All things work together for good….or do they?
Greetings from the “pressure cooker,” the place that I like to refer to as where God and I do the hard work of taking His truth and making it real in my life. As of late life has been traveling and speaking with the hopes of seeing all my circumstances come together for my return to the mission field. It is here that God has been working and in particular He is in the process of ingraining in me the reality of Romans 8:28. “All things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose.”
All things work together for good…or do they? When people are passing through difficult situations this passage is one of many that well meaning folks try to offer as a form of encouragement which some times sounds more like a pat answer rather than encouragement. I for one greatly dislike a pat answer I want something real and genuine….and Paul the writer of Romans is being real and genuine when he makes this statement because he has just finished talking about how the spirit really helps us in our times of need. Then comes this statement…and frankly I have found myself knowing this passage in my mind but it hasn’t quite found the destination of my heart.
Now before I get ahead of myself I need to qualify something in what Paul is saying because he places a few conditions on his statement of “All things work together for the good.” Just who does this apply to? Who gets to experience the reality of all things working together for their good? Paul tells us…and we need to pay close attention. He completes his statement with “…of those who love God and are called according to his purpose.” I don’t know about you but there are two things that I see here…two qualifiers which distinguish who this piece of truth applies to. “To those who love God,”…Paul is referring to our relationship with God here…primarily being in right relationship with God. If you have sin in your life then you are not in right relationship and God is going to go out of His way to bring you back into that place of being rightly related to Him. This might include things in your life being “frustrated,” and some times we respond with the question, “Why is life working against me?” It’s not that life is working against you but that you have sin in your life and God is trying to get your attention so that you can resolve the issue with Him and move on in your relationship. The second qualifier would be “and are called according to his purpose,” here Paul is talking about being in the center of God’s will and purpose for your life and unique ministry He has for each of us. Again, if we step outside of God’s will for our lives…our best efforts to accomplish that thing we are so sure we are supposed to do can be thwarted. We then want to respond with, “Why does it seem all my best attempts to do this thing are being blocked and preventing me from moving forward?” Could it be you are outside of God’s will and He is trying to get your attention so you can be brought back into His purposes for you?
I think when we are passing through difficult times we need to “check” and ask the Spirit to reveal to us if there is sin or if we are operating outside of God’s will for our lives. If there is nothing He brings to mind then it means He is working to strengthen our faith and wants us to trust Him. That sounds so easier said then done and that is where I am finding myself these days. God is taking me through the process of renewing my mind with His truth but He doesn’t intend for the truth to merely be something that goes into my mind He wants it to go deep into my heart as well. I know Romans 8:28 memorized it many years ago and it is in my mind. However over the past couple of months God has been revealing to me that it is not in my heart and it becomes apparent when I “see” what is going on around me and how things appear to be working out for others and yet here I sit not nearly as close to my goal as I had hoped. Is it because of sin? Is it because I’m outside of the will of God? I have asked the Spirit to check me and it’s not because of either of these things…it’s an issue of trust and building my faith.
“An issue of faith and trust” is not an easy place to be because we often times find that there is this disconnect between the head and the heart and in order for the truth of what God is saying to us to find it’s resting place in the heart something has to happen. The head and the heart have to meet somewhere in the middle and come to an agreement that what God is saying and revealing to us is true and then it is assimilated into our belief system. Unfortunately this is exactly the same process that happens when the enemy of our lives introduces lies into our minds but that is a subject for another day. Let me just say in closing….we live out what we truly believe. All things work together for good…or do they?
This is Shelly signing out from the “pressure cooker”….keep working out your faith and relationship with God.
