Old Posts: God in a Box 2018

I wrote this post back in 2018 and it's still relevant today. I want to post all sorts of new entries, but how can I put a timeframe on God's revelations to me? I can't and I won't. I've learned that lesson well and I hope that you will too!

"Man plans, and God laughs." The old adage has been running through my head for days now, ever since I posted on Facebook that I would make two entries a day on my blog and haven't posted a single one since. At first I was frustrated at my inability to finish any of the posts that I started, but then those words echoed in my head.

Still I tried to make it work, writing half a post and either erasing it or leaving it in my drafts to haunt me each time I came back to my blog. But now I see that I wasn't just suffering from writer's block; God was trying to tell me something.

I wasn't able to write anything until I got it through my head that I was putting God in a box by putting stipulations on my writing. After all, my blog is called "Revelations of God's Heart," so how crazy is it for me to tell God that he must give me two revelations a day? Who am I to tell the Creator of all that he must adhere to my schedule?

How arrogant can we be with God sometimes! Rather than ask him in his Mercy to look favorably on us, hear our cries, and do His will in our lives, we give him a to-do list with schedules and deadlines. Then we rail against him when those expectations aren't met to our exact specifications.

We say he doesn't answer prayers, he never hears our pleas, he doesn't care about our needs, or even that he's not really there. But in reality, he does hear us and he answers us in his own time and his own way.

The Bible says in Isaiah 55:8-9, "'My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,' says the Lord, 'and my ways are far beyond anything you can imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.'"

When we ask for help through a tough time, he may send a compassionate friend to lend an ear and a shoulder to cry on. That's Him answering our prayer! When we cry out for healing, he may lead us to doctors who give us medicine or surgery to heal us. That's an answer to prayer! When we're in dire financial straits, He gives us a paycheck that was bigger than expected or a $20 bill to find on the ground. That's an answered prayer!

God is not deaf to our cries and it is our own blindness and stubbornness that make us think that he is. He's the Creator of all, not just the birds and the trees, but of our hearts and minds and the workings of our hands. And the most beautiful part of it all is that he is always on our side and he loves to be there for us.

But we have to realize that we can't keep trying to put him into the tiny little boxes of our finite understanding. He's too infinitely big to fit.