God Always Comes Through

I write this article from a seat by the window on a train going from Berlin to Amsterdam. The spring sun comes in through the window and lights up the table in front of me with a soft afternoon glow. I’m drinking an ice-cold Red Bull and have my Spanish playlist blasting on my headphones at full volume. I was in Berlin for a few days meeting an investor and some old friends from school. I’m on my way to meet some family for an important event. It’s 4:21 pm on a random Friday in May.

Sometimes I just like to stop for a second and contemplate exactly where I am and how I got here. A mere moment ago I was a kid with big aspirations, and all of a sudden 8 years have passed and I’m living a completely different life. I cannot even tell you how I ended up here living this life. While I can pinpoint some key decisions that brought me here, if I zoom out and look at the bigger picture, all I can see is God’s hand guiding me through this journey, very often nudging me without me even knowing, using the tiniest coincidences to lead me down the path I am now walking. Do you think about your past? Do you, truly?

Do you look back and realize how many steps you’ve taken to get to where you are? And if you do, do you see how even the wrong ones brought you to this hyper-specific, unrepeatable point in time? Everything you’ve ever thought, done, or said, brought you to this second of awareness, and that just goes to show how perfectly it all went. Regardless of your flaws and mistakes, or mine, we are here, now, thinking.

As I try to make sense of the not so invisible hand that has been guiding me, I see the fleeting nature of all life, the irreparable and often painful temporality of a human mind. I think about how everything changes second by second, and how I have lived a different life every second that has passed. I think about how a man’s soul has been carefully crafted by a perfect God, and how this means He knows you better than you yourself ever will.

In the overwhelming complexity and fluidity of life, one thing I have known to be constant and timeless is that God keeps His promises.

Romans 8:28. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

I have often failed to see how things in my life are working together for good. Haven’t we all? Isn’t that one of our biggest flaws? As soon as we are called to have faith, we fail to do so. As soon as the holy plan diverts from our own, we refuse to follow God’s command. It’s easy to love and follow God when His presence is apparent, but when it’s meaningful to do so it’s when you cannot feel His presence.

It’s easy to forget the promises of God when you try to make sense of the big picture with a mind that’s too narrow to successfully do so. You’re not supposed to understand, you’re supposed to have faith and trust in His promises.

And God promises He’ll come through. He promises He has a plan. He tells us that everything will be alright, if we follow Him faithfully and keep His commandments. We know our sins can be forgiven thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and we clearly know the way to Heaven and eternal life.

Why are you then so worried? Why are you so stressed out?

Why do you let the things of this world separate you from your creator? There’s no power stronger than the power of Our Lord, so why do you fear?

God tells us He has a plan for us, and He promises abundant life, both on the earth and beyond it. And God always comes through.

Here’s the catch though: He doesn’t come through the way you expect, demand, or want him to. You are not supposed to tell God how to keep His promises. When He tells us there’s a plan, it means it’s HIS plan, not ours.

Even when you think He doesn’t come through, He does. Maybe not how you expected Him to. Maybe not when you wanted Him to. Maybe not how your heart dreamt it. But that doesn’t mean He forgot about His promise. It just means He knows better than us.

We catch glimpses of God’s plan when your own will aligns with His. In this sense, one of the great challenges of life is learning how to have your heart be aligned with God’s plan for you, because that’s when you’ll feel His presence more clearly, and have your faith be strengthened by the obvious reality that God exists, loves you, and cares for you.

But even if you do not yet see how the things that are happening to you are part of a larger plan, we are called to put our faith in God, and trust His promises over our own, flawed, entitled understanding.

Proverbs 3:5-6. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

God is with you at every step of the way. Even if you don’t see it now, keep your faith strong, and one random day in the future, you’ll suddenly be overcome with a feeling of clarity, by which you’ll see, if just for a second, that every step and misstep you took was guided by His divine hand, and that He brought you to exactly where you needed to be.

And at that point you’ll realize your fear was unnecessary. You’ll see your anxiety wasn’t justified, and you’ll know that everything that happened was for a specific reason. You’ll see His presence and guiding hand, and you’ll know with full confidence that He’s got your back.

God bless you and always keep your faith strong.

Simple Man