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"But I will hope continually, And will praise You yet more and more." Psalm 71:14
I'm not going to share the exact cirucumstances in my life that have been so difficult because that's beside the point anyway. Those who are close to me know exactly what they are...needless to say I think when we as Christians go through something difficult, our first inclination is to ask God "why"? We can't reconcile the idea of suffering or waiting or pain with our Lord Jesus because to us He is always good, always perfect, always powerful. In Randy Alcorn's "The Goodness of God" he talks about the fact that goodness and love cannot exist without the presence of evil and suffering in the world. If God took away the suffering, he would also have to take away our free will. This book has too many layers to explore here but it opened up this subject for me even more.
The bottom line is God loves us. God has plans for us. If we've made the decision to commit our lives into God's hands, we've also committed our plans, desires, dreams and future into His hands. We have committed to living His way. While I think God openly welcomes our questions when things don't go our way, or we're hurting, or we're grieving (he wouldn't be a very good parent if we couldn't talk to Him openly and honestly), He also wants us to trust Him that He is going to work together "all things for good."
My conviction lately and especially after coming across this verse in my quiet time is that I want to be a child of God that rejoices and praises Him even though I don't understand what He's doing. What honor is there in throwing a child-like temper tantrum and stomping my foot and pouting that the Lord isn't giving me what I want? And then, just like a child, when He finally does give me the desires of my heart, suddenly I am happy and can praise Him again. I don't want to be a child in my faith, still feeding on spiritual milk. I want to eat the meat of adult Christianity and PRAISE HIM YET MORE AND MORE, despite what's going on my life, despite the pain and the confusion I feel, despite the pain. For He IS worthy to be praised...just for being who He is and for no other reason. We do not have a relationship with our Lord only to praise Him when He gives us what we want and things are going well. We praise Him for His endless love, blessing, sacrifice, mercy, grace, joy...for the gift of life, for sunsets, for majestic mountains, for beauty, for friendships, for meeting our needs in every way. We praise Him because He first loved us, because He sent His Son to die for us while we were still in the darkness of our sins. We praise Him because HE IS GOD.
God has promised to give us the desires of our hearts and it's up to us to believe Him. It might not take the form that we're expecting, we might not understand the current struggles we're experiencing for future events to come together. God does-He sees the big picture. So, we HOPE CONTINUALLY. We wait in expectation for our God to do what He says He's going to do, regardless of what our limited finite human minds whisper to us in the desolation of our suffering. We hope. We love. We serve. And we wait...with joy in our hearts, praising the God of everything yet more and more.
