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Christian Network

There are times when God fulfills His purposes in us in ways we would never have guessed. Just when we think we have grasped a fuller understanding of His will for our lives something happens that makes us wonder if we have grasped anything at all. Many prayers for direction in life are answered with circumstances that seem to make no sense. The divine will rarely takes us on a neatly linear journey towards its fulfillment.

Most seasoned Christians can relate stories about how they were sure they knew where the Lord was taking them only to discover some unexpected twists and turns along the way.

A woman is certain that her boyfriend is the soul mate she has prayed so long and hard for only to have him unceremoniously dump her for no apparent reason. After a long, dark night of grief, and doubt about her prospects of ever marrying, she truly surrenders her hopes to the will of God for the first time. A few months later she meets a man who is better for her in every way than the previous one. They marry and go on to have one of the most successful unions among their friends.

A man convinced he has found God’s will for his professional life asks for a well-deserved promotion. His outwardly genial new boss turns out to be an intimidating bully with an undiscovered grudge and fires him in a fit of anger. The next day he has to return to his workplace to pick up some personal possessions. Encountering his ex-boss he verbally stands up for himself; overcoming great fear to do so. Days later the man calls a friend who was fired from the same employer months before; just to commiserate. Unbeknownst to him the friend then phones some sympathetic members on the board of trustees. The unfair boss ends up being fired and the man is reinstated with the position he wanted and a raise he did not expect.

These unexpected trials turn out to be integral to God’s perfect plan for answering both His children’s prayers. Neither the woman nor the man expected them and neither understood why they were going through the trials at the time they went through them. It was only afterwards that they realized God had granted them their requests, while at the same time profoundly refining aspects of their character through the fire. God’s agenda is often larger then our own desire. It is not that the desires to marry or be successful in one’s work were wrong; if so the hand of providence would have not ultimately fulfilled them. But God often has other, sometimes higher, purposes for sanctifying the people who bear His name.

When well prayed for and seemingly God-ordained blessings appear ready to fall on us only to seemingly end in disaster we must remember that God’s ways are not our ways. We cannot completely anticipate how our Lord will answer our prayers because His work is often not completed according to our expectations. In His sovereignty he is sometimes inscrutable. But he is never unkind. He will not ultimately withhold any truly good thing from His children if we but have the faith to ask and then continue to trust even when, for a season, things may not seem to make any sense.