He is Always a Good Thing

Apologies to some who might’ve been anticipating a writing-related post this week, but I had something spiritual I wanted to say instead.

Plans change. We spend much of our lives devising goals and thinking forward to specific landmark moments in our future. But we aren’t omniscient. We are not seers. We have no significant foresight into possible events. Detours are prevalent. Thus, no matter how thought out our plans may be, they are bound to be altered by apparently chaotic occurrences.

But saying that life is chaos is also wrong. Most of us develop a routine, don’t we? We have a general schedule of when we eat, sleep, and go to work. We have a basic idea of what we want to do at any given moment. When things go wrong, we get upset. Understandable. When you’ve become obsessed with an idea or accustomed to doing something, you’re not going to respond well to outliers.

Take me as an example. Some of the worst days in my life started out as normal or otherwise pretty good mornings. Then a variable that I couldn’t have accounted for interrupted whatever joy or peace I had been feeling. My mind and body went rogue, perpetrating an act that I regretted. Could I have done something different? Yes. Why didn’t I? Because I became so focused on me that I assumed there was only one solution. Maybe it wasn’t even consciously something I was doing, but it’s what happened.

This is one of the follies of mankind. We are squishy, fleshy, temperamental things bent on getting our way. It’s been that way for millennia. We are rebellious by our own sinful natures. Every day that we are fortunate not to succumb to our darker sides, we should be thankful to the Lord. Every day that we do screw up, we should still be thankful, because He has chosen that moment to let us be convicted by the wrongdoing in our hearts.

It is a sign that He cares when he does not let you dwell in pride and arrogance, when He demonstrates what you have been mistaken about in your life. In that moment when everything has gone wrong, when all seems lost, that’s when you know that God loves you, because He has chosen to save you from yourself and the sins that have dwelt within you.

That is what happened for me six months ago. I was consumed by loathsome self-pity, depression, and anxiety. I was mired in sin and evil, guilty but I couldn’t understand why. I thank the Lord every opportunity I can for revealing Himself to me in the way that He did. The darkness I’d fallen into, the absolute nihilism of a sorrowful life—these were all the product of a godless existence, even if I hadn’t realized it at the time.

I am not perfect. No one is, whether they’re Christian or otherwise. But believing in the Lord and His sacrifice on the Cross is your salvation (which is by Grace through faith) and also your recovery. When you become indwelt with the Holy Spirit, you find that your taste for that which is sinful begins to wane. The process of sanctification begins and it’s Good.

That does not mean you’ll never have a bad day. Of course you will. But you’ll respond better each time. By coming to Him, you are no longer bound only to yourself and selfishness. You have a higher calling to obey and delight in Him.

I pray that I haven’t misspoken in this post. It’s still early yet in my faith, so it’s entirely possible that I’ve inappropriately said or labeled some aspect of my belief in a way that’s not properly understood. But I hope you will take to heart the message that even when plans change, when it seems like you’re having the worst day of your life, when all is misery, that so long as you believe in Him, it will always be a Good thing.

“For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out His good purpose.” (Philippians 2:13 HCSB)

“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” (2 Peter 1:7)

Thank you for reading. God bless and I hope to make another post very soon.