Scripture: Isaiah
55:8-9
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are
your ways My ways, saith 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."
When adversity hits you like a ton of bricks, it could
easily throw you into a pit of discouragement and despair. Although you may
regard difficulties as setbacks, the Lord sees them as times for great
advancement. His purpose in allowing them is not to destroy you but to
stimulate your spiritual growth. In His great wisdom, the Lord knows how to
take an awful situation and use it to transform you into the image of Christ
and equip you to carry out His will.
Every adversity that comes into your life is sifted
through God’s permissive will. That doesn’t mean the difficulty itself is His
perfect will, but He’s allowed the trial to touch you so that He can use it to
accomplish His wonderful purposes for your life. Although some of the suffering
we see and experience seems senseless or blatantly evil, we must recognize that
we have a very limited perspective and cannot always understand what the Lord
is doing.
Our heavenly Father sees every aspect of life, but our
view is restricted to what is right before us. His plans include not only you
but also all of His creation, and they reach from the beginning of time to
eternity. Though we’ll never grasp the infinite mind of God, we can know His
faithfulness and love.
When you can’t understand God’s ways, focus on His
perfect knowledge, wisdom, and power rather than the magnitude of your sorrow.
Remember, He sees the entire picture and loves you more than you can imagine.
This is a time to walk by faith, as perfect understanding comes only in heaven.