Accepting and Fulfilling Life

  A man sits by his phone and prays to God, "God, I need a job and in the Bible You said You'd take care of me, and I believe it! So I know that my phone will ring and You'll bring me that job! 

  Another man prays to God, and even fasts, saying to God, "I know you'll provide for me!"  and he sits by his empty field, waiting for plants to grow that haven't even been planted.

  Praying and trusting in God is great, and what you should do, but that doesn't mean you just sit and wait.   "Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them." Matthew 6:26  You don't see birds sitting on branches, looking up at the sky with their mouths hanging open, do you?  Waiting for worms to fall into their mouth? Of course not! They go out and search for their food, and they find food by the grace of God.  Such is the same with us.  You're looking for a job?  You go out and search for that job, praying for God to give you that job, trusting that He will provide.  Do you want corn in your field? Plant the seeds and pray and wait for God to make them grow.  Think of it like evangelizing; you plant the seeds, and God makes them grow.  No, not every seed will grow, but it's the same as God closing one door to open another.  

  Don't wait on God when God is waiting on YOU! All of the blessings that you will get in life have been predetermined by God.  God already knows what He wants to give you, but you have to do your work in getting them! You can't lay around waiting for a blessing! Knowing this honestly changed a lot for me.  

  So to live a fulfilling life, serve your purpose, do what God has called you to do.  Everyone on this planet has a purpose to serve, but whether we serve that purpose or not is up to us.  To get the blessings God has in store for us, we need to follow Him, not ourselves.  The blessings are there, we just have to give our lives to Him and do His will! Don't be like Jonah who ran away from his calling.  Jonah was told to go to Nineveh and preach, to which he ran away.  After being swallowed by the whale and all that jazz, he finally did what he was told, and guess what?  It worked out splendidly!  The entire city listened and went above and beyond to please God! (Of course, Jonah wasn't happy about that, but that's beside the point.) If we follow God's will, we will be blessed and good things will come! Now that doesn't mean hardship won't be around, that will always be there, but that's not to be our goal.  Our goal should be heaven.  We are only here for a short while, heaven is where we will be forever.  Shouldn't we focus more on what we will get when we get to heaven than what we will get here on earth?  

  It's so easy to forget, but earth is just temporary, and far more temporary than we think.  Heaven is forever.  Heaven is our real home.  We should focus that, and not earth.  We should focus on pleasing God, and making Him happy, instead of ourselves. 2 In My Father’s house are many mansions;[a] if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.[b] 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And where I go you know, and the way you know.” John 14:2-4  

Now I will talk about accepting your life.  With this, I would like to focus on the past, but this can also be used for the future as well.  To learn how to take the bad things, and make them good.  To make them just a little bit more bearable. 

 We've all been through things that we wish we hadn't.  Some, we realized later on in life why we had to go through what we went through and we become grateful for what happened to us.  Other things, not so much.  One comfort we can take, is that ALL things that happen is in God's control.  ALL things that happen, happen for a reason! Just this in general can provide a great amount of comfort! Knowing God from the Bible, we can see some reasons why God does what He does.

• Often, we go through trials and tribulations so that He can mold us, and change us into who He wants us to be.  Perfecting us. Through our hardest times, we grow and change. 

• Perhaps we have fled from God, maybe without even knowing it, perhaps He has been calling out to us to come back and we just refused to hear, so He had no choice but to bring us back Himself, a much harder way.  Perhaps we are just going down the wrong path and He needs to direct us back. 

• A sad reason to go through bad things would be that we have sinned.  God is merciful and a loving father, but He does have to punish us when we sin.   

      And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for[a] you serve the Lord Christ. 25 But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality. Colossians 3:23-25   My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, Nor detest His correction; For whom the Lord loves He corrects, Just as a father the son in whom he delights. Proverbs 3:11-12

  

Those are just a few reasons that perhaps these things happen to us, but whatever the reason, at least we can have trust and faith that God knows what He is doing, and that one day we will find out why bad things happened to us!  But by that point, we won't even care anymore!  What joy we will have then!