What If?

I love the adage that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence.  And if you grew up in the country, that was usually followed by: if it is greener, you know what makes grass greener. In case you don’t know, it’s fertilizer; and in the country, that fertilizer often comes from the “other end” of a cow.  I personally am not sure if I want to be in that green grass. But isn’t that what we do sometimes in life? We look at what other people have, and we wish that we had that. We often miss what we do have, because we’re so busy thinking about how much better our lives would be if we were somewhere else, doing something else, maybe even with someone else. That’s a tough, almost impossible, place to be. Then we look to God and say, please move me.

The problem is, if we do get moved, we find that the grass really isn’t greener, or that the manure we have to wade through makes that green grass a little, or a lot, less appealing. The cycle continues as we ask God to move us ……… again and again and again.  We often ask God to move us, but we sometimes overlook that the movement was not from God; rather, it was us manipulating the situation to fit our desires. That can be especially true in relationships.
 
I wonder what would happen if we looked at 1 Corinthians 7:17. The Message Version puts it this way, “And don’t be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God’s place for you.  Live and obey and love and believe right there.  God, not your marital status, defines your life.  Don’t think I’m being harder on you than on the others.  I give this same counsel in all the churches.”  Paul has been talking about marriage, but then he goes on to discuss other areas of life also.

This is so timely for us right now with a society that is telling us we should be happy, and we get there through self-determination. Yet so many people try that, and they’re anything but happy. What if the goal is not to be happy, but to be in God’s will and under His protection? To let Him define our lives? What if we truly turned to Him to lead us, instead of turning to Him to tell Him what we want Him to do?  What if we trusted that He has placed us where we are, and He will walk through it with us?
 
“What if’s” can be scary and unhealthy if they move us into a future of our own making. But “what if’s” can be something very radical in a good way, if we put them into God’s hands, and trust Him with them-  with our relationships, with our jobs, with our down time, with it all.  “What if’s” become endless possibilities that can begin to occur wherever we are, as long as God put us there and we’re trusting and following Him.

I would encourage you today to begin to ask God what He has for you right where you are. You might be surprised at what He can do when we truly release it to Him.

PRAYER: (I would encourage each of us to slow down and really let this simple prayer sink into minds and hearts today.):  Dear God, I ask that You give me eyes to see You, ears to hear You, and a heart to obey You in whatever my circumstances are today. Thank You that I can trust You in it and through it all. Amen.

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