Can accepting that I won’t always understand give me back my joy?

Today's Precious Prodigal Post is at = http://bit.ly/1BCszDM Can accepting that I won’t always understand give me back my joy? #Godmakesnomistakes Like this? Please "Like" & "Share" us on Facebook

Isaiah 55:8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.”

Men Are Like Waffles--Women Are Like Spaghetti…that’s part of the title of a book about understanding your spouse by Bill and Pam Farrel. I’m not sure whether any book can make us understand our spouses, but it certainly is a wonderful description about how differently we think.

I totally don’t understand my spouse. In fact, I often find myself shaking my head at his reasoning when we both use the same facts and come to totally different conclusions. Knowing his brain works differently from mine doesn’t make me understand him better. It just makes me understand why I don’t understand him better.

If I can’t understand my husband, whom I love and know better than any other person in my life, how can I expect to understand God? God says of Himself that His thoughts and ways are higher than ours just as the “heavens are higher than the earth.” (Isa 55:9)

If you haven’t seen the video, “How Great Is Our God” by Louie Giglio, there’s no way I can adequately describe it to you. You can see it for yourself at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtpTk2ENq7o. This God who spoke the worlds into existence is beyond our ability to adequately describe. When we try, all we do is make Him “people sized,” so our human brains can comprehend Him.

As I’m writing this, a friend is making arrangements to bury her daughter, who was kidnapped and murdered. Another friend is visiting her newborn baby in NICU. Yet another has protective custody of her niece who was born two months early addicted to the drugs her mother was taking. Her cries are heart rending.

I don’t claim to understand why these terrible things happened to the good people I know all of them are. And all the trite sayings about relying on electricity when we don’t understanding it or trusting that a chair will hold us up aren’t going to help them to do the impossible…the unthinkable.

The only way any of them will be able to face the things that have happened is by relying on a trusted source of strength…a power higher than themselves...even though they don’t now and never will understand. And until you and I come to terms with the fact that we won’t always understand, we’re going to have a hard time letting go and trusting God to work things out according to His will rather than our own.

You have no doubt cried until you think you have no tears left. I get that. I’m sometimes walking a similar minefield of fear and doubt so I know it isn’t easy. But I also know that until we let go of that desperate need to understand why terrible things have happened, we’ll never know peace or serenity. And reminding ourselves that when we can’t see God’s hand, we can trust His heart will, even in our sorrow, give us back our joy.

Challenge for Today: What might happen if we, just for today, trusted that God is still in control and that He will somehow work that situation out for our good and His glory?