Monthly Archives: August 2011

If God’s Will is our happiness…

He wouldn’t have punished Adam and Eve for eating the fruit off the tree. 

He wouldn’t have allowed Job to lose everything.

He wouldn’t have kept Sarah from having a baby until she was 90 years old.

He wouldn’t have put Abraham through the anguish of preparing his only son as a sacrifice.

He would have exalted Joseph to be a Prince in Egypt while sparing him the devastating years of family rejection, slavery, and loneliness.

He would have found someone else to lead his people out of Egypt when Moses said he didn’t want to.

He would have allowed Moses to lead His people all the way into the Promised Land, and experience for himself the promise fulfilled.

He would have let us worship whomever we wanted, talk back to our parents, and have our neighbors’ wives.

If God’s Will is our happiness…

He wouldn’t have killed David’s son.

He wouldn’t have called Jeremiah, a likely teenager, to be the messenger of destruction.

He wouldn’t have told Ezekiel to lay on his left side for over a year and cook all his food over poop (I KNOW that didn’t make Ezekiel very happy!).

He wouldn’t have told Hosea to marry a prostitute.

He wouldn’t have sent an enormous fish to eat Jonah, and all the while keep poor Jonah ALIVE!

If God’s Will is our happiness…

He wouldn’t have given Mary the burden of an un-wed pregnancy.

He would have let John the Baptist eat normal food.

He would have commanded Jesus to go back to His family when they were searching for Him, probably worried sick, and He was just hangin’ out at the Temple.

He would have said, “Sure, you go do that,” when a man asked if he could go to his dad’s funeral before following behind Jesus.

He wouldn’t have let the man from John 9 be born blind, and then kicked out of His church.

If God’s Will is our happiness…

Lazarus wouldn’t have died.

Peter wouldn’t have denied.

His one and only Son wouldn’t have been crucified, after sweating in anguish drops of blood, begging His Father for another way.

If God’s Will is our happiness…

Floods and fires wouldn’t come.

Wars would cease destruction.

Earthquakes and famines would be halted.

Every man would find a mate, have a job, own a home (with a heated swimming pool).

Every woman would have a child.

Every child would have a family.

If God’s Will is our happiness…

We would all live in houses with 3 car garages and yards big enough for the kids and a few friends.

We would always have enough money to buy new clothes whenever we wanted them, our children would succeed in school, and our homes would not foreclose.

If God’s Will is our happiness…

My husband would not have laid in bed with fevers while all the other 8-year-olds were outside playing baseball.

Nor would he have had to suffer 4 joint replacements before turning 30.

If God’s Will is our happiness…

I would not have miscarried.

The thing is… God’s Will is NOT our happiness.  Our in-every-moment-I-have-what-I-want happiness. At least not the God of the Bible.

God’s Will, in every moment, is our SANCTIFICATION.

“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified…”  1 Thessalonians 4:3

And sanctification is hard.  It means that God will put His Holy Spirit inside of us, and we will be convicted, challenged, pushed and prodded into doing the things of the Spirit, instead of the things of the flesh.  We will be made more and more into the image of Christ… which is so opposite of what our flesh convinces us will make us happy.

But if we allow the Holy Spirit to do His work, if we allow the sanctification process to happen, with all the pain involved, the FRUITS of the SPIRIT will be produced in us.

LOVE . JOY . PEACE . PATIENCE . KINDNESS . GOODNESS .  FAITHFULNESS . GENTLENESS . SELF CONTROL

I don’t know about you, but that sounds better than happiness to me.

***UPDATE AUGUST 31, 2011***
Please read on into the comments through the conversation between Jarrod and Tasha for a fuller exploration and understanding of this topic.

My son was having a hard time sitting at the table long enough to eat… anything.  He didn’t want breakfast (even pancakes!), he just wanted to play.  No lunch either, just wanted to play.  And FORGET dinner.  Play play play.  So we started a sticker sheet (as all good parents have at some point or another.  Ha.)  Every time Maddox tries a new food or eats a good dinner, he can put a sticker on his sheet.  (Lion stickers on a picture of a jungle, bear stickers riding on a transporter, fish stickers swimming through the water… you get the idea.)  And when he fills up his sticker sheet (10 stickers) we get to go to the store and pick out a present.  Any present he wants (for under $5)!

Maddox loves playing with the little die-cast cars from the Disney movie “Cars.”  Usually when he fills up a sticker sheet he wants to add another car to his collection, and usually he knows what car he wants in advance.  He’s been thinking about it for a while by the time we finally get to the store.  So yesterday, we glided into Target to pick up “Mack the Truck.”  He was stirring with anticipation and I was gleaming with pride.  Straight to the toy section we went, and straight to the “Cars” aisle (yes, they get almost an entire aisle to themselves).  Maddox was so excited.  “We get to take Mack home!”  He had been looking forward to getting Mack for about two weeks now, which is a long wait in Toddler time.

We started scanning the shelves for Mack the Truck, but my joy soon turned to worry because I didn’t see Mack anywhere.  And neither did Maddox.  He started asking, in the most awfully sweet, disappointed little voice, “Where’s Mack?  Where’s Mack, Mama?”  We looked and looked, up one aisle and down the other, and no Mack.  Then it occurred to me that these are all “Cars 2″ toys.  I haven’t seen “Cars 2,” but am now thinking that Mack the Truck might not be a Cars 2 character.  I did my best to point my little guy toward another car, which he was happy enough to take home and add to the collection.  But I left feeling sad, like I wasn’t able to give my son the thing he had set his sights on.

As soon as we got home, I started thinking about how I could get Mack the Truck for Maddox when he fills up his next sticker sheet.  I will search Amazon, I will hunt Craigslist.  I will find Mack the Truck from the first Cars movie.  I will pay the shipping.  I will wait for the package.  I will hold it and keep it until it’s just the right time for Mack to be revealed.  And when Maddox fills up that next sticker sheet (which might have to be 15 stickers because Mack is not less than $5), I will get Mack out and gift him to my son, happy that I can give him that gift.

And it makes me think… how often in life are we that wanting two-year-old?  We glide through life, filled with expectation, but don’t see what we want.  Maybe we lost a job.  Maybe we can’t visit a family member.  Maybe our marriage is in a rough spot.  Or maybe we have to foreclose on a home.  And we see the Lord point us in another direction.  But we are confused, because all we know is that we didn’t get what we thought we should have had. 

But here is the God we serve.  He goes home and does all the work behind the scenes.  He begins to labor on our behalf to give us a good gift.  But because we can’t see this, nor could we even understand the steps that He needed to take in order to bring us goodness, we often interpret this period as silence.  Where is God in this?  I can’t see Him working.  I don’t hear His voice.  He must not care.  He must not be planning to be faithful to me in this issue.  But all the while, God continues in His work, knowing that at just the right time He will reveal to us the good gift He had planned for us to receive all along.

And at just the right moment……….

Mack the Truck.

God’s silence is not an indicator that He has stopped working for us.  If the Spirit of God lives in us, He is always working on our behalf.  His plan for us is always good and the destiny He wants to give us is better than anything we could dream up on our own.  (Rom 8:28, Jer 29:11, Mt 7:11)  If anything, God’s silence is an indicator that He will never give up on us.  But how could we ever understand the ways of God, that we should know all the ways He works it out for us.

You never know.  When God is silent, He might be browsing Craigslist…

just

for

YOU.