Go to God and ask Him to show you His perspective on your circumstances
p.119
Share to the group a statement or scripture that resonates with you from today’s reading and a responding prayer…
Go to God and ask Him to show you His perspective on your circumstances
p.119
Share to the group a statement or scripture that resonates with you from today’s reading and a responding prayer…
In the devotional today, I learned more about how Jesus has unfailing love for us despite whatever circumstances we are in. I very easily blame God when I’m not in a good circumstance or things don’t go my way. Today was a good reminder that God still loves me and I shouldn’t try to understand things from my own perspective but look at it from God’s perspective. Also, i saw how comparatively to Job I haven’t gone thru anything that severe so I should stop whining and complaining LOL
After completing multiple home studies, a myriad of requirements and our family profile, Kathy and I prayed and waited for God to bring us a baby boy to adopt. But one year turned into 5 years as one birth-mom after another passed us up.
“Why, not, God? We thought that adoption is where you were leading us as a family?”
God kept bringing back to Kathy’s cousin who had fostered then adopted 2 black boys. We opted for straight adoption because foster-to-adopt is fraught with uncertainty. And it could be so messy. But God wanted us to trust him in the uncertainty and messiness…so we had to pivot and adjust to what God was doing in the foster care community.
It took us another 10 months to complete all the coursework to become certified as a foster family. And before our profile was even officially completed, we got the call to become foster-parents to a 6 week old baby boy…baby Jesus.
To understand my bad or difficult circumstances, God’s perspective is vital. A lot of times when I go through a difficult situation, the truth is it can be very hard to understand on my own. As hard as I try to think to make sense of it, sometimes it just doesn’t. In these trying times, I must look to God not to try to understand but to trust in His work and see His perspective. I believe God never fails. God is perfect and Almighty – I can trust in His perfect timing and unfailing love. I pray when circumstances get confusing, may I remember in my heart to cling onto God’s truth and know God is good. Lord, give me your eyes and reveal your perspective to me.
“When you face hardships or confusing situations, they can overwhelm you. When you look at God from the middle of your circumstances, you will always have a distorted understanding of Him.” I can’t imagine what Job went through, but I can understand the confusion and hurt he must’ve felt without considering God’s perspective. I often times see myself questioning or blaming God to even the smallest matters in my life. I am selfish to think of myself and my sin instead of what God can reveal to me. Whether good or bad circumstances in my life, I need to remember that God is at the center of it all and He keeps his promises. Like Job, I pray that I am led to stay faithful to God because of His everlasting love for me. I recognize that I am a sinner and there may be times where I am tested, but God is still the same. God, I pray that even when times are tough, I still view you as my Lord and Savior. You are the one who is in control of my life and I need to trust and think of your perspective in it all.
One thing that stood out to me is this statement on pg 120: “when circumstances are confusing, do no try to understand what God is like from the middle of circumstances”. I have done this and and when I did, it raised a lot of questions from me about God. I asked why certain things happened this way and it’s so easy just to blame everything on God and it caused you so easily to lose faith in Him. You have to do step 1 which is settle in your mind that God has forever demonstrated His unfailing love for us on the cross. Putting faith in Jesus despite the circumstances and in the end, I got to learn a lot about myself and especially about God. I do this because I know God sovereigns over my life. And I’m grateful for these circumstances because I get to experience God and to listen to what God wants to teach me.
Father, thank you for your work on the cross for us. Help me to continue trust in you so that I learn more about you everyday.
From Charlie
I think the most important thing to remember is that “God has demonstrated his unfailing love” for us and when things are not going well and we don’t understand God’s plan, we have to remember to trust that He does love us and His plan will glorify Him and we should be grateful to be part of His plan.
One thing I observed in my life is that even if we don’t understand His plan and are not participating in it, He does not wait for us to complete His plan. We are offered the opportunity to observe His work and be a part of His plan and if we can see that He is at work then I think that would allow us to accept what’s happening and be able to trust in it’s outcome. If we don’t have a good relationship with Him then whatever His plan is will still happen but we won’t be a part of it and because of that we might suffer more because of the unknown.
I often find myself better able to handle a circumstance if I have an idea of the eventual outcome regardless if it is good or bad. The worse is always not knowing. For example, if you knew the ending of the movie, all the tensions would be gone and no matter how scary the movie might be it won’t be so scary now. I think this is true in our lives as well. If we have a good relationship with God especially if we know that it is a loving relationship, then if we know that God is indeed at work and He allows us to participate in His work then the “scary” or “stressful” part of life would just go away.
We human are untrusting lots. We need proof of His presence before we can learn to trust Him so he indulge us by revealing His plans in His words guided by the Holy Spirit. But once we have proof, we should be able to trust in His intention and love and when circumstances don’t seem to go our ways, we should remember His love and trust His plans. And because we human are impatient and self centered when things go badly we will forget all of these lessons and so if we learn to depend on God and pray to Him for all things, by His grace, He will remind us of His love and reveal His plan so that we can have the patience to endure and wait for the plan fruition.
Father, you are always loving and faithful. I am learning to depend on You and consult You at all points in my life and will trust that You will always be merciful and reveal Your plans for me to help me endure and be patience. And when things are going well, I pray you remind me of that it is Your work and Your glory so that I will be humble and be even more dependent on You and will never stray too far from what You have plans for me. Amen.