“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9
Blessed are those who live with the attitude that God’s ways and God’s thoughts are far above their own thoughts and ways.
The Bible is full of examples of people who planned their own way—and then yielded to God and He did it better. Let’s examine a couple of examples:
Joseph (Genesis 37-50): God saved Joseph’s whole family in a way that he could have never imagined. As a young man, God showed Joseph in a dream that he would gain preeminence over his brothers. But Joseph had no idea that the purpose was to save his entire family from famine. And I’m quite sure young Joseph absolutely would never have imagined a trajectory that would take him from thirteen horrible years of slavery and imprisonment to becoming Prime Minister of Egypt. When Joseph realized just how miraculously God used his brothers’ treachery to carry out a rescue plan for the entire family, he told his brothers:
“Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.” Genesis 50:19-20
Moses (Exodus 2-14): Moses knew he had been called by God to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt. But at first, he tried to do it on his own by killing an Egyptian who was beating a Jewish slave. But God had a different plan and He had different timing. Moses had to be exiled from the life he was used to as a prince of Egypt. He needed to spend fourty years on the backside of the desert. And during this time, Moses wasn’t building an army to free his people. No—he was being prepared to free the Israelites in a way that was far more miraculous and glorifying to God than anything Moses could have imagined. I doubt Moses ever imagined God speaking to him out of a burning bush, sending 10 plagues, splitting the Red Sea wide open, and drowning the Egyptian army.
We could examine the lives of so many characters in the Bible—Abraham, David, Esther, Ruth, Paul, etc. Although they were flawed humans, when they decided to let God run their life HIS way, they discovered He does it better than they could. This is true for us today.
I’ve experienced it.
Is your life going the way you think it should? Do you wonder where God is in all the mess? If you are born again then He has not gone anywhere. When we begin to wonder where God is and why He is not doing our life our way then it’s time to begin re-surrendering every area of our life to Him. In this beatitude, Jesus is saying:
Blessed is the woman who allows God to run her business—HIS way.
Blessed is the man who allows God to run his family—HIS way.
Blessed it is the woman who lets God raise her children—HIS way.
Blessed is the man who lets God run his prayer life and ministry—HIS way.
God has a plan, and it is far beyond our understanding or imagination. He just wants us to put our life in His hands and let him run every aspect of it—HIS way. God has more effective and efficient ways of getting us where we need to go and accomplishing what we need to do than we could ever imagine for ourselves.
Our job is to trust and obey God whether we understand what He is doing or not!
My friend, we ALL struggle to give God total control. Especially when the storm is raging and it looks like our ship is going down. But God gives us tools to ride the storm in victory! That’s what the attitudes of Christ do for us.
Tomorrow, we are going to wrap up this final Beatitude by examining another remarkable example. We will see how this attitude Christ taught us gives us remarkable courage even in the face of death.
