Can it just be okay with us that God in His sovereignty allows what is best for us to grow in Him, or to grow more like Him?

 

Isn’t this the ultimate test of our surrender very often?

 

It’s a constant battle isn’t it if we’re just honest?

 

So much pain and suffering is due to free-will in a sin filled world, yet, in the hands of God something can happen that is actually good and life changing.

 

I’ve seen the fulfillment of Ecc 3:11, “Everything is made beautiful in its time.”

 

It didn’t feel good or beautiful and it certainly didn’t look good or beautiful for a while…but trust me when I say that there really is a vineyard in that wilderness of yours. (Hosea 2:14-15)

 

Weariness may surely set in but that’s okay too because when you’re weak He is strong and a few times I needed to know that my own strength wasn’t to be leaned on. Only His was.

 

I’ve fought for things I thought should be working out differently while He was pruning and severing what was necessary. In essence, I was fighting against Him not the Devil. But I didn’t know so much was causing me harm, keeping me quiet, or just not allowing me to become who God designed me to be.

 

But Jesus did and, listen, He is some kind of a jealous God.

 

Some of the suffering was a good kind but you would have had a hard time convincing me of it while those seasons were happening.

 

The same kind maybe when we feel we’ve been used, manipulated, or abused and know we need to walk away. We still suffer loss, loneliness, and pain but we know it’s a good and necessary suffering to be fully free and safe with Christ.

 

Jesus is a liberator after all.

 

He sets His gaze on anything that has you bound and He is so committed to you that He may need to arrange some things through an unexpected wilderness season.

 

I think it’s so lovely that He really owes me nothing else. He already paid with His life for my sins and gave me eternal security and a home in Heaven….yet still He stays daily to guard me, protect me, teach me, and free me of things perhaps I’ve not yet seen in myself.

 

I mean, this Bridegroom of ours is so smitten with us, ya’ll. Always chasing after our hearts, trying tirelessly to capture our attention, extending grace upon grace when frankly we don’t deserve it. But it’s just who He is.

 

This glorious and mysterious Godhead 3 in 1 is always giving more of Himself to us.

 

I’ve thrown many a fit over certain seasons and I must confess we do have still some “dynamic” conversations over some of them.

 

I can’t say that I’ve done so well with accepting the way some things are. But I am getting better.

 

This life is full of learning how to trust Him and I’m of the age now that it’s getting much closer to the day where all things will be finally understood fully.

 

Until then, we keep walking and growing in grace, listening and learning, and walking through the word knowing we’ve entered into a living and breathing story that transforms lives with every turn of the page.

 

In that, friends, is peace like a river.

For thus says the Lord: “Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip, and bounced upon her knees. (Isaiah 66:12)