Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

We read in the Bible book of Jeremiah that God knows His plans for us, plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). So, sometimes we assume that living in obedience and service to God will be easy and painless. It can be difficult to understand how pain and suffering in our lives are not plans to harm us.

God does not say we may not protest our pain. Instead, He says He has overcome the darkness (John 1:5). Our pain isn’t a reflection of God’s dishonesty, weakness, lack of control, or disinterest. It occurs because we cannot yet see God’s full plan for us. God does not owe us understanding and we don’t need full understanding to choose God’s will. Rather than following blindly when confounded, the practice of faith is living and acting in the belief that God is good and will honor His Word.

A. W. Tozer wrote, “To will the will of God is to do more than give unprotesting consent to it; it is rather to choose God’s will with positive determination. As the work of God advances, the Christian finds himself free to choose whatever he will and he gladly chooses the will of God as his highest conceivable good. Such a man has found life’s highest goal.”

Have you found the joy in trusting that what God brings when you submit to Him, is His highest good?

Resource reading: Ephesians 3:16-19