When Life Does Go As Expected
I bet as you read this title you could think of your own real life circumstances when your life didn’t go as expected. Unfortunately, life has a way of taking unexpected twists and turns. Sometimes it is a slow turn and other times it is a sharp change that comes out of nowhere! So often it leaves us wondering what to do next? What can we stand firm on when everything around us is changing?
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The Change We Didn’t Want:
I don’t know what your unwanted change is, but I m sure you have one. We pray for good health, good jobs, and good relationships. There are times in life when we get a taste of all of those things. When we can take a deep breath and soak it all in.
But inevitably in this world full of sin and pain we will all encounter the change we didn’t want. Your story is certainly different than mine, but I am sure we share some of the same emotions in our stories. And I wonder if you have asked the same questions I have too.
The last thing I want this post to be is an attempt to put a nice tidy bow on suffering. Suffering is hard. God gave us emotions and he made us for relationships. So when those relationships are hurt in some way we feely deeply. We have walked through years filled with five miscarriages, the unexpected death of my father, a heartbreaking decision to leave our church of 15 years, and most recently a job change for my husband that we never saw coming. I tell you this so that you know, I have grieved deeply too. And I have struggled through questions and uncertainty. And yet, I know God has lived and worked and moved in my life in each time.
Letting Go of the Outcome
The last few months I have been in a Bible study that has been study the book of Daniel. The stories of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are some of the most well known in the Bible. I have always looked at them as stories where we see God’s faithfulness to those who have chosen to be faithful to him.
And yet as we talked in my Bible study, 99 percent of the time when you go into a lion’s den, you die. And if God had chosen that outcome, he would have still be faithful. Our faith can become so wrongly connected with the outcomes we see here on Earth. And while the stories of Daniel and his friends help us know that our God CAN do the impossible, it doesn’t mean he is required to do the impossible in every situation.
So this last month as we entered a reality of my husband no longer having a job, I was challenged to separate God’s faithfulness and our outcome. I would love if God provided a new job that was a great fit. That paid more money and better benefits and we could look back one day and say, I know this was for the best. But I don’t know if that is the road before us. I hope it is, but I have also seen enough sorrow to know that the outcome isn’t always what we want. So I remember that if our finances are challenged in the months to come. Or if a new job doesn’t come quickly or easily, that does not mean God has not been faithful.
God Will Satisfy
So where does that leave us? With a God we know is faithful. A God we know is good. These are amazing blessings, and I don’t want to sound like they don’t matter. They do. They are everything in the big picture of heaven and hell and a relationship with God. But when you are in the middle of suffering knowing God is good and faithful doesn’t stop the waves of sadness and grief. I found myself wondering, why God wasn’t choosing to move in miraculous ways like He has for Daniel and his friends.
If I am honest, when I first found out my husband would be looking for another job, I thought…Really?? Haven’t we been through enough God! I struggled with knowing what I could stand on that would help the reality of anxiety and uncertainty. If God’s goodness and faithfulness won’t change my situation on Earth, what can I count on him doing?
And as God often does, He spoke to me through my community at small group. I honestly couldn’t even tell you exactly what was said, but I know I walked out of that group knowing the one thing I know God can and will do for me, is satisfy my heart. Psalm 23:1 says “The Lord is my shepherd. I will lack nothing.” This verse reminded me that God can satisfy my heart in any and every circumstance. I don’t need to have a certain amount of money to be satisfied. I can even be in the middle of grief and God is still able to satisfy us.
I am not minimizing the pain you and I go through. But the promise that God will satisfy us with himself is something we can take to the bank. It is a firm foundation when the world around us is crumbling. I can say as I write this, I still don’t know what kind of job my husband will get. I can’t see clearly how the bills will get paid. Sometimes I can still feel the hurt and anxiety of the situation. But God has been so faithful to satisfy my heart in ways that could only happen through his work in my heart. So if you are feeling the pain of this world today, I invite you to begin praying with me and ask God to satisfy your heart. I can’t wait for him to show himself faithful to you.
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