It’s Christmas in July in my office these days as I write a daily Christmas devotional that MARKINC will launch right before Thanksgiving. So, I’m digging around my old blog posts for some of the older most popular ones to share so I can use every writing minute for the devotional. Those of you who have been receiving my blog from the beginning might recognize some of these. Hope they encourage you today.

Originally Posted March 3, 2014

A few years ago, a friend wrote:

Funny how when people would ask me, 'Why would God do that? Why am I struggling so much?' my first gut reaction was to impatiently retort, 'just trust Him, He knows better than you do, and He has a plan...' but now...Now that I'm in this situation where my husband and I did EVERYTHING RIGHT and nothing is going the way we hoped. We prayed, we asked God to direct each step, we sought counsel from people wiser than us, and now we're living in a nightmare...all I can think is, "How could this not work out? We did everything right!" Knowing He knows me better than I do, and He has a better plan, well that doesn't make it easy, and certainly doesn't bring me comfort right now...How could anything be better than what we wanted to do? Help! What did we miss?"

My edited response:

This is a hard question, and my answer might not satisfy your hunger for the pain to go away. But this is what has helped me. Your question takes you to the core of what you believe about God. As one who tried to do "everything right" and then faced the loss of her son, I feel your pain in wrestling with God's purposes in this disappointment. God is using the process you chose to answer your prayers. Just not the way you expected.

You ask if you missed something in your search for direction. I don't know if you missed anything but we are flawed people who live in a broken world. Looking inward is a good place to start. Is it possible that your desire for a certain outcome shaped the way you viewed or heard the counsel you sought or the way you read scriptures? Did you seek a good thing, convinced that there was no way God could be against your desire, because it was so good? And did that desire color your response to any negative input or counsel to slow down or change directions? Did you seek wisdom from those in authority over you? If those authorities discouraged you from pursuing your plan, what was your response? Did you submit or did you go around them? Did you avoid people who are not always positive but seem to always find the obstacles? Depending on your answers, is it possible God is using this disappointment as a means to answer the desire of your heart to be more Christlike, by giving you a glimpse into a prideful heart rather than a heart of humility?

Let's say that no one advised against your plan, everyone you respect was on board and encouraged you to go forward. Let's conclude that you did not read the map the wrong way. That you are exactly where God was leading you all along. Yet, everything appears to be falling apart.

Can you still trust Him?

Others have struggled with the same questions you have.

Elisabeth Elliot was married to Jim Elliot. They served as missionaries to the Waodani tribe in Ecuador. They also had a 10 month old daughter. Along with other families, they prayed and surrendered and followed God's leading to this isolated place. They prayed for protection but more than that, they prayed for God's purposes to be fulfilled, that people would come to know Jesus. To their shock, Jim and 4 other husbands died when they were attacked by the very people they came to touch with the gospel of Jesus.

Talk about everything falling apart! Did these precious families misread God's plans for them? Or did God have something eternal in mind for each of them? Elisabeth will tell you that there is no safer place than to be submitted to the purposes and character of God. And that was where they were. By God's grace, Elisabeth returned to Equador to share Jesus with the very people who murdered her husband.....with her little girl in tow. She says that God's will was simple, following Him was hard. What she did was crazy, abnormal, ridiculous in the eyes of many. And yet.......

There is no safer place than to submit to God's will. The very ones who took her husband's life, saw Jesus in her response to the horror and in time, met the very Jesus who sent her to them. In the many years since, through her writing and speaking, hundreds of thousands of men and women have seen Jesus in a way we never would have. And we still are. Her books and her messages continue to turn my own heart toward Jesus. God had a plan. Elisabeth trusted His plan, even though the way was extremely difficult at times.

On a smaller scale, a young couple prayerfully bought a house where they would live while they attended school and prepared for ministry. They sought financial counsel, made sure they were making a wise choice. In keeping with their well prayed over plan, a ministry opportunity opened up right on time. But to accept it, they had to sell their house. The market was flat and their mortgage was more than the house was worth. They were devastated that their plan fell through. It was such a good one and they had taken every spiritual step possible to make sure it was the right one. They questioned the process they followed, i.e. how could they have made such a wrong decision about this house when they prayed and followed good financial protocol? Had they missed God's best? The husband continued working in his 9 - 5 job but the couple concluded that God had a good and perfect plan for them right there in the middle of their neighborhood. Because they had not planned to live in the house very long, they had not connected with their neighbors. But now they realized that their own neighborhood was their mission field. They befriended their neighbors, started a Bible study and a few years later, saw God create a church from those tiny steps.

Elisabeth Elliot is correct - we are never more safe than when we are submitted to the purposes of God in our lives. And therein lies the rub. We say we want to be in the center of God's will, but the reality might be quite different. We believe that God's plan is easy and the pathway to ease and prosperity. But that is not the message of scripture. Our very pain could be the conduit of His love into the heart of another. When our sixteen-year-old son died in a car accident, God sent a woman into my life who had lost three sons. Several years after we met and she had held my hand in this grief journey, I told her that while I was deeply sad for her grief, I was grateful for her pain - because her grief journey led me into the heart of God. She understood what I meant as only another broken person can. Perhaps your disappointment will be a similar conduit of grace for someone else - if you are trusting God with the broken places.

Can we trust God? The answer is a resounding yes! The next question is a little more difficult. Will we trust God? When plans fall apart or when God-given authorities say no to our plans or turn us in a different direction, what is our response? Do we trust that our perfect God has a better plan? He will not waste our sorrows.

You're not alone in your struggle to surrender to God's purposes in these circumstances. You remember Job's devastation when everything he loved was taken from him. Though we often hear about the patience of Job, a closer look at his response to deep loss reveals a man who wrestled with God in order to rest in His sovereignty. Job actually states that it's his wrestling that brings him into the presence of God when he declares - "Though He slay me, yet will I praise Him!"

I have found that when I'm wrestling with disappointment, there is an intimacy with Christ that far surpasses the intimacy I feel when all is well with the world. It's not a place I enjoy, but I miss it when my wrestling is resolved.

An Auca Woman holding a sleeping Valerie

You say you are not comforted by God's sovereignty at this moment, and I get that. God's sovereignty did not comfort me the night of our son's death. But in the days to come, His sovereignty was the only safe place I could go for comfort and purpose. It's only in His sovereignty that life makes sense - when life doesn't make sense.

I'm so sad you are hurting when it seems life should be so perfect. Yet I know the pain can give you exactly what your ultimate hunger is - your pain can drive you into the heart of God. There are treasures in this disappointment, opportunities for your to grow in grace, to allow God to use this disappointment as sand paper on your soul and open opportunities for you to be poured out for the sake of others. We see others in scripture who doubted God's care or presence, even asking, "Where are you?" as they watched the evil succeed and the faithful persecuted. Those doubters give me comfort and hope for myself! Our God isn't afraid of your confusion or your disappointment with Him, in fact He invites your questions and encourages you to crawl right up into His lap and let Him hold you tightly while you pound on His chest. We named our daily broadcast, In His Grip, because we know that if He isn't the one doing the holding, then we're lost. He promises He will never, ever let go of His children. There's comfort in that picture - and oh by the way, if you feel like His lap is a little crowded at times, well, that elbow in your side is probably mine!

In His Grip,

Sharon

But I Did Everything Right!

A few years ago, a friend wrote:

My edited response:

Can you still trust Him?