God’s way doesn’t make sense
I have always heard the scripture “God’s ways are not our ways” Isaiah 55:8-9 says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” This never made sense to me. I mean intellectually I understood it but practically I had no idea. I had never seen it practically work out.
When I met my wife back in the days of early online dating, we spent a lot of time talking because we lived hundreds of miles apart. As things began to move more serious, I told her something that bothered me. I mentioned that I had always gone back to retail it seemed. I had been in the Navy and a Firefighter but God always allowed me to make a living in retail work. It was tough work and tough scheduling for a family if we were to get married eventually. I wanted her to know that. She said “ well thankfully He is providing you with a constant career.”
Almost twenty five years later God’s ways are starting to make sense to both of us. I have worked for several large big box retailers and a couple of great Christian Retailers in the Christian Bookstore industry. Lifeway Christian Stores changed my life and the trajectory of our young family when we moved to North Carolina with them a couple years after getting married. It was a great period of our lives but I can say that looking back because God used a lot of struggles to grow our faith.
The gentleman, I tookover the bookstore from told me a story about how he had sold one of the last US Made Textile Mills on the East Coast to do missions work. He wanted to go oversees and be a missionary. Somehow he ended up at Lifeway in Buckhead Georgia, learning how to be a bookstore manager for Lifeway. It was raining and he was having a “poor me” day so to speak. His desire to be in missions was not being realized, at least in the way he understood it. A man was leaving the store after his purchase and looked back and asked him, “why are you down today?” He told the customer the desire to be a missionary and the story he told me about selling everything to do so. The man told him “Sir, I am a Pastor. I get 52 Sundays a year to reach people. This store is open 6 days a week each year. You have 312 days a years to be a missionary.” That statement reenergized him for a period of time. When he told me this story, I began seeing how I could be a better follower of Christ at my job. A light began to flicker in my soul back then, that has continued to burn stronger and stronger.
I can look back on that story and see a huge seed planted in my life. A perspective change started that day. God’s ways almost 20 years later, make sense to me now. The hard times we endured as a family in NC due to health issues for our daughter with Downs Syndrome and the eventual bankruptcy we ended up with by starting a ministry and it failing, all make sense now.
Those times in NC God was using events and people to impress on Cindi and I the importance of work and its ability to grow us in Christ. I have grown as a man due to an employee named Jeff, who got me interested in Men’s Christian interest books. Books that grew me as a father and husband and a leader. Books that grew me closer to the Lord. Cindi developed close friends in the Special Needs community that helped her understand the struggles of married couples with Special needs children and adults with developmental disabilities. Our youngest daughter saw our family walk out in faith and fail and see the amazing provision of our Lord and Savior that brought us to where we are now.
His ways are not our ways and never should be, He is Lord. If you are struggling at work, in life, in your marriage, talk to the Lord about it. Study scripture and pray like crazy. Sometimes God moves instantly and restores and heals. Sometimes he helps us grow so we can see that He was always there we just couldn’t recognize it because we were not quite where we needed to be in maturity.
