God controls the outcome

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I believe God "decides the outcome of my income". I promised more on that later, and well, today is later. So, if you have a few minutes let me explain what the heck I am talking about. It will be fun.

I believe that those of us who are trying to follow Christ's leading through life (or "chase the Wild Goose" as Mark Batterson puts it) have the upper hand in the situations and decisions we face, and it has nothing to do with us. God controls our outcomes, He has a plan for us, good works that we were predestined (I said it) to do, and all this for His glory. He certainly puts opportunities in our path and wants us to respond to these in a way that please Him, but that still doesn't guarantee the outcome. He decides.

So, that means the incomes are ours. What we put into things via prayer, and passion and intelligence and energy (Hear, o Israel) is up to us and doesn't really equal what the outcome will be. We can try really hard, and want it so bad we can taste it, or have a huge heart for God's work in our career path and study like mad for our next test but ultimately, it's up to Him. He decides if we get the position or if we pass the trimester or if we get pregnant (I have no womb, Thank you Jesus) and it often seems like He doesn't really care what we think or feel about it, doesn't it? Certainly we've all felt at one time like God just doesn't understand what we're trying to do for Him, and if He'd just get out of the way and let us git 'r done there would be so much more fruit for us and the Kingdom.

So what do we make of this mess? God has a plan for us, and our actions do matter, but He still decides. For many of us, this is difficult to manage. We wanna control what happens and be masters of our own destiny. I think we have our perspective all wrong. What we see as a curse is really an immense blessing! We have the Almighty looking out for us in ways only He can, moving pieces on the board that we didn't even know were in play. So what's left for us? Trust Him, Love Him, try our best to please Him and talk to Him about it when we don't or can't. Seems pretty simple, right? I think so.

We have the upper hand because we don't really have a hand at all. Instead, we've trusted our Father to play our hand for us. All he asks is that our head is in the game, and that we're looking over His shoulder, watching, learning and being amazed by Him.