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Humans are very attached to outcomes. We say we trust God but behind the scenes we work our fingers to the bone and our emotions into a tangled fray trying to control our outcomes. We praise God when our normal looks like what we thought it would. We question God when it doesn’t. And walk away from Him when we have a sinking suspicion that God is the one who set fire to the hope that was holding us together.
We cannot control our outcomes. We cannot formulate how the promises of God will actually take shape. And we will never be able to demand any of the healing from all the hurt to hurry up.
Though we can’t predict or control or demand the outcome of our circumstances, we can know with great certainty we will be okay. Better than okay. Better than normal. We will be victorious because Jesus is victorious (1 Corinthians 15:57). And victorious people were never meant to settle for normal.
What if a bigger part of being victorious is how well we live today? This hour. This minute.
The disappointment that is exhausting and frustrating you? It holds the potential for so much good. But we’ll only see it as good if we trust the heart of the Giver.
In the quiet, unexpressed, unwrestled-through disappointments, Satan is handcrafting his most damning weapons against us and those we love. It’s his subtle seduction to get us alone with our thoughts so he can slip in whispers that will develop our disappointments into destructive choices.
The human heart was created in the context of the perfection of the garden of Eden. But we don’t live there now.
Therefore, it’s impossible to escape the truth that I don’t want to relinquish control to God. I want to take control from God. And then I make the most dangerous assumption of all: I could surely do all of this better than God.
Please see how dangerous this assumption was. She got alone with her own thoughts and assumptions. And it led her to doubt God. And take control to get what she wanted. What she thought was best.
But here’s the good news: even when we follow in Eve’s footsteps, when we try to take control and make assumptions and misunderstand God on every level, He still has a plan. A good plan. A plan to make something from dust. And eventually we will understand that God hasn’t denied us the best. He’s offering us the very best by offering Himself. He is our only source of perfection on this side of eternity. And He sees a perfect plan for our dust.
If our souls never ached with disappointments and disillusionments, we’d never fully admit and submit to our need for God. If we weren’t ever shattered we’d never know the glorious touch of the Potter making something glorious out of dust, out of us.
If I want His promises, I have to trust His process.
