God's Surprises

I am supposed to be reading for and writing a Doctrine essay (which really needs to be mostly finished by Wed night) but my head is so full and busy with other things, which might have to do a little with the hours I have been keeping lately.

The last couple of weeks have been full of surprises from God. I have been thinking a little about how God works in our lives. Sometimes you can see fairly instantly why God lets and makes things happen in your life and sometimes it takes the gift of hind-sight to really see what is going on. Sometimes these surprises come in the form of hardships and sometimes in events of absolute delight.

I am pleased to finally report that there has been more of the latter than the former lately (although the former hasn't been absent). I have been reminded again of how true it is that when you let go of your attempt to control your life God really blesses you. And he blesses you beyond what your brain could have conceived. It is funny how God really does know better than us and it's funny how we constantly try to live otherwise. I guess this is kinda related to my essay (I am looking at the significance of the Fall being a historical event). We as humans always want to tell God what to do and how to do it. We think we know what is best for us but more often than not (in fact pretty much most of the time) we don't know what we are talking about because we can't see the whole picture.

We like to give God our broken toys to fix but we want to hang around and boss him about while he fixes them. This is where my (well God's really - he just happened to clear it up for me recently) Philippians 4 Diversion Therapy comes in. Paul urges us to "not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present [our] requests to God" (v6). And he promises us that "the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard [our] hearts and minds in Christ Jesus" (v7). But it is only recently that I began to put the rest of the chapter in the context of the whole. You see, a wise father gives his child another toy to play with in order to distract their attention from the broken toy. And this is what Paul tells us to do in the next verse (v8). He tells us to think about true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy things. I think that this is the secret of contentment that Paul learned. Give your cares and worries to God, distract your thinking and let him deal with them...and he will bless you beyond your wildest dreams.

Now I am working on applying this in the area of my finances. But I know that God is good and he wants to give his children good gifts. And boy has he proved that recently!!! What a joy and a privilege it is to be a child of the God who created the heavens and the earth.

If you are a child of God - REJOICE with Paul (Phil 4:4)!!!
And if you are not then please consider it!!!