You would think that at some point along my walk as a Christian, I would learn to look past my circumstances and remember that no matter what I see in front of and beside me, God is still God. In the book I am studying with the women's group at my church, Max Lucado's He Still Moves Stones, Max writes in chapter 18 about how imagines what Joseph might have been feeling the night that Jesus was born. He imagines Joseph praying and wondering at how different the birth of the Messiah was from what Joseph had envisioned--a barn on a haystack instead of a nice room on a comfortable bed, alone instead of surrounded by friends and family. A manger was no way for a king to enter the world, and Max ponders that this scene in his life was unfolding much more differently than what Joseph would have envisioned.
This chapter struck a chord with me because of the way so much of my life has unfolded lately, or, actually, if I'm going to be completely honest, how my life has unfolded pretty much since I left the womb. God often moves in my life in ways that I never would have anticipated just as He did in Joseph's life on the night that Jesus was born. And like Joseph, I often find myself looking around dumbfounded with only the question of "huh?" on my lips. Satan likes to take that "huh?" response to the circumstances around us and use it to drive us away from God. Satan wants us to believe in the reality of our own thoughts rather than the sovereignty of God. In response to our "huh?" Satan says, "Let's look at this logically. The facts of the situation show that God either doesn't care about you at all or he is completely insane. Wouldn't you be better off on your own?" Satan wants us to run away from the God we should be serving.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." --Isaiah 55:8-9
The huge call of faith in our daily lives is to trust that God knows better than us. His thoughts and His ways may not make sense to us, but that is because His thoughts and His ways are far larger than what our minds can comprehend and far better than that for which our sinful hearts could hope. The challenge of being a Christian is perservering on our walks even when the road we're on seems completely illogical. If we had it our way, the path would be straight and free of thorns that might hurt us on the way. Faith calls us to trust in the goodness of God's ways regardless of our present circumstances. God does not put twists or thorns in our path without purpose and we can trust that every one of those twists and every sharp thron is placed there so that we can grow and glorify Him. And much to our chagrin, the biggest glory for God and the most profound growth for us rarely comes from the easiest path.
Posted by Kim at April 15, 2007 05:30 PM