Are my troubles drawing me close to God or driving me away?

Precious Prodigal's Post for 01/28/2015 is at = http://bit.ly/1CzqbkL Are my troubles drawing me close to God or driving me away? Like what you see? Please "Like" & "Share" us on FB

Precious Prodigal's Post for 01/28/2015 is at = http://bit.ly/1CzqbkL

Title: Are my troubles drawing me close to God or driving me away?

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Psalm 24:1 “The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.”

In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren begins by saying, “It’s not about you.” He’s right that the world and everything in it was created by God and for God. (Col 1:16) So Warren is correct when he says everything has to start with God and the knowledge that we don’t belong to ourselves.

But he’s wrong when he says it’s not about you. It is totally about you. It’s totally about me. What does that mean? God created man for His own purpose and plan. I don’t understand why God loves us and condescends to want fellowship with us, but He does. And our divine purpose is to love and glorify God and have fellowship with Him.

Genesis 22 tells the story of Abraham and Isaac. Twenty-five years after God’s promise, Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah. I can only guess how Abraham must have loved that boy. Now God has told him to sacrifice that son, his only son. But wait. Is God not a God of mercy?

God’s desire and our divine purpose are the same. God deserves to be first in our lives, and He wants an intimate relationship with us. How could we doubt that when Christ paid for our sins so we could be reconciled to God? That God did not withhold His own Son should shout to us the importance God puts on us and on a relationship with us.

That diagnosis that frightens us, that spouse who left, that job we lost, and yes, even that prodigal…all of them have one purpose in common: to draw us closer to God. And it isn’t the illness, the failed marriage or the lost prodigal that God wants. It’s my heart and yours drawing close to Him and fulfilling the purpose for which we were created.

I’m not suggesting God gave us an illness, financial problems or a prodigal to punish us. I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that it’s easier to hear God and draw close to Him when our hearts are broken. C.S. Lewis says it best: “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

For Abraham, that megaphone was Mount Moriah, an altar, and his son. You know the end of the story. God stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac and instead provided a ram for the burnt offering. God didn’t want to take Abraham’s son; He only wanted Abraham to let him go. You see, it was never Isaac that God wanted. It was Abraham.

It isn’t easy to face a diagnosis of cancer or the death of a loved one. It probably goes off the chart when we think about letting go of our prodigal. Troubles like those come to all of us at some point, and we don’t have a choice about that. We can, however, choose whether our troubles are going to draw us closer to our God or drive us away. The choice is up to us.

Challenge for Today: What might happen if we, just for today, let our troubles draw us closer to the God who loves us?