Author: Lisa Bellamy

I'm a former print journalist whose day job is "financial health." That's corporate-speak for helping people understand and maximize their employee benefits. It is not a job for the faint-hearted. I've been married to the same awesome IT guy for 30+ years and am the insanely proud mom of three beautiful and brainy young adults – a poet, an Army man and a scholar/athlete. Insanely proud because medically I should not have children. Even after fertility surgery, I remained barren until some church ladies, who were in the habit of praying Mondays at noon, asked God to give us children. My children are my reminder that God still answers prayer and performs miracles. I'm a Christ follower who seeks to live where faith meets life. Join me on the journey.* * I began blogging more than a decade ago under the title "Walking Across Egypt," now re-branded as BringFaith2Life. My mission is to do everyday life in a way that reflects faith in Jesus Christ. Faith has to work in the real world of annoying neighbors, angry bosses, ungrateful children, overloaded schedules, stubborn wills and sudden bills and responsibilities that come out of nowhere. If faith doesn't work where I live, it's not worth exporting. "The just shall live by faith." Habakkuk 2:4b 

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I have spent the better part of my life trying hard to do something that God Himself does not do: prevent people I love from making choices that could ruin their lives. I’m guessing I am not alone.

When God created human beings with the ability to exercise free will, He allowed for the possibility that we would make choices that go wrong, cause us great pain and produce outcomes we never anticipated and would never knowingly choose could we see things from His perspective.

But we don’t see things clearly. We often prefer the tinted glasses of Oz. (Yes, in the book, The Wizard of Oz, the citizens wear glasses with emerald-colored lenses which is why they see an Emerald City). We want to be loved. We want to be accepted. We want to be applauded. And so, because we do not see things as they are, we may make terrible choices that lead to unimaginable consequences.

This accounts for so much of the misery and grief on display in the world. If God is God – haven’t we all asked or heard this question –  why is there so much XYZ evil in the world?

The answer is God is not doing the choosing. We are. Apart from His mercy, we eat the fruit of our own choices (or maybe someone else’s). Sowing and reaping, seed time and harvest are a law in the Earth that goes way beyond agriculture.

Choice is a beautiful but potentially dangerous thing when not exercised from a place of submission to what God wants.

Let’s not fool ourselves: if God always wants what we want, we just might be our own god. Reason: Scripture clearly states that He is not like us.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV)

I have learned, am still learning, that my choices are not necessarily God’s choices. It may be that in His infinite wisdom, knowing the end from the beginning, God says: “This is not for you to have, to experience, to do. This is not my will for you.”

Think on that for a minute. Not every “good” thing we want to do is God’s will for us. King David wanted to build a house for the ark of the covenant, the symbol of God’s presence with His people, which was housed in a tent.

David is living in a palace and decides it’s only right that he build God a house. Sounds wonderful. However, God responds that He never asked for a house, and it is not David’s task to build Him one.

“When you die and join your ancestors, I will make one of your sons the next king, and I will set up his kingdom. He will build a house for me, and I will let his kingdom rule always.” (2 Samuel 7:12-13 NET)

I’ve just experienced what it’s like to want to do “good” and have God say, “No. I have a different plan.” It is a hard lesson.

My plan, like David’s, seemed a good thing, a God-thing. Yet, the more I tried to accomplish it, the more obstacles presented themselves. It became unmistakably clear that not only was God not facilitating this “good thing,” He allowed significant opposition.

I had a choice to make. Persist in doing what I thought was right or acknowledge this was not what God wanted.

What would Jesus do? Better: What did Jesus do? In the garden of Gethsemane, fully knowing the tortuous death that lay before Him – being nailed to die on a cross reserved for criminals to purchase our freedom from sin and restore us to God – Jesus asked if there might be some other way, a different choice.

Sweating like great drops of blood, He wrestled in prayer until he fully submitted to God’s choice: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Yet not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42 NET)

Still, we Christ followers persist in the wrong-headed notion that God’s will for us will always be what we want and that it will be sunshine and roses. In reality, what God wants can be painful and hard, so very different from what we imagine that we are left without words, stunned into silence and deep concern that something really bad could happen.

And, beloved, God never promises that nothing bad will happen. His promise is, no matter what happens, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20 NET)

It all comes down to this: faith. Do we trust God to be God and to remain faithful when we can’t understand what He’s doing, don’t like what He does or what He allows? If it’s happening, whatever it is, God allowed it. (If that blows your mind, I recommend reading the book of Job.)

Trying to do a good thing, finding it near impossible but insisting on having it your way? I recommend you let it go and trust what we know about God’s character.

“Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25 NIV)