Life~Trials~Inspiration

 I don't know about you but personally I like control... Having no control in a situation is not something I've ever deemed to be a good time. I ran across the verse today that talks about not leaning on our own understanding. The post that followed talked about how our emotions are constantly changing, our goals, our visions, the world around us. Leaning on our own understanding would be like stepping into quick sand and expecting not to sink... The Lord never changes, he is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Thus logically it makes sense to lean on him, his understanding, his wisdom. This is quite the challenge for me, as someone who loves learning and wants to understand absolutely everything...  I have found though when I try too hard to understand some things, my brain goes into a panic. As I was mulling all this over today, it hit me. Some things are not meant to be understood. God wired our brains, he created our minds, and he didn't give us the ability to compr...

  A thought came to me today as I stumbled upon some inspirational posts. Why are we often so eager to escape our troubling circumstances. We get trapped in the fire and get so focused on getting out that perhaps we miss the most important question of all, what refining needs to be completed in the fire? Just as a welder uses the fire to shape and refine metal, so God uses our circumstances, "fires" to shape and refine us. If he simply swooped in and saved the day, we would lack the knowledge he hopes us to gain, we wouldn't grow in character or wisdom. In the fire we think he abandom us, left us to our own devices, but in reality he is more present in the fire even then in the calm. It's when we feel abandoned that he's calling to us the loudest, beckoning us to just open our ears to listen to his voice. Take the fires in stride, don't immediately reach for the extinguisher. Allow the flames to surround you with the confident knowledge that the one whom the...