I Only Have Good in Mind for You

This is Part Five in my series on Trust - please read the rest of the posts here:

Part One - "Waking Up to our Need for God"
Part Two - "Lean Into God"
Part Three - "It is Well"
Part Four - "Understanding God's Plan"

I Only Have Good in Mind for You
If there is any obstacle to our trust in God that is universal it is that we struggle with trusting in His love for us. For some this struggle comes from their own insecurities, for others this struggle comes from their life experience of not being able to trust their parents or others in their lives, for others it is a lack of trust that comes from their experience with the Church growing up. Either way this lack of trust in God's love will undoubtedly eat away at us and in time our faith in God, ourselves, and others will decay.

The great lie that Satan has been telling us since the fall of man is that God is holding out on us, that he is hiding something from us, that he is using us, that he doesn't really care, that he wants us to suffer, that he likes seeing us struggle, and the list goes on. Picture the scene in the Garden of Eden. How did the serpent get Eve to eat the apple? The same way he gets us to sin or to stop trusting God’s will in our lives. By placing doubt there, by making us question God’s love for us.

I can imagine the conversation:

“So Eve, I see you are eating of the fruit of all of these trees but that one. Why don’t you try the fruit on that tree? It looks so good.”

Eve replies, “Because Adam said that God told us not to eat of the tree of knowledge. So we don’t eat of that one, but we can eat everything else.”

Here comes old slimy again, “How do you know that God told Adam that? Are you sure Adam is telling the truth? And even if he is telling the truth, why do you think God would want you not to eat of that tree?”

Eve retorts uncomfortably, “Well because he said it wouldn’t be good for us
to…”

Cut off by the serpent, “I see, God doesn’t want you to have it all, he doesn’t want you to be truly happy. He knows that this tree is the one that gives you power, and control, and enjoyment. I mean Eve you agree that the fruit on that tree does look really, really, really, really delectable right?”

“Well, it does look pretty good.”

“Then why would God not let you eat of it, I mean he does want you to be happy right? He does want you to enjoy things, and you agree that this fruit looks so good. The only thing I can think is that God doesn’t truly love you. If he truly loved you he wouldn’t hold out on you, he wouldn’t keep you from true enjoyment.”

And with that sin entered the world.

Man has been falling into this same trap ever since. It is our doubt in God’s true and undying love for us that causes us to mistrust him and to sin. It is the basic human condition. I can see it already in my daughter. She is only seventeen months old and yet she can’t fathom why I don’t want her to have my coffee. She’ll shout, “Hot!” but then she still reaches out for it and whines for it. I can imagine her thoughts,

“If it isn’t good for me to have then why do you and Mommy seem so happy when you are drinking it, and why are you pining for coffee the rest of the day when you don't drink it?”

Are we not the same with God?

Why can’t I have this?
Why can’t I do that?
Why don’t you let me have fun?
Why do I have to struggle?
Why am I so broke?
Why can’t I get that job?

Yet God is crying out in answer to us, “I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU! I want only good for you. I have only good things in mind for you.” When we doubt God we mistrust his love for us, we mistrust his desire for our good. Even most of our sin has to do with mistrust of God’s love for us. Since sin is basically nothing more than taking what we want rather than receiving the gift that God has for us.

Since that very moment of the fall, God has been desperately trying to join man back to himself. Look all through scripture and you will find a God saying, I love you, TRUST IN ME!

Today look at your relationship with God and your life. Are you truly trusting in His will, in His plan? Do you truly believe in your heart of hearts that God has only good in mind for you?

Understanding God's Plan

This is part four in my series on Trust. You can read the previous posts by clicking on their titles here:

Part One: Waking Up to our Need for God
Part Two: Wake Up and Lean Into God
Part Three: It is Well

Excerpt from Part 3:

"Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well, it is well,with my soul."

This is the level of trust to which we are each called. It is a trust that brings great freedom in our lives. When we can truly give it all over to God, even in the middle of great pain and suffering, then we can be free to live a life of joy.

******
God's Promise
In order to have this kind of faith in God we must first understand God's promise for us. We must understand that our God is a God of love, a God who loved the idea of you and I so much that he created us out of love. He created us not for his own musing, but for our own good. He envisioned our lives and saw that it was good. Indeed God created us for a purpose.

There is of course much debate about the idea of a Creator. First, let me say that it really doesn't matter how you believe the earth was created. Whether there was some form of evolution, a big bang, or God was literally forming us like clay in his hands, it doesn't really matter. All that matters is that we understand He created us for a purpose.

We are not accidental beings. If we were accidents, then we would not have a purpose, which would mean that we would not strive for anything. Deep down we each know that there is a purpose to our lives and that in itself proves that we are not some accidental creation. If we just happened by chance then our lives would just happen by chance and we would live without any hope for more. Certainly there are people who don't feel like they have a purpose, they may have given up on finding their purpose in life, but I have yet to meet such a person who is not unhappy or depressed. Why is that? Because deep down they know they do have a purpose and they know they are missing out on something.

