I am psycho-crazy about my grades. It's actually really dumb. I get all stressed out, and I forgo relationships with people, food, sleep, and my relationship with Jesus, and I get super stressed out and start going nuts. So you can image that this semester and I didn't really become BFF's. It was bad. It was hard. I didn't handle it well. I made a lot of mistakes. Blah blah blah.
The thing that was interesting to me was what happened while I was walking to a test and praying during finals week. My prayer was something along the lines of "Lord, honor my work and the time I put into it" because I knew that I had done everything I knew to do to prepare for this test, including be crazy (see first list).
So I was walking and praying and then, I felt the Lord say very clearly "why would I honor something that pulls you away from Me?"
Not an answer I expected to hear. Not really one I wanted to hear either. And it's kind've brought me to this odd stand-still. Why would He honor that? Why should He? And would I even want Him to? The very thing that I am angry with God over this semester is that I feel like He threw me to the wolves and left me. I feel very abandoned on a few circumstances, and I feel like I was left to fight out of them on my own. Instead of God helping me be victorious in trials, I wallowed alone until I just arrived at the end. And in some cases, still have not arrived at any kind of end.
But in the middle of being angry I am wondering. I am wondering if maybe God's rescue was in allowing me to remain unhelped. I wonder if God's provision for me was in not saving me. I wonder if success in the ways I asked for would've brought a kind of death that only failure at the things I wanted to succeed at could avoid.
Maybe these things that we judge God by, provision and deliverance and circumstantial outcomes-perhaps they are not fair. Maybe a gague of God as Deliverer is not rescue from my circumstance I am sure I should be rescued from. Maybe a baseline of God as my Champion is not victory in areas of my life I assume I should be victorious in.
Maybe I really have no idea how God works, or who He is. Maybe I presuppose so many things on Him that are man-made that I have lost sight of Jesus's heart. Maybe I've adopted this church idea that God is primarily supposed to fix things in my life, such as sin, and bring me through trials, like my own personal assistant. Maybe my anger is a result of my misconception. Maybe God is loving me more than I understand doing the very things that I have decided mean He doesn't love me.
Maybe, in being left in the middle, I am being delivered to a greater love that I could not understand if I was always rescued out of every circumstance. Maybe it is more important that our lives are forged in the fire, caught between the hammers of pain and the anvils of situation, and seared in the discerning waters of truth. Maybe God cares very little of life being fair, and very much for lives that are real. Maybe He cares less of what we see, and more that we see.
Perhaps these failures I have become bitter over....perhaps God is saving me from being successful at the wrong things
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