How God Brings Good from Trials

God orders our steps and uses all the circumstances of our lives to mold us into the image of His Son. 

How does this work?  Because God knows everything we will do in our lives, since He sees our lives, not as a one-dimensional picture, but as a panoramic picture to be viewed from beginning to end all at once.  God knows every mistake and every wrong choice we will make and orders our steps to bring good for us.

God knows what we will do but does not, cannot, interfere with free will.  But He can and does lay out the course of our life from that day forward, making something beautiful from the ashes of our mistakes.  This is how God works all things for good.

People ask how this concept works–making good of circumstances God allows.  They want know how we can call God good when He allows trials.

The full understanding has to come through the Word of God and from knowledge that the Holy Spirit provides as we seek Him daily.  I fully accept that this side of Heaven, my knowledge of God, in all its fullness, will be incomplete.  This allows room for God to move and me to follow Him all the days of my life.

Why do I love Him so?  Why do I seek Him? Because I, like so many others, have made in my life, some very poor choices and suffered the consequences.  But in spite of all of these things, God has been faithful and redirected my path and continued to love me, in spite of my disobedience sometimes and my stubborn will to resist His calling on occasion.

The failures in my life have been many, as I suspect most of us would admit, but by the grace of God, I have been rescued and prospered. I have in no way earned this, but it’s because of His steadfast love.  This in itself is amazing–that God would pardon me.

“The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.  He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103: 8-12).

Once when I strayed far away from the path, to my exceeding sorrow I awoke one morning with the voice of the Lord in my dream telling me to read a Psalm.  I could not remember the chapter or verse, so I read them all, and found my comfort in a verse of Psalm 103, that I have never forgotten.  It is verse 14:

” … for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”

The Lord built me up in His image so that I no longer looked like the me who had done such wrong by gently imparting to me that He understands my weaknesses as one made from the dust of the ground and He does not hold it against me.

I wish I could say I no longer held it against myself, but over the years, I have managed to loosen my fisted grasp a little.  The failing was mine alone, and the Lord has directed my steps in the direction of the throne because of it.  But, had He prevented my fall, I probably would be far away by now.  Only He knows.  God knows everything we will ever do and uses that knowledge to make a contingency plan so that when we arrive in the place of brokenness, He has made a new path for us to walk although, in the beginning, our path led to only empty space over the edge of the cliff.

Will you trust Him with your failures?  How has God used the wrong choices in your life to bring you into a greater place of fellowship with Him?