You are good, and what You do is good. Psalm 119:68
I feel like the past two years of my life has been all about learning that this is true about my God. Learning that God is good AND what He DOES is GOOD. It is not just ok or will work out, but it is good. A lot of different things have come may way that, at first, didn’t look good at all. Looking back now though, I can see why every single thing had to happen exactly the way that it did to get me to where I am now.
For example, I went through a really tough break up at the beginning of my Freshman year of college. We had dated for 6 years, and it left me wondering why. Why didn’t we break up sooner? Why did we have to break up at all? Etc. However, now I can see that God kept me and that guy together just long enough for us to start going to Church of the Highlands. (His best friend was the person that found out about Highlands and made it an option for us) Then, after I knew I wanted Highlands to be my home, we broke up. It was a new church. I didn’t know anyone there except for my now ex-boyfriend and his best friend. So, my mom visited with me a few times so that I didn’t have to go alone. She fell in love with it and invited my dad and sister. Long story short, after a lot of prayer, my entire family felt called to move there. Now we’re all serving in the church, and I have even been blessed with the opportunity to start Highlands College in the fall so that I will be able to go straight into ministry after I graduate UNA.
All of that lined up into place because God knew that he had a plan for me that was so much better than my own. Learning this truth can be hard because it is so much more than a true statement, it is a mindset. Whenever any trial comes your way, you can walk through it with the joy of the Lord when you know that God is good, so whatever it may seem like he is doing to you is good too.
God will never cause you pain without purpose. In Isaiah 63:8-10, it says that “in all their distress, he too was distressed.” God loves you. His heart is for you. He would never put you through something that brings you pain if something better wasn’t waiting on the other side. Even if it is a spiritual warfare situation where the Devil might be attacking you, just remember whenever the Devil wanted to attack or cause harm to Job in the Bible, he had to ask God for permission first. Your God is in control of everything. Genesis 50:20 says that “You (the Devil) intend to harm me, but God intended it all for good.” So, when you face a trial, you never have to ask, “Why are you letting this happen God?” “Why me?” “How could you let this happen?” Instead you can ask “What do you want to show me through this?” “How do you want to grow me?” “How can I let you use me in this?”
The more you practice this, the more of a natural reaction it becomes. I’m still not perfect at it by any means, but an example of where I’ve seen myself grow in this recently is how I have viewed a recent family tragedy. My aunt recently passed away, which in and of itself is very sad, but the most heartbreaking part about it to me was that she left behind my two little cousins. One of them is around 3 and the other one is in the 4th grade. The first question humans naturally want to ask when these things happen is “why?” However, instead of seeing all the negatives that the world or the enemy would point out to me, I can now allow God to show me all the things he can do. For example, these girls will have such a powerful testimony on the other side of this, they will have a whole new set of opportunities, there are millions of things that God could use this for, but what is important is knowing that God is going to use it. It’s hard to understand, but because Jeremiah 29:11 is true and God does have plans to prosper us and not to harm us, God will turn pain into promise every time.
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