When the plans we make crumble, when our dreams don’t come true, what are we to think about the goodness and faithfulness of God? About his sovereignty?
That’s the journey in store for Verity Wilde and Will Crockett in my upcoming release, A Scattering Of Light, but what grace did God use to bring me through my personal journey during the years I wrote this book, through my own disappointed dreams and plans?
No surprise… it was, in part, books!
Two timely books came to my attention after our plans to move to Tennessee ended in financial disaster (see Part 1 of this blog series). One of those books is a devotional called New Morning Mercies by Paul Tripp.
New Morning Mercies repeatedly addresses several key themes of the Christian life. One of those themes spoke deeply to my situation and the questions and struggles I’d had in the months leading up to that first morning I opened my copy of NMM, in 2024.
Where do you place your hope when life seems out of control?
The devotional reading on the day I decided to write this post, March 13, happened to provide these answers:
- You and I have very little power and control over the most significant things in our lives. You and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. We don’t have a clue what will be on our plates next week or next month. We have little control over the principal people in our lives, little power over the situations in which we live, and almost no control over the locations of our lives.
- Facing your lack of sovereignty over your own life produces either anxiety or relief. Anxiety is God-forgetting. It is the result of thinking that life is on your shoulders, that it is your job to figure it all out and keep things in order.
- God-remembering… rests in the relief that although it may not look like it, your life is under the careful control of One who defines wisdom, power, and love. “For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation… and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Dan. 4:34-35)
- You will never be in a situation, location, or relationship that is not under his control.
When God closes a door…
Those passages are taken from just a single morning’s reading, but the theme of God’s sovereignty and control is one that’s woven through many of the devotionals in this book. NMM helped carry me through set-back and disappointment, helping underscore this fact: no matter what, God is sovereign. When he closes a door or allows a season of waiting, it’s for my eternal good. Sometimes my present good as well. When my life plans don’t align with his, I’d be wise to choose his plan rather than trying to force my own, or some crippled version of it, into being (I write this from a place of faith, still waiting to see his plan unfold in regards to where we will live out our retirement years).
Meanwhile…
Nothing in this world apart from Him can provide the peace, happiness, and contentment that living out the prayer, “Thy will be done, not mine,” does once I accept and believe that God is good, that he does only good—no matter what things look like from my limited and temporary perspective. Sometimes I’ll get to see in a month, or year, or decade down the road how a trial or loss worked for my ultimate good. Sometimes I’ll have to wait for Heaven’s big-picture perspective to see the full good. But I will see it. And when I do I’ll say, “Righteous and true are Your judgements, O Lord.”
I’ve more to say about Heaven in Part 3 of this series. Stay tuned!
Will Verity Wilde, Will Crockett, and other characters in A Scattering of Light reach the same conclusion about God’s goodness and sovereignty while facing their life-shattering struggles?
A Scattering of Light releases April 13th. If you plan to purchase a copy, consider preordering. Preordering is a huge help toward a book’s success because it lets those pesky algorithms know more readers should hear about it. That’s one way word of a book gets spread.
