A Faith of a Different Color

From Lesson 6 – Trusting God’s Purposes:

Let’s start this chapter with complete honesty: most of us have struggled at one time or another to trust God’s purposes. In fact, most of us have struggled to even know God’s purposes, much less trust them. The apostle Paul addressed this in Romans 11:33–36, pointing out that because of God’s great riches and wisdom and knowledge, “How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!” (NLT). Some of our experiences in life don’t make sense from our perspective, and we have a hard time getting to a point of trust apart from understanding (which is, of course, what real faith is!).

I have found, through much hard work (and trial and error), that trusting God’s purposes involves stepping outside of my perspective and trying to look at life from God’s perspective. I have also discovered that trusting God’s purposes cannot be separated from knowing and trusting the other parts of him: his sovereignty, his love, his thoughts toward me, his grace and mercy, and everything else that his Word tells me about his character. Truly believing what the Bible teaches me about God’s heart and motivation helps me to trust his purposes when they don’t match my purposes or seem to make any sense.

Trusting God’s purposes begins with the truth outlined for us in Ephesians 1:4–11:

“Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son . . . He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.” (MSG)

God has an overall purpose for every part of his creation, and we are a part of that purpose. But we are only a part.

God is all about relationship, and his overall purpose is to bring everything in creation into meaningful relationship with himself and each other under Christ. We need to remember that this purpose can NEVER be thwarted regardless of the evil that Satan brings or the present view we have of a world that lacks sense and is in a state of confusion. In 2 Peter 3:8–9, Peter also reminds us that God isn’t in a hurry to accomplish his overall purpose but is willing to patiently wait for every single part of his creation to have the opportunity to be a part of that purpose. What God has planned for all of his creation is far beyond our planning abilities and far more purposeful than anything we can imagine because it is an eternal purpose: “For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory.” (Romans 11:36a, NLT). In order to begin trusting God’s purposes, I need to trust his overall purpose of meaningful relationship and be a willing participant in bringing him the glory he is due.

The next step in trusting God’s purposes is to focus on what the Bible tells us about the characteristics of those purposes. God’s purposes are just and true, they are eternal or everlasting, they are holy and righteous, and they are always loving and faithful. In the Bible, “heart” refers to the center of the human spirit from which emotions, thought, motivations, courage, and action all come. We are told that the purposes of God’s heart stand firm through all generations and can never be shaken. God is completely consistent, so we can count on him to lead us in “straight” paths. This does not mean that everything will always be smooth (from our perspective); but that we can trust God to lead us in paths that are right (from his perspective): “I’m writing out clear directions to Wisdom Way; I’m drawing a map to Righteous Road.” (Proverbs 4:11, MSG). When I am tempted to question God’s purposes or wonder why he does things a certain way, it is helpful to remind myself what his Word tells me about the kind of leader he is and the “heart” that guides everything he does.