“For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:” (1st Cor. 1:26)
Things are starting to look up a little, you’re finally left with a little money at the end of the week. The financial responsibilities are being met, and you actually enjoy your job. And then something unforeseen happens and all that comes to a halt.
Your new acquaintances seem like decent people, you can feel a bond forming, perhaps the beginnings of a friendship, but you come to the realization after a short time, for various reasons, that these are not the people you should be associating with.
The possibility of that romantic relationship falls apart, old friends and even family members begin to treat you as if you do not exist, you have to move from where you live, out of your comfort zone.
“A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” (Prov. 16:9)
Are you being prepared by the Almighty in ways that you never imagined to finally apply this verse to yourself?
“Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,” (Phil. 3:8)
When nothing seems to be working out anymore, when loss seems to greet you around every corner, when hardships and forms of personal suffering arrive in your life, and that life has been devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ to the glory of the Almighty, then rejoice.
Easy to write, not so easy when it actually happens unfortunately, for we tend to find a form of security in repetitiveness, in a sense of the foreknowledge that what we have envisioned for our future here will remain as we have set it to be.
And then the Lord says to you, “No, not that way, this way.”
Suffering with our Savior means loss, it means grief and sorrow, to be despised and rejected, to be mocked, ridiculed and wrongfully mistreated. It means to make yourself available at all times to Him whom in love you serve, to accept the truth of Romans 8:28, no matter the circumstances that arrive in your life.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
The initial response by all of us, not some, but every one of us who are hid in Christ when the Most High redirects our steps is not fear, it is not confusion, anger or frustration, it is not doubt. It is an unwillingness to accept change. How long it lasts within you is how long it takes you to recall, and accept, that your Father in heaven is directing your steps, and that it is for good.
Grief and sorrow, loss, no matter what it is, can only be seen as gain if you realize these truths.
“But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:19)
Look back on the job, on that relationship, even on those friends and family members, on all those things that are no longer a part of your life, did you need them?
This is not to say that perhaps your affections that are to be reserved for the Lord were being transferred to them, that you may have been on the path to putting your trust in the job, the money or even those relationships. It simply means that God is directing your steps, and if you truly desire to seek His face for His glory, that sense of loss you feel each time will lessen.
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” (Prov. 3:5-6)
When we finally set our affections on things above, when we understand that our treasures are laid up in heaven, when we can finally count the loss of all things as dung, looking to gain Christ in every loss and realize that He is directing our steps for good, for His glory, then we have the assurance that we are on the path that He has set before us.
