Set Up For Failure?

"Is God really good? If I trust myself to Him, isn't there a good chance that I will wind up where I least want to be or that God will withhold what I want the most? Isn't God a little bit like Lucy in the Peanuts comic strip, who pulls the football away just as Charlie Brown gives himself completely to the kick, causing him to fall flat on his face?"

So many times I have viewed God this way. I have wanted something so passionately and have completely committed myself to it only to have God take it away. God doesn't always do this, but sometimes He does. The thing is that God is nothing like Lucy... God is not rooting for us to fail. He is not sitting up in the clouds just waiting for us to fall flat on our face so that He can laugh at us. God wants us to have the best life possible, He just knows that what we think is the best life, isn't the best life at all. Let me put it another way, His ways are higher and greater than our ways. He knows what is best for us because, well because He is God! Just like a parents knows that children need to take naps and go to sleep early, or how parents know that their kids need to eat healthy foods and not only eat candy, so God knows what we should do or have to have a life that is greater than anything else.

So what is the best life possible for us to have? Because there are so many times that I think I know, but apparently I don't. I thought the best life possible was for me to be a teacher. I spent my whole life thinking I would be a kindergarten teacher. I had good intentions. I wanted to minister to my kids and be a teacher they could always come visit and that I would always be someone they would look up to as a woman of God. I wanted to be a good teacher in a corrupt world. I think those are great intentions. I think that more people who are called to teach should live like that, but that isn't what God had for me. He led me to writing and film. He had molded a different, better life for me than the one I decided for myself. I thought that I should spend the rest of my life with my ex to have the best life ever, but God knew that my relationship with Chris was holding the both of us back from a greater life neither of us could have imagined. Then God, knowing my desire to have a husband one day (after all He placed that desire in me), gave me time to heal from wounds of falling on my face with Chris, built me up into a more confident woman, brought me closer to Himself, and then like a beautiful whirlwind, Andrew Bradford came into my life... and let me tell you, life is so much better than I had planned for myself.

There are so many other ways that my life isn't turning out the way I had originally planned, and it's because God is steering my wheel now. I gave it to Him a long time ago and He takes me where I should be. It's almost always where I had never planned, but it's so much better than I could ever plan. And honestly, the better is not because of Andrew or film... it's because I'm living a life close to Jesus. I'm not perfect at a life close to Jesus, in fact I mess up daily. But God knows my heart desires to be close to Him, even though my earthly flesh fails. He stays close to me because of that even though I sometimes go far from Him. That is why my life is better than I ever could have imagined. I am content in the arms of my Savior and so He can take me wherever He wants me to go. Change my plans all He wants.

Here I am, God! Show me where to go and I will follow You!

I went on a rant... haha. But the point is that God is not setting us up for failure. God sets us up to have the best life which is a life closest to Him.

"God didn't set us up for an angry rejection but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. He died for us, a death that triggered life. Whether we're awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we're alive with Him!" (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10)