It Isn’t Always Black or White

I have been asking God lately why I went through my severe battle with anxiety. For a long time, I believed God had a reason for my pain, that He was going to use it for a purpose. I thought He told me that He had something amazing on the other side of it. I felt like I could see His handprint woven through my journey when I looked back. I thought that I had heard God say the enemy had a plan for me before I was born ( The doctors thought I was dead in my mother’s womb), but that He had a plan for me also, and His plan will be done.

Over the past few days, I have been questioning all of this as I look at the present and I look to the future and I see no evidence that anything good is going to come from the pain or that God had any purpose in the pain. Was there really purpose, or was it all a result of my bad decisions in my thinking. Is there really something ahead for me or did I make it all up in my mind just to cope with what I went through? Was God’s handprint there?

As I lay in my bed this morning thinking about all of this, I felt the Holy Spirit nudge my heart and heard Him ask me the question, why does it have to be one or the other? Can’t you hold both things in your hand? You can hold the fact that you weren’t taught to watch your thoughts and didn’t understand that allowing fearful and anxious thoughts could cause such havoc in your life. So, yes out of ignorance you made choices that caused pain, but at the same time you can hold in your hand that God had a purpose in the pain and that the enemy did not want God’s purpose to come to past so he also played with your mind. You can believe that even though you should have made different choices, God will redeem those choices and bring good. You can believe that God was not punishing you. The enemy would love for you to believe that was true. God loves you in your pain even when you contribute to you pain and His will is for your good.

You can also believe that even though in the present moment you see no evidence of God having an amazing purpose for you on the other side of the pain, and even though you cannot see evidence of it in the future, that is where faith steps in. Faith is the evidence of things not seen.

In our walk with God, things are not always black and white, we have to remember that we can hold that God’s ways are far beyond ours and His thoughts are not our thoughts. The way we see things is not always the way they are. Sometimes, we have to hold two things in our hands at once and just trust that God is faithful to keep His promises, and that He loves us and redeems our pain, even when we caused it.