Have you ever experienced a time in your life when everything is humming smoothly along and you know what to expect? It’s like landing on that sweet spot on the Candy Land path that gives you a shortcut to win the game.
Or, how about a time when things have been the same for so long, you actually pray for a change? Those can be good times full of solidarity, security and simplicity.
Just when you think nothing in your life will ever change…Life throws you a curveball. Someone who you love suddenly dies, or you lose your job unexpectedly, or how about when a good thing happens to you like getting married, but it brings you unexpected situations.
What do all of these things have in common? CHANGE.
What does God use change for in this life? One of the things is for our spiritual growth. So the bigger question is whether or not you are OPEN to the work God is doing in your heart, even if that change is a difficult one.
I got married for the first time when I was thirty-nine. I was super excited about the gift God have given me in my husband and my two stepchildren, as you would expect me to be.
But, at thirty-nine I was pretty much set in my ways as a woman and as a provider for my then eight-year-old daughter. I had no idea the work God was about to do in me through this new situation that I had prayed for, for years.
God brought me to my knees many many times in my first year of my marriage. He was teaching, humbling and molding me to become the wife and the mother He wanted me to be. My old ways of being a single mother didn’t work anymore as a godly wife.
In the old testament, when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness for forty years, he was giving them a new life and a second chance out of Egyptian slavery. But forty years of forty times moving to different places was trying and extremely unsettling to the Israelites. Yes they were God’s chosen people, but they had to learn God’s ways and God’s commandments. God was training the Israelites for their new life in Canaan. But they had to follow God, trust in Him, and remain faithful amidst great struggle, starvation, lack of water and through various other trials and battles. Many of the Israelites died because they refused to follow God’s rules and commandments that Moses had set out for them to follow.
Doesn’t that sound like many of our lives today? Full of struggle and change. Yet, we must remind ourselves to wonder what God is doing in our lives in the midst of change.
We must trust the verse Romans 8:28 ESV “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
When you allow God to mold you spiritually, He will be glorified.
My husband gets excited when there is any unexpected change in our lives because he trusts and knows that God is up to something good even if the change seems hard to go through.
I hope to find a similar faith like my husband has found. And I hope the next time I’m up for bat, I hit that curveball right out of the park.
Will you join us on this journey, trusting in God, no matter the situation? Will you believe and follow God even during the struggles of your life?
Many Blessings,
AllisonD
- Ch…ch…ch…CHANGES Are Coming in 2017 for TMI - December 27, 2016
- What New Thing Are You Ready to See God Do in Your Life in 2017? - December 26, 2016
- Heaviness and Newness - December 23, 2016
