What not Why...

     My trial continued to wear me out.  I really felt like the boulder God dropped on my path was much too big to climb over.  My instinct was to naturally go around it.  But that wasn’t God’s plan.  He intended for me to slowly & agonizingly climb over that boulder if I wanted to make it to the other side. 

     During this time I began to continually ask myself, “Why?” Why me?  Why now? Why not them? (I know, shame on me, but I’m being honest here!) Why?! Why?! Why?! Then one day my husband told me I shouldn’t be asking God why, but what.  Huh?!  What do you mean what?!  What’s wrong with why?  He then proceeded to explain that God didn’t owe us an answer as to why, we owed God by asking what.  As in:  What does God want us to learn?  What does God want us to change?  What, if anything, does God want us to give up? What might be God’s reasons for allowing this trial?   Hmmm…Jeff was right. I needed to shift my thoughts off of why God was allowing our trial to what God wanted me to learn/change as a result of it.

      One lesson I learned from our trial is that God truly wants us to be Heavenly minded in our earthly world.  I could see Jeff & I becoming earthly minded & falling into that trap of keeping up with the Jones’.   When God started to take away our financial safety net, we no longer cared about keeping up with the Jones’, we became more concerned about keeping up with bills.  It’s amazing what the Scriptures forewarn about money traps too:

Ecclesiastes 5:10 Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.  This too is meaningless.

Matthew 6:24 ”No one can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and money.”

1 Timothy 6:10   For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.  Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs

Hebrews 13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have because God said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

     Through prayer and reading God’s Word we began to realize just what God wanted us to do.  It’s amazing by asking “what” how you become more pro-active in trying to climb up and over that boulder, versus sitting down in front of it and having a pity party full of “whys”.   My times of waiting were VERY hard, so I embraced when God revealed what changes we needed to make and went about making them.

     I understand that not all trials we face are our fault.  Sometimes, like Job, God allows trials for His own reasons that most of the time we don’t understand.  Even though I did keep asking God why, I did know why, our trial was completely justified and needed.  I am grateful to God for refining us and purging us so that we may be more like Him.  God knew we needed to be pulled back into His loving arms and God knew exactly what He needed to do to make sure that happened.

     For those of you who honestly don’t know why you’re in your trial, I know it must be very hard to ask God what instead of why.  Don’t give up!  WHATEVER you are going through, God has allowed and I HAVE to believe if He’s allowed it, He has a reason for it.  Our part in that plan is to submit to it by asking Him what instead of why.  Can you do that?  I’m praying for you and that like me you’ll ask God what instead of why as I’m continuing on to Canaan.

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