“The cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things can choke out the Word and the Word becomes unfruitful in our lives” (Mark 4:19).
In the daily rush of living, sometimes I forget. The ‘busyness’ of this crazy life seems to be one of the enemy’s favorite tricks to cause us to lose track. We are joint heirs with Christ. Grafted into the family of God. Overcomers!
But as we go along, we can sometimes stumble and fall. The cuts, bruises and scars, of the chance and circumstance that happens to every man, can cause us to lose site of the fact that we indeed belong to Him and He does have a good purpose in mind for us.
“It is Him at work when we both do and will according to His good purpose” (Phil 2:13).
”Being confident of this, that He who began a work in you will complete it til the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6).
These two verses specifically tell us that we can know that we have a place in God’s math.
In the book of Esther we see Esther being exhorted about her miraculous position in the scheme of things. Esther 4:14 “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your Father’s house will perish; and who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this.”
Over and over we see God’s providence in the lives of His people.
I’m reminded of Ruth’s mother-in-law telling her to just wait and see how the matter turns out. (Ruth 3:18) The truth is, we don’t always know if we are meant to be somewhere at a particular time before we get there or at the time we are there. Often times we still don’t know for a while after. But as we look back on the years, as we take score and review the math, we most certainly see the pattern of God’s goodness and mercy in our lives.
That it is a fact that His good pleasure is to involve us in His plan. How He indeed takes what the enemy meant for evil and makes for good (Gen 50:20). How He began working all things out together for good in our lives (Rom 8:28) and how He has taken the years that the locusts have eaten and He makes them new (Joel 2:25).
In fact, our worship comes from this very place of seeing the receipts of the goodness of God and is work in our lives. Our knowing comes from His faithfulness and from His trustworthiness as we learn to trust Him on the mountains and in the valleys.
There is an assurance that comes from the moments when He gives us a glimpse of what He is doing and how His love for us and His good will towards us includes us in His plans.
There are moments when we can clearly see that He is intervening.
He is using the very things that He has done in our lives to work in the lives of others and there is no greater place to be. Sometimes we simply have to trust Him and wait to see how the matter turns out.
He is a good, good Father.