Day 2468 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.


Psalm 71:20 NIV

I'm thankful for God's faithfulness. I, like everyone else, have gone through more things than I can remember. All of us have lived a life filled with trials, challenges, mountains, and valleys. We've endured days so long we thought they'd never end. We've come up against battles that we knew would be the end of our story. We've all got enough stories to fill countless books about God's deliverance and provision.

But how often are we thankful for the rough spots in life? How many times have we stopped in the middle of a storm to thank God for the rain? How many prayers have we prayed telling God thank you for the tough love that inspires change and refuses to leave us comfortable? How many times have we smiled in the midst of adversity because we knew God was up to something amazing?

Sadly, we usually get stuck seeing the pain, the inconvenience, the discomfort, the effort required to keep going. We get tripped up whining about how much we wish the road ahead of us were easier. We become blinded by our preference to avoid strife and challenge because they bring this unavoidable need to examine ourselves and push beyond the limits that we've settled for having in our lives.

Thankfully, God doesn't set those same limits. He's not willing to compromise on His plans for us just because we don't want to endure the arduous journey to experience them. He won't settle for what we've deemed good enough because He knows that our good enoughs are only acceptable because they afford us the ease and comfort that we seek in life. He wants more for us than we would ever choose for ourselves. And that's something to be thankful for!

All of us can look back on so many times that we've fallen down, failed, come up short, and made a complete mess of things. We all have plenty of tales of tragedy and triumph. We all have a life that tells stories of things we wouldn't have chosen, but that we would never change now that we're on the other side of the fight. If only we could learn to trust in His plans no matter how hard, how strange, or how painful they may be.

Friends, no matter what God brings us into, He does so for a reason. And while that reason may rarely be to make us comfortable or to give us the rest and peace that we'd prefer, His plans are always for our best. He will make us stronger by first forcing us to address our weaknesses. He will help us grow by pruning away everything that would otherwise hold us back. Sometimes He will help us learn to stand by pulling the rug out from under us so that we're forced to lean on Him.

No, this road and our lives along it won't always be easy. But we can always, and I mean always, trust in God's faithfulness and His unrelenting desire to build us into the people that He created us to be before our sins and concessions got in the way. Don't look for the easiest path. And don't allow anger to cloud your ability to see that God's doing something amazing even in the roughest of circumstances. He has always been good, and that's something that will never change!

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