| God meant it for good!!!! |
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". You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result ." (Genesis 50:20)The life of Joseph was anything but peaceful. It was filled with youthful folly, broken dreams, and the mean-spirited actions of others. Yet he remained a man remarkable for his lack of bitterness or regret, always seeing God as the "Great Engineer" behind even the worst of circumstances.
In a final confrontation with his brothers, he graciously noted, "You meant it for bad; God meant it for good."
'God meant it for good to me means -
I can accept the past - No sin, no action, no choice on my part is too big for God to handle - or too big to be worked for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His name. Just ask Joseph. Better yet, ask his fearful and famished brothers, who were forced to rely on him for survival.
I can embrace the present - There's no need to play the 'what if' game. The past is gone, and no energy I expend will ever change it. The future is in God's omnipotent hands, so am free to focus on the present. My job is to love God with all my heart, soul, and mind, trusting Him to forgive the past and transform the future. Martyred missionary Jim Eliot once wrote, "Wherever you are, be all there," not living in the past and not fantasizing about the future. God wants me in the present because that's where His grace will flow.
I can look expectantly toward the future - Even if I make mistakes today, God still controls my future. Walking in the Spirit, I can live life to the fullest, unafraid of making mistakes and unconcerned I may stumble into some terrible circumstance that takes me out of God's control. Even when things appear to be terrible, I can trust that God is working out some divine plan through me.
What does this mean?
· No matter how bad things get - God is still able to bring good out of it. Today, thank God that nothing - no disaster, no delay - is bigger that his ability to turn it into something good and godly.
· Thank God and let go - Thank God that he is sovereign over my past, my present, and my future. I give God the circumstances, disasters, hindrances, hurts, and sins from my past. I give God my current situation, my disasters, hindrances, hurts, and sins of today. Praise God that he can work anything in my future for godly good, that I can walk in confidence that there is nothing anyone can do to me, or anything I can do that will be beyond the reach of God's Grace and redemption.
· Look for God's hand - Walking by faith means I see God's hand even in the most difficult of circumstances. I trust in his ability and his willingness to transform the bad into godly good. God is not limited by people's motives. In other words, it does not matter why someone hurt me; God can still transform a deliberate, mean-spirited situation into something for his good.
· What will I allow God to change? - There it is: some situation, or event, or person in my life who, as far as I can tell, "meant it for bad." How do I think God meant it for good? I simply ask God what He wants me to do with this situation (event or person). When He answers, I do it. |
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