God’s will

I got a letter in the mail the yesterday.  Let me stop right there and dwell on that for just a moment:  A friend of mine had something she wanted to tell me so she wrote it down, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and put it in the mail.  She didn’t text me.  She didn’t post on my Facebook page.  She actually sent me mail.

I don’t do that for other people nearly enough…

Anyway, the point of the letter she sent was to share with me the following quote:

God’s plan for you is not past tense or hidden in the obscurity of the future.  It is continuous.  God’s will is always current.  It is for this you have been brought into the kingdom: to live this day, within its circumstances, in obedience.  ~Jeannette Clift George

That hit me pretty hard.  I had to think about it and mull it over for a while, but yeah, that got me. 

So often we spend a lot of time and energy trying to “discover” God’s will for our lives.  But what if, instead of using our time and energy on that, we used our time and energy in our current situation?  What if instead of waiting for our future to begin, we dedicated ourselves to living as if today is all we get? 

What if we really believed that God planned out every last one of our days before we were even born? (Psalm 139:16)

Perhaps we would be more content and at peace with our present circumstances.  Perhaps we would make the most of every day we have (and I don’t mean stuff as much into every day as possible and be completely exhausted at the end of the day…)

I don’t know what this would look like for you.  For me, I think it means that I need to stop wondering if I’m really where I’m supposed to be right now.  It doesn’t mean I’m just going to sit here until the next thing comes along.  I’m still going to plan for my future and I’m still going to look for opportunities. 

But I will stop resenting my current circumstances.  I will trust that God knows what He’s doing with my life.  I will rest in the knowledge that nothing I can do will ever sidetrack God’s plan for me because nothing I can do will ever take Him by surprise.

It means that I will decide “to live this day, in its circumstances, in obedience”, because when I do that, then I will be living in the center of God’s will.

So what does living in the present look like for you?   What benefits do you see in choosing to believe that you are exactly where God wants you right now?

 

God-ordained failure

A couple of months ago, I had a job interview.  It went really well and I was called for a second interview.  That one went really well too and I was told by some people I knew in the organization that the interview team was very impressed with me.  I had prayed about the job opening before I applied for it and I felt completely at peace about it – like I had gotten the green light from God.  I was excited that I was finally going to have a job!  Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I got a letter a few days later saying that the position had been offered to someone else.  Part of me was able to say, “Ok God.  I trust You”.  But the rest of me just didn’t understand what had happened.  I was so sure this was my job.  I was so sure God had finally answered my prayers (and the prayers of countless other people literally around the world who’d been asking God for a job on my behalf).  But He hadn’t.  And I was confused.

A similar thing happened to the people of Israel in the book of Judges.  Some men in the tribe of Benjamin had committed a horrific sin against a fellow Israelite and the rest of the nation decided to go to war against Benjamin to punish them for what they had done. 

They gathered themselves at Bethel and asked God who should go fight the Benjamites first.  God told them to send Judah first.  So the men of Judah went and were soundly defeated.  The Israelites went back to God, confused and disappointed.  They asked God what they should do and He told them to go fight again.  And again, they were soundly defeated. 

What was going on here?  It wasn’t as if they just went up to fight Benjamin on their own.  They specifically asked for God’s guidance and they did exactly what He told them to do.  And they failed.  Repeatedly.

This story makes me see something I had never seen before.  Sometimes, even when we ask for (and receive) God’s blessing in an endeavor, we still fail.  Our first instinct is usually to throw our hands up in frustration and get mad at God for leading us into a trap.  But look at what Israel did: They went back to God a third time and asked again what they should do.  Again, God told them to go fight, but this time, He told them that they would win.  I see some principles here that we can apply to our own failures and disappointments:

• God’s blessing does not always equal immediate success.  This one is hard to accept, but it’s true.  We’re so conditioned to believe that if we’re following God’s will, life should work out well for us.  The Bible does not teach that and we do ourselves a great disservice if we refuse to accept the truth of God’s word.
• Failure is sometimes ordained by God, and is not always punishment or a tool of satan.  Failure is an opportunity.  We can either react to it with bitterness and resentment, or we can take hold of it and use it to make changes in our lives, to increase our faith and to get a better understanding of God’s sovereignty and faithfulness.
• When faced with failure, our best course of action is to revisit the issue with God to make sure we’re still moving in the right direction.  Perhaps we missed something or allowed our own desires to cloud what we thought God was telling us to do.  On the other hand, we may very well be doing exactly what He wants us to do and we are simply in a time of testing and growing.  But unless we remain in constant contact, we will never know.
• Even after we succeed, we may never understand the reason behind our past failures.  There is no explanation in the Bible for Israel’s defeats and there is no explanation for their final success.  We’re simply told that they prayed, they failed, they prayed, they failed, they prayed, they succeeded.  Nothing more. 

All too often, we see failure as a negative thing.  We see it with finality.  But the Bible doesn’t see it that way.  Failure is part of life and it’s necessary for growth.  It’s not something we should be afraid of.  In fact, for the mature Christian, perhaps it’s something we should look forward to…

What have you learned about failure?  Has success ever ended up being a bad thing for you?

 

Canaanites

After the Israelites crossed the Jordan, God told them to take possession of the land that He had promised to give them.  But He didn’t just give it to them ready to go.  He made them work for it a bit and in doing so, He tested their resolve to obey Him like they said they would (see Joshua 24:1-27).  Their instructions were to go in and completely destroy the cities of Canaan and to completely drive out the people who were living there.  The tribe of Judah did a good job at first (Judges 1:1-18).  Then, we see the word “but”.  “They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains…” (Judges 1:19)  That “but” signifies a compromise, a failure to completely get rid of what God had told them to get rid of. 

From this point on, we read about failure after failure to drive out the people living in the lands the Israelites were supposed to be living in.  In fact, what we see more often than anything is that the Israelites, rather than driving the people out, moved in with them and lived in the land with them. (See Judges 1:21 for example.)  Again, the Israelites compromised their position in their land.   They allowed the Canaanites to live among them and in doing so, soon turned to the Canaanite gods and away from the God they had sworn to serve.

We read of the repeated failure of Israel to stick to what they said they would do, and we shake our heads at their stupidity and backsliding.  But are we really so different?  “I want to lose weight.” Then why do you keep buying cookies? “I want to stop gossiping.” Then why do you keep inviting your gossiping partner to have coffee with you?  “I want to think purer thoughts.” Then why do you keep buying Danielle Steel novels?  “I want to spend more time with God.”  Then why do you turn on the TV the minute you get out of bed and the minute you get home from work?

We all compromise.  We all back-slide.  We all allow Canaanites to live with us.  God has given us everything we need in Christ.  He is our Promise.  But when we don’t completely drive out the things in our lives that bring us closer to sin than they do to Him, we fail to take possession of all that He has for us.  Christ came to save us from our sin.  Why then, do we allow compromises in our lives?  When we do that, it’s only a matter of time before we start worshipping Canaanite gods rather than taking hold of our Promise and serving Him alone. 

Have you escaped from a land of compromise?  Do you have any advice or encouragement for the one who is trying to get out?