Forged By Faith

Proverbs 19:21 NIV We sure love to make our plans don't we? All of us have spent countless hours and days envisioning this life filled with the dreams that make us all giddy inside. I know I’ve done that. Sit around plotting out this perfect course to all of the desires that I just know would make my life perfect. We all do it. We draw up these maps to all the things we want thinking that we know exactly what we need to make us happy and bring us fulfillment in life. But often those dreams and desires turn into expectations. And as we talked about yesterday, expecting things to go a certain way or assuming that God will just cater to what we want is a very dangerous game to play. If we’re so dead-set on our lives going one specific direction or obtaining this list of things we want then we’re opening the door to more disappointment than we could imagine. We’re just setting ourselves up. There’s nothing wrong with having goals, dreaming dreams, and making plans. But that can’t becom...

Psalm 48:14 NIV Yesterday we talked about how our God is unstoppable. Each of us are a small part in this humongous masterpiece that He's drawn. Nothing can stop what He has planned. Nothing can change His will for our lives. Nothing we face is without purpose or reason. We simply need to learn to trust in Him above and beyond anything else. He is our God! You know, I look back at all these little plans and dreams that I've had in my life. Some worked out and went how I imagined. Most didn't even come close to happening at all. But what I see mostly now is that it all went according to God's plans. While I may have not gotten what I thought I wanted, I get exactly what I needed. While it definitely hasn't all been easy or understandable, it all made sense to Him. That's what matters. We have no guarantee that our lives will go how we want them to go. And as weird as it may sound that's an incredible blessing! We don't know what's best. We don't k...

Proverbs 16:9 NIV Here's another little brutal truth that hit me the other day: stop thinking that this world or anyone in it is going to cater to you. I think selfishness is one of those things that is almost instinctual in most of us. We get caught up living our lives the way we want to live them and think that everyone around us will understand and accept that. Not really the way it works though. I was sitting in a drive thru the other day thinking about how my normal schedule was being interrupted. I tend to follow a pretty normal routine, and when things happen that force me to adjust it, well it usually leads to frustration. But then I heard this voice pop in my mind that reminded me to stop taking everything in life so seriously all the time. So what if our routines get interrupted? Who cares is we have to push things back a little bit? Does it really matter if we end up having to skip something that we had planned? No. We get to this point where we think things have to be d...