Isn't it funny that we as Christians feel a sense of entitlement to our own happiness? That for some reason, we seem to have been indoctrinated with the idea that living for God promises no wrong will come to lives. You may say you don't totally believe that...and I would say you just haven't consciously accepted it. Because when tragedy strikes in our lives we start to rationalize our situation with God, and, almost counter-intuitively, start to question His goodness as if our happiness and God's glory are magically intertwined. We try to sit God down on our proverbial couch and counsel Him as if we will reveal something to the One who gave us the ability to reason. We start to make deals with God in the hopes that He will change the circumstances in exchange for a few extra minutes of quiet time in the morning.But believers will continue to struggle with this concept of happiness until we truly view God as the One who spoke everything into existence and unconditionally loves a traitorous race so much that He reached down with a hand of mercy to do what in a thousand years we could never do for ourselves. That is redeem us and save us and in view of that the only we would question is why I haven't surrendered my life to you. And that means in the best of times and the worst of times, I'm going to love you. When my family is healthy and when we're spending the night in the hospital, I'm going to love you. When I have enough money and when I struggle to make ends meet, I'm going to love you. When I have a direction in life and when I'm scared about of the future, I'm going to love you. Because there's only two options: accepting the idea that is most glorified when I'm most satisfied in Him, or taking control of my own life which leads to cycles of frustration and disappointment.
But it's easy to give God glory when life is so good. It's easy to accept this new thought process when my heart is not broken, but what about when we question how God is receiving glory through sickness, divorce, death. We begin to accept this skewed view that if this is glorifying God, I'm not sure I'm ok with that. We realize that as much as we want to say it's all about God, we don't really mean it. What we really mean is that it's all for God's glory if He would fix this or heal them. But God says in this case, I'm going to receive the most glory through not fixing this or healing them, and if you want to glorify me, you'll be good with that. It's in these moments that we discover whose glory we are really pursuing. And it's not that God never wants us to question the things that happen in our lives, but we need to accept His answer even when he keeps saying no, no, not yet, no, trust in me. Because what a testament to His character that we would love him and trust him even when things don't make sense. That's the paradigm shift, that God leverages all things for His glory, and that He is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him.
