We think God operates under our own agenda, but God has His Own Agenda about us.
11 ‘For I know the plans and thoughts that I have for you,’ says the LORD, ‘plans for peace and well-being and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29 : 11
Do we think we know better than God? That Scripture starts with “…I know”. God knows, but we can go into His Presence knowing better than He knows: we are arrogant. This has to change because we are delaying ourselves from expanding in His Grace and Mercy. God is not our cousin that we can play around. He is Omnipresent: He is everywhere at the same time, but He is intensifying Himself within us. The intensity within us causes His Presence around us to become tangible. That’s how it operates. But we are supposed to understand what is disturbing that intensity and limiting it from growing and bursting out from within us. It is our own pride, selfishness, and arrogance. We go to God and say, “God, come and bless my business”. Why can’t you say, “God, I started a business without talking to You. I am sorry because I am arrogant. But if you are pleased by what I started in my ignorance, shed Your Light”. That is different: you are talking to Him in His Authority; you are talking to Him in His Omniscience and Might. He can rectify that business, or that relationship; He can correct it. But the problem is how you approach Him. Jesus taught us how to pray:
9 “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father, who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.10 ‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.11 ‘Give us this day our daily bread.
12 ‘And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors [letting go of both the wrong and the resentment].
13 ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]’
Matthew 6 : 9 – 13
Jesus was teaching us reverence. We cannot go in the Presence of God thinking we know it all. People will shake by the Presence of God and they will bow their heads down; not because of fear, but because of reverence. But we are in a generation where we no longer fear God: it is not being scared of God, but it is knowing that He carries your past, present, and future in His Hand. If we deviate and remain in our past and depression comes, He controls our past and can go there and bring you out. If we go in our future and get anxious and fear and panic, Who is already in our future? Then, He comes and says, “Let me show you what I have for you in your future”. He pulls us back into the present because “I AM WHO I AM”. He lives with us in the moment even if we left Him in the past and will find Him in the future; He controls everything: that is GOD. However, in God being God, He doesn’t control us to worship Him. He has given us free will to choose to worship Him. He wants it to come out of the love we have for Him.
28 And we know [with great confidence] that God [who is deeply concerned about us] causes all things to work together [as a plan] for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His plan and purpose.
Romans 8 : 28
Do we really love God? This verse has been misunderstood. People think God only turns trouble into good, no. When He says that He can turn all things for our good, it is even the things that we are doing better today; He wants us to be the best. It is not just misery; He is moving us from Glory to Glory. It is not only when we are trouble that this verse works; it is the combination of everything. If it is bad, He will make it good, and if it is good, God will make it better, because He has called us for His Purpose.
