why God gives good things

I have not been able to stop listening to, singing, and thinking about this song since I first heard it four weeks ago. It was at the end of a season I never thought would end - which is silly, I guess, because seasons always end and I should know that by now.

I am still trying to figure out what comes next, but yesterday God let me in on a little secret that has kind of ravished the way I think about His plans for me. Because here's what the song says:

All Your plans are for Your glory
Yes, we can know You are good

If all His plans were for our glory, they'd be contingent on our performance, behavior, and worthiness.

But GUESS WHAT: His plans are for His glory, and He is always worthy, so His plans will always be good.

He plans things for the good of His name, to bring glory to Himself.

HEY. (This is me trying to figure out how to tell you how revolutionary this news is.) God will never plan evil or bad things for you, because He will never be untrue to who He is, and He will never bring evil or bad to Himself. He is pure. He is good. He is holy. And WE get the promise of good things because HE is good.

Am I talking in circles?

God is good. It is who He is. And it is more comforting to me to know that He will always plan good things for me because He wants to bring glory to His name, than if I were to believe that He plans good things for me because I deserve them. Because I don't deserve them. And I would much rather trust in a God who is worthy of glory than in my own feeble efforts to do good things.

I hope it brings comfort to you, too.

Our purpose is to bring glory to God. So if He's taking you from here to there, it must be because you will bring Him more glory there than you will here. - my friend Katie

encouragement

Thankful that the Holy Spirit gives us words months before we even know we'll need them. Proof that God goes before us and knows what we'll need in order to walk through whatever is ahead.

Here's what I wrote in my journal on December 31st, 2012:

TRUTHS TO CARRY INTO 2013:

 - The Lord knows you, heart and soul.
 - As long as you are trusting the Lord, you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing.
 - Your successes and your failures answer to no one but God - He is your judge.
 - God is aware of everything, and He sees what others may never see.
 - He is all you need, but you must trust Him to receive Him.
 - When your soul rests in Him, no outside tumult can shake you.

He is faithful, y'all. And sometimes that is all He gives us to hold onto in the change and transition and uncertainty.

But it's more than enough.

Even if I walk through a very dark valley, I will not be afraid, because you are with me. - Psalm 23:4a NCV

morning promises

My alarm woke me up this morning to Will Reagan & United Pursuit. I am naturally a morning person, so smiling when I wake up is not unusual for me. My first thought is usually, "I LOVE MORNING!" (Not an exaggeration.) But my first thought this morning was a little different.

One of my favorite promises that God has been fulfilling in my life recently is that He is all I need.

Sometimes I start to look at who's getting married, who's having kids, who's making more money than I am, who's driving a better car than I am, who has family living near to them, etc. And I wonder at God, "Why haven't You blessed me with all of these things?" And I feel discouraged and discontented and a little sad, like maybe there's something wrong with me or that I'm not as "treasured" or "valued" or "deserving" as someone else.

And once I've thought these thoughts, I've taken my eyes off Jesus.

Because here's the thing about Jesus: He gives.

I'm not talking about the Pollyanna "glad game" where you make a list of all the blessings you have been given (which is a very good thing to do).

I am talking about finding everything and all in the One whose love and grace goes deeper and fuller than any person or thing ever could.

He gives us Himself.

There are a lot of things I want, and a lot of things I don't understand why I don't have. But here is where that Will Reagan & United Pursuit song comes in:

I take all those things that tell me I am incomplete, that tell me I am not where I could be or should be, that tell me there's more that I could have, and lay them at Jesus' feet and pray,

If I give it all to You, will You make it all new?

Because He does. He has. He continues to take what I give Him and make it into something I would not have designed for myself. Sometimes that means giving Him something I really want and telling Him that I trust that whatever He gives will be better.

And it is.

Because when He gives you Himself, it is far better assurance that you are treasured and valued than if He were to give you every blessing on earth.

I do not comfort myself in my "losses" but counting all the blessings He has given me. I allow Him to comfort me and show me that there is no loss when I find everything I need in Him.

"The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy." - Psalm 11:7

to you who wait

Yesterday a man at church told me, "You're missing your calling."

He had the best intentions, and he meant it as a compliment, and I am not so insecure that I believed him and changed my vocation to Circuit Rider, henceforth.

But his words have hung around the fringes of my thoughts the past 24 hours.

Just because I am not doing right now what perhaps I will ultimately be doing, does not mean that, right now, I'm not exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Sometimes I think we are in too much of a hurry to get to the Promised Land that we miss the preparation time in the wilderness.

But preparation time is just as much of a calling as destination is.

Maybe God's calling on your life right now feels like wilderness. 

Just because you're not called to live in the Promised Land right now doesn't mean that where you are is not still your calling.

Don't rush what God is building in you in the wilderness to get to the Promised Land prematurely.

And don't mistake the Promised Land as the only "calling of God," so that you feel as though you are missing something until you get there. Being obedient is a pretty high calling, and if you're obeying right where you are, then you're fulfilling your calling whether you're in a desert or swimming in milk and honey.

The Lord your God has blessed you in everything you have done. He has watched your every step through this great wilderness. During these forty years, the Lord your God has been with you and you have lacked nothing. - Deuteronomy 2:7 NLT

You Are What You Eat

I couldn't sleep the other night, so I googled Planet Earth in an attempt to find videos of Birds of Paradise. They're crazy. Then my roommate came in and of course I had to show her the male Bird of Paradise trying to seduce the female Bird of Paradise. It's like the SciFy channel, only real life.

My roommate and I then started talking about whether Satan has access to our dreams. We can change subjects really fast. And this topic led us to discuss, until 2:30 in the morning, the lies that Satan feeds us.

In my old apartment, there were burn marks in the carpet that left melted patches of stiff fibers in random parts of my floor. I distinctly remember kneeling next to one of these burn marks one day after work, crying. My friend, who had been praying for me over the phone, said, "Heather, what I just keep getting is that you're believing lies."

I struggle against believing lies every single day. My mind is a rarely-inactive battleground. Mostly the lies I believe center around the word "enough." I'm not good enough. Smart enough. Creative enough. Strong enough. I don't have enough to offer. Also, things like: They'd be better with someone else. I'll never overcome this. I'm not needed. If only I were like this, I'd be better.

Sometimes it's a lot easier to believe lies than to believe truth. For whatever reason. Maybe because we have a hard time distinguishing between what we feel and what is truth. Or because sometimes the circumstances seem truer than what the truth really is. Or maybe it's just easier to have a pity-party and go outside and eat some worms than to be challenged and grow in spite (or because) of it.

Psalm 37:3 (NCV) uses the phrase "feed on truth." I like to imagine God's truth as our sustenance; the fuel that makes us go, gives us energy, feeds our brains, strengthens our hearts and our muscles.

But you know what? I don't think Satan is ever going to stop feeding us lies. He's never going to get tired and say, "Well, I've told her enough falsehoods for the month of September, so I think I'll take a little break."

A friend in church pointed out yesterday that, in Psalm 23, God prepares a feast for us in the presence of our enemies. Satan may never stop telling us lies, but God will also never stop speaking and being Truth. It's up to us to choose which we feed on.

What lies are you believing? And how can you choose to feed on truth?