With God, I’ve learned to expect the unexpected. He always surprises me and then helps me see that His plan makes perfect sense. I’ve learned to love and accept His lessons as beautiful gifts. I’ve also come to love His methods.
God uses the unlikely to accomplish His will because the likely would want the credit. It is only when I learn that I can do nothing without God that He can begin to work through me. I am more surprised than anyone when God allows me to be a vessel for Him.
The prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi best describes the plea of those unlikely souls who seek to do God’s will in unexpected ways.
- Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
- Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
- Where there is injury, pardon.
- Where there is doubt, faith.
- Where there is despair, hope.
- Where there is darkness, light.
- Where there is sadness, joy.
- O Divine Master,
- grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
- to be understood, as to understand;
- to be loved, as to love.
- For it is in giving that we receive.
- It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
- and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.The beautiful prayer turns me around and the world upside down. If I live this prayer, I can expect to find the unexpected lessons God has for me. Jesus lived the words Saint Francis penned, and I pray we will all seek to do the same.
God uses the unlikely in unexpected ways. He is full of surprises and the Master Teacher. There is never a dull moment with God because I can always expect the unexpected. That’s what makes learning, living, and loving in His kingdom fill me with wonder. Like a child, I am constantly awed by all God has done, is doing, and will continue to do.
I used to be a planner and liked having everything laid out before me. God knows, and has shown me, that lifestyle won’t work in His kingdom. Faith is about trusting when I don’t understand. Believing when I can’t see, and knowing God loves me no matter what. That requires letting go of the need to know and letting God have a clear, clean vessel with which to work.
It’s taken a long time for me to let go and trust God completely, but I’m learning to love the way He surprises me with beautiful lessons that catch me off guard and make me shake my head and ask, “How did You do that?” The answer is always the same, “I am God; I love you, and I know what I’m doing:)”
journeywithgigi 