Life: It Happens

There are plenty of things that we want and plan in life. How does the usual plan go? We graduate high school, go to college and spend four years working on a degree deciding what we want to do, graduate again and go one to continuation school, then we meet the girl or boy f our dreams, get married, have an awesome job and live happily ever after. Right? Wrong. Four years in college turns into 5 when you fail some classes, you get rejected from that graduate school, and the boy or girl of your dreams breaks your heart. Not quite what you planned huh? So now you're sitting there, head in your hands wondering where you went wrong? Things do not go as planned. They never do. Why? It makes no sense right? It should be going all okay. Well that's true if we were on our own time. But we are on God's. We eventually get there the problem is its not the way WE want it. It was never my intention of failing an entire semester of classes except one and having to spend so much time retaking them but it happened and I didn't like it and its only now that I realize that God is control and he'll get us there to our dreams but in a different way than what we planned. We have to go through the bumpy parts in life, the refining fires that burn us, melt us and shape us as we go through them. Of course as we do we whine because its not going our way and the journey is longer than what we wanted but as we go along we learn things. Life doesn't stop once we finish everything we had planned. Life continues on it doesn't stop. Finished school? Now its time to look for work. What can;t find a job in your field. But hey you're married so that is a happily ever after right? Right up until the bills and crying pooping machines come ( referencing babies). Life isn't a cake walk. But after some tike when we get there through the journey God put us on, we'll look back when we are much more mature and understand everything that happened. It takes time and its hard and doesn't always make sense. Those are the times when we have to be careful or we'll want to give up. I've had my share of times where I have wanted to. Its not fun but in the end are we not always okay? To be honest its hard sometimes even when knowing it'll all be okay in the end. Because they way you feel during those times is never fun, but despite that we have to be strong and not give give up.

"Man Plans, God laughs."

Psalm 27:14- Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

And this was a comment a good friend and brother in the Lord wrote in response:

I agree with what you're saying here. So many times I've made my own plans, almost as if to say to God, "Ok, here's what I'm going to do, now please bless me in this endeavor." And then I wonder why everything falls apart and why God has "abandoned" me... But after taking a step back, it becomes easy to see that it wasn't God, but me who in fact abandoned God's plan for my life by trying to take control from him and blaze my own path. This never works, and if it does somehow not end in failure, then you're not going to be as happy as you could have been and there are going to be regrets as you realize that you aren't living your life to the fullest extent as you could have if you had just given God the controls and followed his lead. Waiting on God and his guidance is so important. Too often we are so used to getting everything in life right away, immediate gratification, fast food, rush delivery, etc. Then when we take this kind of mindset and try to apply the same rules to how God works in our life, and we open ourselves up for disappointment and frustration as we find out that God's timing is not our own. All due to as Steven put it, "the pest that is this fallen world." If we can manage to remold our mindset from "Give it to me now!" (like the girl from Willy Wonka) and change it to "Ok God, I'll wait for you to lead me", we can remove some of that stress in our lives. Not to say that we still won't have stress, there will always be trials and struggle as we are refined during the process, and it hurts! That's what fire does, but the end product is well worth the wait, being glorified like Christ and living our lives for his glory. Its a matter of putting God first in our lives and being patient for his guidance in "his" timing not ours, something much easier said than done!
But I encourage you Robert, and everyone else, when life knocks you back square on your butt, don't just sit there in a daze, but get up, shake the dust off your clothes, and look back at your life, at the choices you have made, and ask God to show you why this all has happened, sometimes is painfully obvious, other times its not, but there is always a reason.
Persevere in his will, be patient in his timing, and be open to his guiding.
Ok, enough blabbing from me, this is Robert's note, not mine =P