God created us out of love. He created each of us with unique gifts, talents, dreams, and desires. His love for us is so great that he will never give up on us. In fact His love is so great that he didn't give up on us already. God's plan for humanity was that we would be in union with him in the garden. That our lives would be full of joy, peace, fulfillment and creativity.

Out of love for us he gave us free-will. Our free-will allows us to make choices, both good and bad. It allows us to love or hate. Obviously God understood that we could possibly fail at this, and we have. But in his faithfulness he never turned his eyes away from us. All through salvation history we see the story of God trying to join man back to himself. He went so far as to send His Son Jesus to walk among us and die for us on the Cross. God's plan hasn't changed. He still intends for us to walk in union with him. He made us to be one with him.

That is where our true joy lies, in complete union with God. Saint Iraneaus said, "The Glory of God is man fully alive." How true this is. We are the crowning jewel of God's creation and he is pleased with all that he made us to be. Our fulfillment is glorifying to God. It is God's desire that we find fulfillment and lasting joy and peace here on earth so that ultimately we may one day be reunited with him in Heaven.

In John 10:10, Jesus tells us that he "came that they might have life and have it more abundantly." This is God's desire for us. He has not destined us for a life of gloom and despair while on earth. We are not in some waiting room just biding our time on earth. God desires us to have life to the full, that we might use those gifts, talents, and desires that he has placed within us. Then God's ultimate plan will come to pass, that we will be united with him in heaven. This is the promise we have in God. Our faith is rooted in this very promise of God's undying love for us. It is through our faith in this promise that we find the joy and lasting peace that I spoke of earlier. When we take hold of this faith and begin calling on God's promise in our lives that we can begin to trust God to a point of knowing no matter the circumstance that "it is well."

Read Part Five in this series here: "I Only Have Good in Mind for You"

Waking Up to our Need for God

I believe that if any lesson is to be gleaned from the tragedy of September 11, 2001 it is that no matter how much we have or how good our life is we need more than anything to cling to God. At the time I was working at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Tempe, Arizona as the youth minister. I awoke to a roommate knocking at my door saying to get up, something horrible had happened.

Together the four of us along with a guest watched in horror as the towers fell. We all know the emotion of that day. Each time they repeated the footage of the plane entering the tower I felt a blow to my chest. Then we watched in utter horror as the towers each fell. With each image my heart and soul was pierced.

Our guest had arrived the night before in Arizona, he had moved from New York and this was how he spent his first day in his new home. For all the sorrow and pain that the rest of us felt, we could not help but hurt for him as he frantically called those closest to him only to find that phone service was cut-off. Without hesitation we all entered into prayer. On our knees we begged God's grace on this moment, for us, for our friend and those he loved back in New York, and of course for all of those who must have lost their lives. To this day I still ache when I see images of that day, or when I recollect memories of that day.

What a horrific event. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to watch that and not have their soul shaken about. It was a wake up call, a reminder. It was an event that would have us all checking ourselves and our lives a bit. There are countless stories of divorced couples who reevaluated their lives and got back together, family members who reconciled past differences, and countless people who came back to Church, at least for a time.

I recall the prayer service that our church held a day or two later. It was at lunchtime. We left the service open to the public. It was amazing, I would say there had to be well over 1500 people filling the Church which sat only about 1200. People were pouring in from all over. Many hadn't been to church in a very long time. Yet, the way people prayed would have made you think there was a revival going on. People prayed with everything they had. For the next month or so it seemed that attendance was up at most churches. People had woken up to their need for God, at least for a time.

That is the sad part, it was only for a time. It seems that it is easy to forget our need to trust in God. We are a nation of doers. We thrive on adversity and overcoming obstacles. The more we can succeed autonomously, the more we are praised for our victories. "I did it my way", goes the song and we love that song. We cheer as Sinatra bellows the final chorus, "I did it myyyyyyy wayyyy!"

What September 11, did for us as a nation was to wake us up to our need for God, Psalm 23, was sounding pretty good as we walked through that valley of death as a nation. Yet, that seemed to only last for a time. Once the stock market bounced back, businesses got to be booming again, and the unemployment lines got shorter we started singing our favorite old song again.

We have learned to accept exterior comfort in place of internal peace of heart and mind. I know it in myself. It seems I pray pretty darn well when I am in need of something. Boy I can pray when I'm trying to stretch that paycheck just a little further than it can go. But, when I have a little extra to throw around I find I don't have so much time for prayer. Why is that?

[This post is the first in a series of posts I will be doing on Trust. Click here to read Part Two "Wake Up and Lean Into God".]