The Hidden Hands of God

The faithful hands we praise
When to the skies we’re raised
We learn to hate and curse
When our live turn for worse

 

Each of us are very different. Our looks are different, our lives are different even our dreams. And as a wise man once put it, “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” (Charlie Tremendous) In other words, we are who we are because of the things in our lives.

I think it’s safe to say that every single one of us has experienced “bumps” through out our lives, things that made us change where we were going. Turns in the proverbial road of our lives. But we didn’t see it like that back then, they weren’t turns they were road blocks, walls in the way of our destiny. We had a straight shot to success and then someone had to mess it up.

These “walls” or road blocks are what I want to talk about. I believe that there are way to many of us who spend too much time trying to break down the walls that are stopping us from getting to where we want to go.

I had a very simple theory; I knew where I wanted to go, and anything that got in my way was a temptation I had to conquer. But last Sunday when someone shared this verse my eyes were opened to a different view, a heavenly view.

 

“The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.” Proverbs 21:1

An image was placed into my head…a river twisting and turning through the land. It never sits still. On either side of the flowing water are walls. But the river didn’t just stop when it ran into one of these walls trying to get the wall to move, it flowed around the wall.

The walls I thought I was supposed to climb were the LORD’s hands protecting me, turning me where I needed to go.

Disclaimer:
Just because you run into problems or delays or resistance in a plan or a certain road in your life doesn’t mean you should give up. Just like if you find something easy to do without any interference doesn’t mean you should do it. God created us in His image not in the image of a river.

But sometimes we have to fall so God can pick us up. Sometimes we have to lose everything to find the one thing we really need. The walls keeping us from our dreams are often just postponements from a future because we’re missing part of the key we need to open the door within the wall.

Everything in our lives happens for a reason, so every bump, every bruise, every mountain and every cliff, they’re all there so we can become exactly who God intended us to become. And the more we resist God’s plan for our lives the longer it takes us to get there, and the more we miss the beautiful masterpiece God is making.

“But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.” Isaiah 64:8

Now this comes to the question, when to fight, and when to let the waters guide you.

One very easy way to pick up on God’s hand verses a challenge is the wall. If this “road block” in your plan involves a direct or indirect commandment from God than it is obviously not the road you’re to be on.
Another way to see from heaven’s perspective is the dream or goal that this road is supposed to take you on. Is it God honoring? Is it earthly or carnal? Why do you want to go where you want to go?

Sometimes, ok a lot of times, man does not want what God has in store for him (Is 55:8-9). Are you willing to sacrifice you’re desires to follow after Christ? (Luke 9:23) It’s easy to get sucked into dreams of fame and glory, or if you’re a shy person, dreams of good books and silent secluded beaches. But when we became Christians we surrendered our lives to the better judgment and guidance of the King of all creation(1 Cor 6:20). We gave up our dreams to be filled with new ones.

If you surrender you’re selves to God and his wisdom, if you are faithful to trust in him no matter how bazaar the situation may seem, you will find a peace and joy beyond all understanding.

“Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” James 1 3-4

He knows how much we hold on to our dreams, and how much it hurts when we let go, but “what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36) He knows best and his plan for you is bigger and better than anything you could have imagined.

I promise you that when you let go of your own dreams and open your heart to whatever the LORD has willed you will be filled. There is so much the human misses in life, but if you constantly live unto the LORD searching for his perfect will you will be astounded at all the things he can do with just one man.

“Fear ye not me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?” Jeremiah 5:22