This year, God will redeem all that you’ve lost
There is nothing that you lose that God does not restore.
It may cost you a lot of weary days and a lot of patience, but keep the faith in God’s plan for you.
Most of the time, God’s plan is hard to understand.
What you value, you lose. What you need, gets broken. Who you love, leaves.
There are circumstances wherein you can’t anymore see how things could even go worse.
Yet…still, they do.
What you thought was a worst-case scenario even goes further to reach beyond the limits of your pain.
You then come to the point of asking, “How can this be God’s plan for me?”
You know for yourself what exactly would make you happy, yet God says no.
You know what exactly you deserve, yet God allows your heart to be crushed by what happens to you.
You know how much exactly you have already invested in what you desire, yet God abandons your dreams.
Is this some kind of joke? Why did I ever have something I was bound to lose? How can I even see the good in something that crushes my heart? I have invested so much already, but why did God take away everything in a single snap? Have I come all the way this far for a dead end? Can I even be happy in a life that pushes me to the edge?
You’re wrong.
About your happiness, about what you deserve, and about your limited vision.
You cannot know everything with certainty.
In mysterious ways, God is testing your faith.
Giving life the benefit of the doubt, no matter how hard it beats you down to your core, is an inch closer towards allowing God to take over in your life…
Instead of limiting God’s plan for your life by insisting on what you thought alone would make you happy, even if it means turning your back on faith.
Begin to ask the right questions
‘Cause whatever you don’t know, about how God’s power is at work in your life, will work against you. This year…
Turn the “God, why do you take away what’s important to me?” into:
God, how can I not lose heart at something that has already become a part of who I am? How can I fight for it when I still have the chance to?…when I still should? If there’s anything you now want me to value the same way, how can I have the wisdom to see it? Is there something You now want me to see, which I took for granted when I still have what I’d just lost?
Turn the “God, why does the very thing I need gets broken?” into:
God, how do we fix this together? In what way do You want me to grow out of fixing this mess with the eyes of faith? How do I let go of something if it can’t be fixed anymore? How can I change heart if there is nothing I need to fix except for myself? How can I allow Your Words to heal my wounds?
Turn the “God, Why do you take away whatever/whomever I love?” or the “Why do the people I love leave me?” into:
God, how can I have a heart that keeps on loving again?…a heart that is not afraid to get hurt again? How can I be strong enough to forgive and be brave enough to carry on? In what way can my situation lead me to write a powerful story of love? In what way can I offer healing to the people who are shedding the same tears I have broken out?
There is nothing unfortunate that God ever wanted for you, but He allows them to happen so that you would grow faith in Him.
Keep on looking for the silver linings. Never stop believing. Don’t ever cease to carry on, for everything would, in the end, be worth it.
The pain that you’ve been feeling is only a sign that you are on the verge of a breakthrough.
Your severe pain signals that you are either about to heal from the many heartaches that have combined into something big or you are preparing for meaningful growth.
There would always be hard days, the days outside your comfort zone, the days full of pressure.
As if you are at the point of no return after everything you have risked. As if you have no one to run to after the tables have turned.
These days are your treasure.
Bear in mind how a chunk of coal that has done really well under pressure turns out to be a diamond.
God gives back more than what you’ve lost.
This is a truth that bears repeating. It is not a mere way of seeing things in a positive way. It is something that you always experience. Aware or not, you encounter how God’s power is at work in your life in ways such as this.
God knows what your heart desires, especially when it comes to what you’ve lost. He knows how He could bring healing into your life even though you have not yet asked for it.
He is The Redeemer. He will redeem what you’ve lost. He will redeem you.
This year, promise yourself that you would no longer hurt yourself further by not believing. Promise yourself that you would start seeing all things with the eyes of faith.
Promise yourself that you would surrender everything to Him and open your heart to allow His restoration to be at work in your life.
You owe yourself the grace and unexplainable happiness of growing in faith.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen.
The Serenity Prayer — Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
