Good morning, DearHeart.
I led a women’s retreat recently where we listed each year of our lives and wrote a memory or significant event of that year … all the way back to the year of our birth. Looking back over the timeline, the stellar years and the tough years, we found that the God that has been faithful through every victory, trial, and ugly tear of our lives can also be trusted through this season, too.
‘Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God,
for He chose us in advance,
and He makes everything work out according to His plan.’ (Ephesians 1:11 NLT)
Looking back – especially at the most difficult years, the Hand of my Savior, the One that chose me in advance, made things work out.
He delivered me.
As I enter His presence and take in this promise in a fresh, new story, I’m absorbing … NOTHING can happen in my life that He cannot work out according to HIS plan.
Read that again & let it sink in. The same is true for you.
We all have things occur in our lives that we’d rather edit out. For whatever reason, it was allowed. He somehow takes the ordeal & works it. His plan … my story.
In the midst of pain and trials, He is still at work. Because of His sovereignty, He gives
the energy,
the power,
the fortitude,
that enables us to get through … to stand in spite of it all.
I won’t pretend to understand it, because I truly do not, but everything, ALL OF IT, somehow works out to bring Him the glory & praise He deserves. Each day that we endure in the middle of our deep pain & hurt is a testimony to the enabling of the One who lifts us to survive. Each day makes the statement that
we can,
& do,
& will
overcome because of the shed blood of the One Who has been victorious & gives us … shares with us, the victory.
Chuck Swindoll once shared:
When God Wants to Drill a Man
When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man,
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!
How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And, with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!
How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And which every purpose fuses him;
By every act induces him
To try His splendor out-
God knows what He’s about.
– Anonymous

God knows what He’s about. He works everything out according to His plan & purpose…. the struggles, the doubts, the insecurities, the rejections, the betrayals, the loneliness, the deaths, the changes, the brokenness and disappointments. God has a plan.
Wake up.
Hold on to Him.
Trust His ways.
Go.