Tag: trusting God’s plan

Restoration in God’s Time

Old Testament: Job 19-21

Poetry: Psalm 40

New Testament: John 20

There is an expression about starting a family that has passed down from one generation to the next that goes something like this: “If you wait to start having children until you’re ready, you will never have them.”  There is much truth in this.  While you can prepare for being a parent by accumulating wealth, knowledge, and supplies, no one can really be prepared to take care of a tiny, fragile human 24 hours a day without on-the-job training.  Being that my wife and I’s first experience of inexperience was with twins, we felt conservatively confident that we could manage it when we found out child three was going to be a singleton birth.  However, I wasn’t ready for what would happen prior to Violet being born.

As I mentioned in the first blog in this series, my health spiraled out of control a couple months ago, which culminated in a scary visit to the ER.  Out of all the doubts and worries that penetrated my mind, I wondered how I would be an effective father when my heart was beating rapidly and I couldn’t catch my breath putting my children in their car seats. God, why now? My Heavenly Father and I talked a lot about it, and He gave me peace in my restlessness. How I see it now.  He placed me there to deliver me.  He broke me then to prepare me for my present. He worked through the people around me to heal me for my growing family. His timing is always perfect, and I wish I always saw it this clearly.

“I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.” – Psalm 40:1,3

Throughout the course of this week, we have focused on Trusting God’s plan. He will most certainly take us where we need to go to align our steps closer to His.  It is possible we need to spend time in the desert to clearly focus on what God is calling us to. Sometimes, we need a season of mourning to remember His promise of the life to come. It could be that we need our possessions removed to see every good and perfect gift. God makes it clear He will deliver us, but He sets the schedule. He does not hang healing over our heads so we learn a lesson.  He helps us to see Him more clearly, and He uses both our struggle and restoration as a testimony to Him.  The words of Job ring true with this when he states, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand on the earth. Yet in my flesh I will see God.” (Job 19:25-27)  While this speaks of a promise to come, literal restored men and women being with their God, we can also see God as He works in us in the seasons of feast and famine.

“‘Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’… Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!'” – John 20: 11, 16

God has promised to hear our cry, so why are we bemoaning? Why are we crying?  We don’t grieve like those who have no hope.  There is nothing that can be taken away that God cannot restore one-hundred-fold. Our Rabboni, Jesus Christ, is the firstfruits, and we will be restored like Him at the hour the Father has set.  We cannot accumulate enough wealth, knowledge, or supplies to be prepared  for every downfall or pitfall set before us, but in our dire circumstances, we can wait on the Lord for He will renew our strength in his perfect time.

-Aaron Winner

Reflection Questions

  1. As part of your personal testimony, can you tell of a time God has used both your struggle and your restoration to draw you closer to Him?
  2. What does waiting patiently on the Lord look and sound like?
  3. From God’s word and/or from your own life, what have you learned about God’s timing?
  4. What has God shown you about Himself in your Bible reading today?
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The Illusion of Control

*Old Testament: Job 7 & 8

*Poetry: Psalm 34

*New Testament: John 14

It is not unusual for me to carry around a Ziploc bag full of fruits and vegetables as I meander across the cafeteria crunching through school lunch. A few years ago, I made changes for the sake of my health, improving my diet and exercising regularly.  I dropped some weight, I felt better, and I was healthier in my late 30s than in the whole of my 20s.  I had finally mastered my body once and for all; however, this control was an illusion.

Early this summer I experienced significant changes to my health.  My heart was beating out of control.  I went from marathon running to huffing and puffing up the short flight of stairs at my house.  I was sweaty, panicked, and dropping pounds no matter what I ate. I was heading, as I now know, full-throttle into a thyroid storm and quickly losing the gains that I had worked so hard to maintain. It was then I was given this sobering reminder: I’m not in control; not even a little bit.

Throughout the course of this week, my goal is to focus on trusting God’s plan.  The rain equally falls on the just and the unjust, but we often fix our gaze on our wet shoes in the puddles and mud. This is where we find Job in Chapter 7.  He ponders the calamities that befall him, and even torment him in his sleep.  He is looking for a reason that God has placed him in this circumstance and even “targeted” him (v.20), removing his wealth, health, and happiness.  In what looks like an ironic spin of Psalm 8, Job asks “What is mankind, that you make so much of them? That you give them so much attention?”  It is a fair question.  Why would God place so much attention on my life, seemingly ruining it, especially when I have put in so much time, effort, and energy into making something good?

We find our focus in the lens of eternity. When we surrender our lives to Christ, our possessions, our status, our health, and the whole of our lives are assets of the Gospel message.  There is profound peace in the perfect plan of our Heavenly Father, but it requires us to relax the white knuckle grip we have over the course of our life.  We must surrender in faith, fully trusting that our storm, our season, our suffering is for the glory of God.   Psalm 34 states when we seek the Lord, our fears are quelled (v. 4) and in His time, he will deliver us (v. 6, 17, 19, & 22). While it is hard not to let our hearts be troubled (John 14:1), God is still good in our struggle, and for many of us, more present to taste and see it, when we are broken, poor, ill, hungry, or in peril.

When things seem out of control, we have to realize they were never in our hands.  Thinking we have the power to redeem or fix our struggle alone means we are intoxicated with our own glory, one that will ultimately fail.  Conversely, if we hand our lives over to Christ, declaring our lives are forfeit for His glory in faith, God will use us in a way that will infinitely diminish what we can accomplish by ourselves.  Thank God, I am not in control, and His perfect will can redeem us all.

“I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips. I will glory in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.” – Psalm 34:1-2

-Aaron Winner

Reflection Questions

  1. What do you think and feel when you hear you are not in control?
  2. What evidence do you have to prove you are, or are not, in control?
  3. How can you bring glory to God, even if your feet are in (or have been in) a muddy puddle?
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