Dear Friends,
Summer camps are over, school starts in a few weeks. August is always busy, as Chris makes sure our students can arrive in time, and this year he also has to make sure they have all the documents they need to enter the country (due to COVID regulations). It’s also a busy month because half of our family was born in August. π Haley is going to be 7 tomorrow (August 16), Chris will be 33 (August 21), and JJ (aka Jonathan) will be 2 (August 25). 3 birthdays in 10 days. π (Not to mention that my mom’s birthday is also in August, and my niece’s, too.)
The girls are getting ready for school and Joshua is getting ready for preschool. He isn’t sold on the idea yet, but I hope he will like it once he goes.
These past months God has changed my view on many things. It is frightening to look back and see how self-centered my thinking was after knowing God for almost two decades!
In 2005 I understood I am not perfect, and the perfect, holy, Creator God wants to have a relationship with me. But since I was far from perfect, I deserved death. Eternal separation from Him, who made me. Thankfully, this is not the end of the story. Since God loved me so much, He made a way out for me. All I needed to do is acknowledge that I am not perfect, acknowledge that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to save me from my sins. Jesus lived a perfect life, died on the cross, took the punishment for my sins, and rose from the dead. He offers eternal life with Him, all I needed to do is accept it. I understood this truth when I was 15, and since then, I tried to learn more about God, who He is, who I am in His eyes, how He wants me to live, etc. The more I read the Bible, the more I understood how much God loves me. I understood that all God wants of me are great things: love Him and love others. Help those in need, find a way to live in peace with others, be kind and loving, not to hurt others, etc. And I should do these things because I love Him. Jesus lived the perfect life and was a perfect example of how to live. The more I am like Him, the more pleasing I will be to God.
But somehow my thinking was very self-centered. When I asked for something, and I didn’t get it, I rarely said, “Your will be done.” I was often sad and dissatisfied. How come God didn’t give me what I wanted? It’s crazy to look back and see how selfish it was of me. Thankfully this summer God taught me to say “Your will be done” and actually mean it. Instead of thinking I know everything better than God, I acknowledge that I know very little. God knows the past, present, and the future. He knows our thoughts, our hearts, our every deed. He knows what’s best for us. Who am I to question Him?
When hardships came, my prayer was almost never: “God, please use me in this hardship so I can be a light,” but rather, “Please God solve my problem(s)!” During this summer I realized two things about hardships: 1) They almost always bring us closer to God, as we know we need Him (whereas when everything is good, we often forget to give thanks to Him and forget to spend time with Him) and 2) through hardships we can shine brighter. When everything is fine, when we are healthy, wealthy, and all goes well, it’s not hard to be content. Not a lot of people are inspired by those who have everything they need and are not complaining… But if you are going through a hardship, and your attitude is different than others’, people notice it. If we react the same way to hardships as unbelievers do, and complain about it, how will they see our hope? But if we are able to give thanks to God in our hardships, despite our hardships, that is definitely a good way to show others our hope is in God.
If we truly believe that God is in control of everything, and that He is perfectly good, we should never look at His answer and be upset at Him for not answering our request the way we wanted it. There are so many instances when we later learn it was the perfect answer, but at the moment we are just so upset at God. I think we think of God as a vending machine. We pray and He “works for us,” He needs to do what we ask of Him. But thankfully this is not the case. As a father often knows better than to say yes to his child all the time, how much more our Heavenly Father, who truly knows everything, and knows if our request at that time would be good for us or not. Often times God saves us from so much by saying no to us (just like imperfect father’s do, too).
As children, we are often upset that we can’t have all the ice cream in the world, but growing up we understand that our parents were right not letting us eat sugar all day long everyday, as we wished. The same way we should understand that just because we don’t see the ‘why,’ God is in control, and He is perfectly good, wants the best for us, so we can trust Him. We can honestly say, “Your will be done,” because we know that His will is the best.
I am grateful to God that He taught me that I don’t know better. He knows best. He wants the best for me. He loves me more than any human ever can. He loves me even though He knows me. He knows everything about me, and He still loves me. He still sent His Son to die for my sins, and rose Him from the dead so I can have hope of eternal life with Him. I have so much more to learn. So much more to understand. I am looking forward to a life-long changing to His Son’s image.