Ever heard somebody say that? “But God.” Two words, and if you’ve been around the church any length of time you’ve heard it a hundred times.
It’s the turn in the sentence. It’s what comes after the part you can’t fix.
My finances are a wreck and I have no idea how we’re going to work it out. But God does.
I’m in the middle of a hard breakup, a divorce I never saw coming, and I struggle to get out of bed. But God has a plan.
I lost a good job. It was my whole identity. I spent years being one thing and now I have to figure out who I am. But God knows.
I think we can all relate to at least one of those. Some of us to all three.
We’re not supposed to know
Here’s what I think most of us actually struggle with. It isn’t the hard thing itself. It’s not knowing.
We want the layout. We want to see how it works out before we agree to walk through it. And we don’t get that. We never get that.
It’s right there in the name. The unknown. By design, we’re not supposed to know it.
“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:8-9
Read that again. His ways are beyond anything you could imagine. Not beyond what you’ll figure out eventually. Beyond what you’re capable of imagining in the first place.
So when you’re lying in the bunk at two in the morning trying to reason out why this is happening, and you can’t get there, that’s not because you’re not smart enough. It was never on the table.
When I tried to fix it myself
Some years back my wife and I were moving from Northwest Indiana down to South Carolina. Our lease was up on the apartment we were renting, and the date was coming fast. Down to the day we had to be out, and we had nowhere to go on the other end.
I want to be honest about what that felt like. My wife and I are the kind of people who take action. Something’s wrong, you fix it. Don’t make excuses, don’t justify it, don’t act like a victim. Own it and work the problem.
We didn’t make excuses about why it wasn’t working. We put the time in and made it the priority. That’s really what owning it comes down to. Setting the right priorities and being honest about what actually matters to you. More on that another time.
We made calls. Got a hold of somebody renting townhouses in South Carolina. The one we asked about wasn’t available. But another was about to open up, and we could be first to apply.
We got it. And my wife ended up with a job at a school literally down the street.
That’s not something I arranged. I didn’t know that school was there.
A few years in, they raised the rent on the townhouse to where it wasn’t worth staying. Now, we had looked at buying a house before we ever left Indiana, and it didn’t work out. At the time that felt like a door closing. Looking back, it was timing.
Because when we finally did buy, we qualified, we got the mortgage, and the house sits fifteen minutes from where I drive out of and twenty from where my wife would end up teaching.
None of that was our plan. Our plan was to buy back in Indiana, and it failed.
God’s timing is always right on time. Just not on our time.
Owning it didn’t solve this. It got us on the phone making calls, and that was our part to do. It didn’t put a townhouse in front of us that happened to sit down the street from a school my wife would end up teaching at. I couldn’t have arranged that if I’d tried.
Do your part. Then let go of the part that was never yours.
It’s supposed to be hard
I’ll say the thing nobody wants to hear. It’s tough. And it’s supposed to be.
Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.
James 1:2-4
The hurdles aren’t in the way of something. They’re doing something. Endurance doesn’t come from an easy stretch of road, and neither does anything else worth having.
That doesn’t make it feel better at two in the morning. But it does change what you think is happening to you.
He’s already out ahead of you
Through all of it, here’s the part to hold onto.
Be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.
Deuteronomy 31:6
Personally go ahead of you. Not watching from somewhere. Out in front, already there.
You don’t know the plan. You’re not going to. We think we have a plan, but God has a better one.
That’s the whole thing. That’s why the two words work.
If you drive and you’re working out your faith on the road, that’s what we write about here. Two posts a week.