When God’s Goodness Isn’t What We Expect
Here I am over a year after my first Hope Church guest blog post. I’m sitting on a bus somewhere between Miami and home listening to the same song (There was Jesus by Zach Williams and Dolly Parton) I was listening to last year in a moment of uncertainty. It’s easy to look back and see God’s hand in everything that occurred in the weeks and months after that. This year has been a roller coaster of highest highs and a few lows. Somehow I’m here with a job I absolutely love (even though it can be stressful dealing with 40 college guys at once, I feel like their mom most of the time but I really do love them) and a church that I quickly got involved with and a home that I own. Certainly a far cry from the tears I was crying last year.
I was recently back in Kentucky for a quick 36 hour visit for an alumni meet at my Alma mater. I attended my old church in Campbellsville the morning I flew out and they sang a song called “The Story I’ll Tell” by Maverick City Music. It talks about being in a hard spot but just knowing that years from now I’ll be able to look back and tell the story about how God won and how he parted the seas for me. That’s where I feel I am now! There were moments where I felt like I was not going to get what I wanted and it felt like the end of the world. Well guess what…I didn’t get what I wanted and it wasn’t the end of the world! God really provided me with something so much better than I could’ve imagined at the time.
Isaiah 55:8-9 is a passage I’ve read many times but it’s hard to remember sometimes. It says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” If you are in the middle of a hard place please hear me! God has something SO good up His sleeve for you. It very well could be something you haven’t even begun to think of yet.
Finally, one part of the song “The Story I’ll Tell” hit me specifically hard the first time I heard it. It says “my God did not fail”. There has been one area in particular where I feel I have been following God’s leading in my life but nothing I’ve expected has come from it, in fact nothing at all has come from it. I didn’t even really realize I needed to hear that God hasn’t failed me in that area until I heard that part of the song. I started crying (I promise I don’t cry all the time, anymore at least). I was telling a friend about this moment and God used her to encourage me in the path I am on. So I am here to encourage you that God has not failed you. He has heard you. He has seen you. His heart is FOR you.