only in the Scriptures that we find an adequate view of God's relationship to and invovement in our painful circumstances. It is only from Scripture...applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit...that we receive the grace to trust God in adversity.
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