His fault

I've got some friends going through some things right now...maybe you can relate. 

Major life transitions.  Incredibly hard challenges with children. Battles with brutal cancers. Huge and sudden losses. 

Impossible situations. No right answers. One hour at a time. Dark nights of the soul.

I've been praying lots of grace. I've been praying lots of mercy. And I've reminded again and again that He can be trusted for two things: His glory. Our good.

He can be trusted for our good. 

I've always struggled with idea, because I'm not often sure His good is the good I'm wanting. I'm sure He wants my good...but what if the one He has in mind isn't best? I want Him to promise my outcome...not just my good. I'm not the first Christ follower to question if His good IS good. If it's the best good. If maybe I don't have a better good in mind. Oh, how patient He is with me. 

Finally through this last incredibly hard season (and you may still have to remind me in the future), He's been stretching me to a place of "I'm trusting you with my good, no suggestions.  I'm trusting that You have my good in Your heart, and I don't need to tell you what that looks like. Whatever comes, I'm trusting that it is for my good."

Whatever happens here, it is on YOU. If it goes the way I want or the way I don't or some other way I haven't thought of, You are the one on the throne of my life. It's on You, it's Your fault, and I'm good with whatever is Your fault. I TRUST you.

And He can be trusted for His glory. 

That one, I don't pretend to understand or know or have the grand perspective for. All I know is that I can trust He's working for His glory...and I want that. I want to be doing that too...I want to be a part of THAT.  So if this current circumstance can and will be used for His glory, and that's His work, then I'm in...relying on His help to be pleasing to Him as we go. 

It's taken me a long time to trust that for Haiti....Leme's good, Gerta's good, God's glory. He's working for their good...even in the situations that are not. It's taking me time, still, to trust that for those dear ones who are deeply hurting. 

However hard or impossible it is to see now, I know the instant we see His face...His goodness to us and His glory will be all that we see. All that we breathe. All that we know. 

And if that's the true reality...I'll take that perspective.

He is who He says He is. 

He can be trusted.