I have been thinking. Life is really a compilation of a series of mazes. We find ourselves at forks in the road, dead ends, circles, right turns and wrong turns. Each decision we make affects where we go in life. Who we encounter on this journey of life is often seemingly random or by chance. Are these really random? Or are they predestined? Is it just that God has already gone before us and knows the decisions we will make?
I often think about how God has thought about every aspect of our lives. He has spent years planing and anticipating who we would be, what he would build into us. He has determined what time frame we would live, who our families, our friends would be. When the world around us seems so out of control, He has already accounted and provided for the solutions to our needs. (Psalms 139:17-18, How precious also are your thoughts for me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake I am still with you. )
I have watched in amazement the last couple of months. God has orchestrated our lives with precision and perfection of timing. It’s no secret that right now our world, the entire world, has been shut down. Lives have been disrupted, jobs lost, people desperate for answers. This has been a time for the Body of Christ to re-evaluate their faith, their beliefs. Do they trust God? Will they let fear control their decisions or will they trust God with their lives and those that they love? I confess, for a short season, I felt the weight of that fear. Thankfully God dealt with me and I recognized that I was allowing fear to be greater than my trust in his faithfulness. Once I came to my senses, I have been in awe, truly awed and dumbfounded by what I have seen God do in my family during this uncertain time.
God has navigated several in my family through a time that the world has essentially been shut down. It has been a maze that had a precise timing and twists and turns that only God could navigated us through. We wouldn’t have known how to do this on our own. Natural wisdom would have shrunk back from even venturing out to try. Yet we have seen some pretty miraculous things that God has done by our decisions to choose to trust him. Some of this story I can’t give you details as it isn’t my story to tell. I will say, my husband and I have been grateful and humbled by God’s goodness. He opens doors that man can’t. Perhaps this seems so much more profound because the circumstances seemed so impossible, but I think it just shows us that God continues to be God. It is in his nature to have answers and provision for us because he loves us. He does things for us everyday, but we aren’t as conscious or aware. I sometimes think we take the goodnesses of God for granted.
In this pause, we need to take stock of what is really going on around us and recognize God’s hand. We need to be purposeful in thanking God. I want to be more aware of what He is doing in my life and in those I love. I don’t want to ever assume God will do something and ignore the wonder of what He does. When we take for granted God’s goodness, then we start to minimize Him in our own minds. Once we minimize God to our level, that can lead to a presumption and assumption and disrespect. We treat him in an overly familiar way. It also opens the door to becoming lukewarm. God wants us passionate about Him. Prior to Jesus tearing the veil and allowing us assess to God, Nobody took God for granted. To enter into His presence with disrespect and sin, meant you would die. We need to get back to the Fear of the Lord, because that is the beginning of Wisdom.
I wanted to share with you the AWE and gratitude I am feeling towards God. I am so thankful for his Goodness. I am glad I got to have a front row seat to watch God navigate this odd maze that was before us. He did it with such perfection. The result was spectacular and a wonderful testimony to His faithfulness. I am looking forward to seeing the fruit of all He has put in motion and looking forward to this new part of the maze He will lead us in.