Sunday, January 27, 2008

God's purposes

It's pretty amazing to me how many times I try to tell God how I want my life to go. One of my favorite sayings is "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him Your plans."
Maybe it's just me, but learning that God has a different plan for my life then what I thought orginially makes me wonder why I even thought about my plans in the first place.
I sometimes wonder what God has planned for me. I see all of my friends growing up around me. I even see friends who were little or just born when I was a little girl growing up, graduating and yes some have even gotten married. I used to be discontent because everyone else around me had a life and knew exactly where they were headed. Me on the other hand has one of those callings where I never know what is going to happen. And yet Now that I have been able to step back and see that God has a special plan for my life that I haven't even begun to figure and can be happy for my friends.
I now realize that sometimes we have to do something totally different then what we want to or at least be willing to do that. God might just suprise you and give you what you were looking for in the first place.
A promise that I hold on to is that if you ask God for something He will give you the desires of your heart. Amazingly that doesn't me the same thing to me that it did a year ago. I thought that it meant that if you want something God will give it to you. But I think Wanting something and desiring something might mean something different. I also think that the desires of our hearts don't always show forth like the wants of our heads. Deep down inside there are things that our soul cries out for that even we sometimes don't realize and Our all knowing God can hear those cries and grants those requests. He knows that your soul is crying out for the things that you need.
Of course we could argue that we haven't yet gotten the expience house and the huge pay raise that we want, but do we really need it? Would it not be better to be dependent on God for all of our needs instead of depending on our pay checks.

Someone said something today in church that got me thinking. He told us that he has a friend who has a problem that is life threatening. He said he wondered why it was that God would send this problem to this friend who was a good Christian and one who isn't easily humbled. I thought to myself, "Why is it that he is questioning God about this situation? Instead the question should be, Why Not him?"
SO why do we ask God why me or why that good person? Shouldn't we be saying "Why Not?" When we became Christians we didn't begin our Christian lives so that we will never again have heard times and never again be in want. If you believe that you need to go back into God's Word and read again. Even after Paul became a Christian and became a missionary for the Gospel he had to live on very little, and he was not stranger to hardtimes, he was beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, imprisoned and had to run for his life more than once before finally being beheaded. Why then if all these things happened to a wonderful Christian who spread the Gospel should we be thinking we are above them?
God's purposes are not our own and although we may have an idea about what we want, we need to realize that God has a much better plan, reason, and purpose that we may not understand until we get to heaven.

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