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Exchanged Glory IV: A Time for Every Purpose
The Author of Life is the great story writer …Once we learn to participate with Him, the drama becomes much more fun. We are able to see the pain, joy, sorrow, love, and unexpected twists from a new perspective – His perspective.
Less than a month after my mother was diagnosed with cancer, changes began to happen in my family. There was a spiritual awakening of sorts, and some of the behavior that had seemed unchangeable changed.
For the next two years, my children lived with the fact that their grandmother was slowly slipping away. It was a constant reminder of mortality and the wages of sin. The Holy Spirit continued to draw them, and the worst of the dangerous directions that had started were reversed.
I can’t be sure what would have happened if God hadn’t touched us through my mother’s cancer, but life might have taken a radically different direction. …And the irony of that amazes me. My mother’s smoking was the springboard that had launched me into my worst emotional problems, including the smoking fetish. There have been few, if any, influences that have led to more pain and trouble in my life. Yet it was my mother’s smoking (through cancer) that God used to steer my family away from possibly serious trouble.
In Romans 11 Paul describes how the sin of one group of people, the nation of Israel, led to an abundance of God’s grace for others (the Gentiles).
… through their fall … salvation has come to the Gentiles.
When the devil seems to win, God does a reverse on him. In the above scripture, the devil misled Israel, yet God made this His opportunity to bless the entire world. He wove the evil into a good plan.
This happens so often that when some of us look at how well life turns out in spite of our sins, we are tempted to think that our disobedience doesn’t deserve punishment. After all, if good comes in the end, why can’t God just be happy and enjoy it?
For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? And why not say, "Let us do evil that good may come"? — as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just.
The Bible makes it clear that sin is never acceptable, and God will judge those who don’t turn from it to Jesus. But that doesn’t change the fact that He is in control and will bring His good out of the evil. When He allows someone to sin (with all of the resulting pain and destruction), He still has a plan to bless those who love Him.
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
In my case, when He allowed my mother to give herself over to nicotine, He already knew what He would do. Fifty years later He would help my family through the cancer that resulted and bring His mercy to us.
What can I say about this? If you were to lay out my entire life before me, with all of the difficulties that my mother’s smoking brought, and if you were to give me the choice to avoid that, but I would lose any of my children in the process, my decision would be obvious. I would gladly suffer more than that for my children.
God knows what is best, and if He allows pain in our lives, He has a good reason for it. (And just think what might have happened if I had trusted His goodness when I was ten years old. The trauma that led to the smoking fetish would have been eased, and I might have avoided a long and difficult struggle with abnormal desires.)
The Author of Life is the great story writer, and we all play a part in His unfolding tale of grace. We influence its outcome, but we don’t control it.
Once we learn to participate with Him, the drama becomes much more fun. We are able to see the pain, joy, sorrow, love, and unexpected twists from a new perspective – His perspective. We may suffer and face confusion, but He uses everything to bring us to His power and unimaginable riches. I touched these as I watched Him write the story of my mother and my family.
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! "For who has known the mind of the LORD? Or who has become His counselor?" “Or who has first given to Him and it shall be repaid to him?" For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
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