We must never forget our Maker and that we are just clay in the Great Potter's hands to use us for His purposes--God will fulfill His purpose for you, with or without your cooperation because He is sovereign and is Lord of all, whether we accept it or not; it is just a matter of our enjoyment and glorification that matters. "...as I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand" (Isaiah 14:24). We are always to be prepared to meet our Maker says Amos 4:12. God doesn't have a Plan B or other emergency exit, backup strategy, or alternate route to take--it's up to us!
We must never forget that adversity, suffering, testing, tribulation, heartbreak, ordeals, tragedy, crisis, trouble, and trials will come to all believers and Christ didn't even exempt himself from them! Our crosses pale in comparison to His! He is our exemplar and we need to bear the cross and follow Jesus as part of what we signed up for. It is our crucible and God knows as Job says, "The LORD knows that way that I take when He has tried me I shall come forth as gold." God never promised us a bed of roses and we must acknowledge that without a cross there is no crown. If we have a "why?" to our suffering and see Jesus with us, we can bear almost anything! There is a place for negative stress, even a psychiatrist will admit that--if we have an easy life we become soft. Don't pray for an easy going life, but to be made strong! "Been there, done that!" Knowing the "why," we can bear any "how."
It is the crises of our daily grind that molds our character to become more Christlike and God does it for our own good, as a parent disciplines a child he loves. God has good intentions: "Behold, the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jer. 29:11, ESV). Some of us learn only from the school of hard knocks, while the wisest ones learn from Scripture and take God at His Word. We don't want to learn life's lessons the hard way. It is pruning and not a punishment that God uses to develop our character. God punished Jesus for our sins, and we are not punished for them too. (It has been said that experience is what happens in you, not to you.) Suffering is par for the course.
We have a will to exercise according to our desires at the moment, but God is in charge of the circumstances. God made our natures that sanguine, melancholy, impetuous, impulsive, introverted, happy-go-lucky, ad infinitum, and we act accordingly. We are not the captains of our souls nor the masters of our fate. God knows how to manipulate and orchestrate events to get His will done and can change our minds; for instance, it may have been your notion to never get married, but you discovered God had other plans! If a man can change a ladies mind, certainly God can. "I do not like crises, but I like the opportunities they afford" (Lord Reith).
The flip side of butter being melted by the same sun is being hardened like clay. We can become bitter or better as they say. Habakkuk experienced the worst of experiences when he seemed to have lost all but made a hymn to the joy that he still had God and if we have Him we have all we really need--sometimes we have to get to the end of ourselves or lose everything to discover this: "Behold the goodness and severity of God" (cf. Rom. 11:22). His confession was simply: "Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation" (Hab. 3:18). Note that God reserves the right to have mercy on whom He will have mercy and to harden [i.e., judicial hardening] whom He will harden (cf. Rom. 9:18). Remember what God did to Pharaoh and know that God can do the same today.
God is in control of the hearts of kings to make them do His will according to Proverbs 21:1 (ESV) which says: "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD, he turns it wherever he will." God leaves nothing to chance--Albert Einstein noticed that "God doesn't play dice with the universe." It is equally said that God doesn't leave one out of His control and that there is not one maverick molecule in the universe. God doesn't just reign like the British monarch, but actually rules over all ("For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations," says Psalm 22:28 and in Isaiah 40 God says the nations are but a "drop in the bucket" to Him.)
Let me add that God works on us to the very end and doesn't give up, we are always a work in progress and won't be glorified in this life, which is only a training ground, a test station, or proving grounds for glory. You may ask the silversmith when he is done refining the silver: when he sees himself in it! The sculptor takes away everything that doesn't look like his subject--his icons! Soli Deo Gloria!
We must never forget that adversity, suffering, testing, tribulation, heartbreak, ordeals, tragedy, crisis, trouble, and trials will come to all believers and Christ didn't even exempt himself from them! Our crosses pale in comparison to His! He is our exemplar and we need to bear the cross and follow Jesus as part of what we signed up for. It is our crucible and God knows as Job says, "The LORD knows that way that I take when He has tried me I shall come forth as gold." God never promised us a bed of roses and we must acknowledge that without a cross there is no crown. If we have a "why?" to our suffering and see Jesus with us, we can bear almost anything! There is a place for negative stress, even a psychiatrist will admit that--if we have an easy life we become soft. Don't pray for an easy going life, but to be made strong! "Been there, done that!" Knowing the "why," we can bear any "how."
It is the crises of our daily grind that molds our character to become more Christlike and God does it for our own good, as a parent disciplines a child he loves. God has good intentions: "Behold, the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jer. 29:11, ESV). Some of us learn only from the school of hard knocks, while the wisest ones learn from Scripture and take God at His Word. We don't want to learn life's lessons the hard way. It is pruning and not a punishment that God uses to develop our character. God punished Jesus for our sins, and we are not punished for them too. (It has been said that experience is what happens in you, not to you.) Suffering is par for the course.
We have a will to exercise according to our desires at the moment, but God is in charge of the circumstances. God made our natures that sanguine, melancholy, impetuous, impulsive, introverted, happy-go-lucky, ad infinitum, and we act accordingly. We are not the captains of our souls nor the masters of our fate. God knows how to manipulate and orchestrate events to get His will done and can change our minds; for instance, it may have been your notion to never get married, but you discovered God had other plans! If a man can change a ladies mind, certainly God can. "I do not like crises, but I like the opportunities they afford" (Lord Reith).
The flip side of butter being melted by the same sun is being hardened like clay. We can become bitter or better as they say. Habakkuk experienced the worst of experiences when he seemed to have lost all but made a hymn to the joy that he still had God and if we have Him we have all we really need--sometimes we have to get to the end of ourselves or lose everything to discover this: "Behold the goodness and severity of God" (cf. Rom. 11:22). His confession was simply: "Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation" (Hab. 3:18). Note that God reserves the right to have mercy on whom He will have mercy and to harden [i.e., judicial hardening] whom He will harden (cf. Rom. 9:18). Remember what God did to Pharaoh and know that God can do the same today.
God is in control of the hearts of kings to make them do His will according to Proverbs 21:1 (ESV) which says: "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD, he turns it wherever he will." God leaves nothing to chance--Albert Einstein noticed that "God doesn't play dice with the universe." It is equally said that God doesn't leave one out of His control and that there is not one maverick molecule in the universe. God doesn't just reign like the British monarch, but actually rules over all ("For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations," says Psalm 22:28 and in Isaiah 40 God says the nations are but a "drop in the bucket" to Him.)
Let me add that God works on us to the very end and doesn't give up, we are always a work in progress and won't be glorified in this life, which is only a training ground, a test station, or proving grounds for glory. You may ask the silversmith when he is done refining the silver: when he sees himself in it! The sculptor takes away everything that doesn't look like his subject--his icons! Soli Deo Gloria!