Every Event

God and Your Destiny

Every event of your day is designed to draw you toward God and your destiny. To the degree we believe and accept God’s vision for our lives, we’ll get through life.  When people junk us, we’ll stand up. God can use this for good. When family members sell us out, we’ll climb to our feet. God will recycle this pain. We may stumble, but we do not fall.  Why?

Ephesians 1:11 tells us that God works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will.  Everything means everything.  No exceptions. Everything in your life is leading to a climactic moment in which Colossians 1:20 says, “Jesus will reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross.”

You will get through this. God will give you a hope and a future! God will use this for good.

Do not give anger an opportunity

Forgiveness

Ephesians 4:26-27 says, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity!”

The word opportunity in this verse means territory or ground. In other words, anger gives ground to the devil. Bitterness invites him to occupy a space in your heart, to rent a room.  Believe me, he’ll move in and stink up the place. Gossip, slander, temper—anytime you see these, Satan has claimed a bunk. Don’t even give him the time of day. Tell him to pack his bags and hit the road!

Begin the process of forgiveness.  Keep no list of wrongs. Pray for your antagonists rather than plot against them. Outrageous as it may seem, Jesus died for them, too. If he thinks they’re worth forgiving, they are. Does that make forgiveness easy? No. Quick? Seldom. Forgive your enemies? Forgive them. You’ll get through this!

Let HIM in

Evil. God. Good

It’s the repeated pattern in Scripture.  Evil. God. Good.

Evil came to Job.  Tempted him and tested him. Job struggled. But God countered.  He spoke truth; declared sovereignty. And Job, in the end, chose God. Satan’s prime target became God’s star witness.  Good resulted.

Evil came to David and he committed adultery. Evil came to Daniel and he was dragged to a foreign land; to Nehemiah and the walls of Jerusalem were destroyed. But God countered.  Because He did, David wrote songs of grace; Daniel ruled in a foreign land; and Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem with Babylonian money. Good happened.

The Bethlehem innkeeper told Jesus’ parents to try their luck in the barn.  That was bad.  God entered the world in the humblest place on earth.  That was good. With Jesus, bad became good like night becomes day; regularly, reliably, refreshingly.  And redemptively.

Evil. God. Good.  When God gets in the middle of life—evil becomes good!

His job

No Easy Solutions

Life turns every person upside down.  No one escapes unscathed. Not the woman who discovers her husband is in an affair. Not the teenager who discovers a night of romance has resulted in a surprise pregnancy.

We’d be foolish to think we’re invulnerable. But we’d be just as foolish to think evil wins the day. The Bible vibrates with the steady drumbeat of faith; God recycles evil into righteousness.

I don’t have an easy solution or magic wand.  But I have found something—or Someone—far better.  God Himself. When God gets in the middle of life, evil becomes good. Trust God. No, really trust Him! He will get you through this. Will it be easy or quick?  I hope so.  But it seldom is. Yet God will make good out of this mess. That’s His job.

Look UP

Heaven’s Throne Room

You sleep alone in a double bed. You walk the hallways of a silent house. You catch yourself calling out his name or reaching for her hand. Good-bye is the challenge of your life! To get through this is to get through this raging loneliness, this strength-draining grief.  Just the separation has exhausted your spirit. You feel quarantined, isolated.

May I give you some hope?  If heaven’s throne room has a calendar, one day is circled in red and highlighted in yellow. The Bible says that the The Master himself will give the command. Archangel thunder!  God’s trumpet blast! He will come down from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then the rest of us who are still alive will be caught up with them into the clouds to meet the Master. (I Thessalonians4:15-17).

Oh, what a day that will be! We’ll be walking on air! And there will be one huge family reunion. I leave you with this reminder: You will get through this!

Journey

Good-Bye

Good-bye. No one wants to say it. And death is the most difficult good-bye of all.

