often it doesn’t make sense…

psalm 138.8 says (nlt), the LORD will work out HIS plans for my life.  you need to know this about GOD’s plan.

GOD’s plan is often more painful.  sometimes it’s harder, it’s difficult and often it doesn’t make sense.  it certainly didn’t make sense to mary who had just found out that GOD wanted her to be the mother of HIS SON.  the plan GOD had for mary’s life was much more difficult and harder than the one she had.  can you imagine the difficulty of facing the gossip that she did as an unmarried mother who claimed that GOD was the father?  ruthless criticism, i can imagine. 

then when she was pregnant she had to travel on a donkey a long journey to bethlehem the day before her delivery.  would any of you mothers like to confirm that that would probably be hard?  on the day before delivery take a donkey ride over a bumpy road many miles, taking two or three days, obviously that would be very hard.  then you’re going to deliver your first baby without your mother, without a midwife, without hospital or doctors.  you’re going to deliver that baby by yourself as a thirteen-year-old girl in a stable with donkeys and cows surrounding you.  that would be hard.  i’m sure mary must have thought a thousand times, “why, GOD?  why does this have to be so hard?  i’ve surrendered to your plan.  why does it have to be so hard?” 

GOD was fulfilling a promise HE had made thousands of years before when HE had said the MESSIAH will be born in bethlehem. 

from mary’s point of view this thing kind of came up suddenly.  it looked like she was being ambushed by GOD.  that GOD said, “out of all the little peasant girls in the world I’m going to pick you, mary, in nazareth and you’re going to be the vehicle that i use to come into the world to bless the world.”  to mary it looked like a complete surprise, spontaneous.  but, no.  GOD had planned this before the earth was formed.  as you read the bible you see all the genealogies had been traced back all the way to adam that the MESSIAH would be born in the lineage of david.  this was no accident.  GOD had planned what was going to happen to mary thousands if not millions of years before. 

nothing in your life is an accident.  nothing.  there is a purpose behind every problem.  it doesn’t ever surprise GOD.  HE knew everything that was going to happen in your life before it happened.  even the bad.  HE doesn’t cause the bad.  there’s enough in the world to cause itself.  but HE takes bad and even brings good out of it.  did GOD bring good out of the cross?  i guess so!!  did bad happen to HIS SON?  yes!  did he stop it?  no. 

so GOD’s plan for your life is going to be often harder.

just a thought from the front porch…