Have you ever heard the phrase “favor ain’t fair?” It’s one of those sayings we toss around in church circles, often intending to describe the unfair advantage that comes when the favor of God falls on your life. But I think we’ve gotten it wrong. Maybe not the phrase itself, but our use of it. Favor really isn’t fair, but not in the way we might have thought.
There is something He knows that we don’t. Something is brewing that we can’t see. We get focused on the disappointment, the frustration of interrupted plans, all the while forgetting that we are part of a bigger plan.
I wonder, what is God speaking into your life at this very moment that doesn’t seem to make sense? Could it be instruction for the promise He is still bringing to pass? A reminder that it’s coming, and when it does, you need to be able to care for it well. Listen up, friend. It will make sense soon. The instructions He gives now may very well be the source of your fruitfulness then.
I recently got a new phone, and like nearly everybody else, I wanted to get it for as cheap as possible (since when did the cost of a phone exceed the cost of my monthly mortgage? Who approved this?!) Getting the discount meant I had to trade in my old phone, but before sending it back, I had to perform a factory reset. Wipe it completely clean and remove the sim card in order to make it useful for someone else.
And now I’m just wondering… how many of us could use a factory reset before the new year? Would we be more effective if we got rid of the old sim card, so to speak, before embarking on something new?
More importantly, how do we get there, spiritually speaking?
What if this year, we took the time to pause. To reflect. To remember why the baby laid in a manger, only to grow up and hang on a cross. It was for us. Just to be with us. Just to give us the chance to say yes to Him, so that we could begin a life with Him. This year, let’s not only recall what He’s done. Let’s recall the memories of time spent together, of relationship with God.
There is one thing I’ve been keenly reminded of today as I sit in the middle of my old stomping grounds: Though He really never does things in a way that I can predict or expect, God always brings things to an expected end of His design.
Ever been ghosted by a friend? Like just out of the blue, no more brunch dates, no more texts, no explanations, just gone. This has happened to me with a few people over the last few decades. A couple of them have come back around and let me know “Hey I realize that my disappearance must have been hurtful, but it had nothing to do with you. I was going through some stuff, and I just had to focus on me.”
We have to ask ourselves, “What are we really afraid of?” Pause here. Examine your most oft-recited what if’s and ask yourself what’s really at the bottom of this fear. Then come back and keep reading. I don’t want us to stop at the uncovering. I want us to get to the undoing.
He is bigger than we know. Bigger than what we read on these well-worn pages in the Bible. More powerful. More loving. More perfect than we can ever imagine. And how could we when everything we have ever known in our earthly lives is fallible and broken? How can we entertain eternity when all we’ve known in life is a series of endings?
That’s not to say we should abandon our efforts to know Him; instead, we should seek to eradicate our curiosity by devoting ourselves to communion with Him.