After our church had five funerals in seven days, the sorrow took its toll on me.  I chided myself, “Come on, Max, get over it.  Death is a natural part of living.” Then I self-corrected.  No it isn’t. Birth is. Breathing is. Belly laughs, big hugs and bedtime kisses are.  But death? We weren’t made to say good-bye. God’s original plan had no farewell, no final breath, day, or heartbeat. No matter how you frame it, good-bye doesn’t feel right.

God has served notice.  All farewells are on the clock. He has decreed a family reunion. What a reunion it will be. Revelation 21:4 says, on that day, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

This long journey will come to an end. You’ll see Him. And you’ll see them. Isn’t this our hope?

God knows

God is in the Crisis

Do you recite your woes more naturally than you do heaven’s strength?  No wonder life’s tough. You’re assuming God isn’t in this crisis.

Isabel spent her first three and a half years in a Nicaraguan orphanage. As with all orphans, her odds of adoption diminished with time. And then the door slammed on her finger! Why would God permit this innocent girl to feel even more pain? Might He be calling the attention of Ryan Schnoke sitting in the playroom nearby? He and his wife had been trying to adopt a child for months! Ryan walked over, picked her up, and comforted her. Several months later, Ryan and Christina were close to giving up, and Ryan remembered Isabel. Little Isabel is now growing up in a happy, healthy home.

A finger in the door? God doesn’t manufacture pain, but He certainly puts it to use!  Your crisis?  You’ll get through this!

HE is bigger

He is Preparing a Place

God’s purpose from all eternity is to prepare a family to indwell the kingdom of God. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11).

God’s plotting for our good. In all the setbacks, He is ordaining the best for our future. Every event of our day is designed to draw us toward our God and our destiny. When people junk you in the pit, God can use it for good. When family members sell you out, God will recycle the pain. Falsely accused?  Utterly abandoned?  You may stumble but you will not fall.  You will get through this!

Not because you are strong, but because God is. Not because you are big, but because God is. Not because you’re good, but because God is. He has a place prepared for you!

It stops with ME

Generational Garbage

Your family history doesn’t have to be your future. The generational garbage can stop here and now.

Don’t give your kids what your ancestors gave to you. Talk to God about it, in detail. God, everyday I came home from school to find mom drunk, lying on the couch. I had to take care of baby brother, do homework on my own.  It’s not right, God. Difficult, for certain.  But let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Let Him replace “childish thinking” with mature truth.

A dear friend of mine was called to identify the body of his father who’d been shot by his ex-wife. The blast was just another in a long line of angry, violent family moments. He made this resolution:  “It stops with me.”  And it has!

God wants to help you—for your sake! Trust Him—with His help, you’ll get through this.

What HE did for YOU?

Stay the Course

Revenge builds a lonely house. Space enough for one person. The lives of its tenants are reduced to one goal: make someone miserable.  They do.  Themselves!

Keep a sharp eye out for the weeds of bitter discontent. God’s healing includes a move out of the House of Spite, toward the spacious ways of grace, away from hardness toward forgiveness. Can he really, you wonder?  Can He really clean up this mess? This history of sexual abuse? This raw anger at the father who left my mother? Can God heal this ancient hurt in my heart?

Begin the process of forgiveness.  Turn your attention away from what they did to you to what Jesus did for you. Stay the course. You’ll spend less time in the spite house and more in the grace house. And as one who’s walked the hallways of both, believe me, you’re going to love the space of grace.  You’ll get through this!

How do you think?

Let God Do His Work

Were your growing up years hard years?  Family pain is the deepest pain because it was inflicted so early; it involves people who should have been trustworthy. You were too young to process the mistreatment. You didn’t know how to defend yourself. Besides, the perpetrators of your pain were so large. Your dad, mom, uncle, big brother—they towered over you, usually in size, always in rank. When they judged you falsely, you believed them.

As a result, you’ve been operating on faulty data.  “You’re stupid, slow, dumb like your daddy, fat like your momma.”  Decades later, these voices of defeat still echo in our subconscious. But they don’t have to! Romans 12:2 says to let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

You are God’s child.  His creation. You’ll get through this!  You’re part of His family.