Does God Care About My Happiness Forever?

"The heart is deceitful above all things" is stated in Jeremiah 17:9; many of us have found this statement to be the truth and reality in terms of romance. The story for many of us who follow our hearts is that the result is not a happy ending, but loneliness, grief, and despair. That being the case with so many stories, where then can we find our hope to continue, and can God really give us a second chance at love?

It's a common phrase about newspapers and coffee mugs. , and it is a common action that we, as stubborn humans, take the metaphorical pen into our own hands to write our own history, to design our own lives as we see fit. Nobody wants to write a tragedy in their own life, and nobody wants to see things go wrong, but often the result of picking up that pen is an unhappy ending. We live in a fallen world, and as such, sin and temptation can enter the picture, bringing about an outcome that we did not foresee or consider when we took up said pen. This leads us to ask ourselves: is the story already over? Can God even redeem that?

When God Writes History

Psalm 37:4 is another common phrase in coffee mugs, but it contains real hope that can make dreams come true. Dreams that come true are not limited to what you can dream or imagine, but can be much bigger, because they are the dreams of the Dream Giver and the Dream Maker. In Psalm 37:4, the Psalmist suggests “delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart,” which we need to flesh out to fully understand and implement. When we delight in the Lord, we no longer limit ourselves to the limited limits of our own understanding. We surrender ourselves with all our heart, mind, and will to the only one we can truly trust: God. To rejoice in God means to find our hope and our salvation not in the things of this earth or in what we can receive on the other side, but rather in the exuberant and incomparable joy that is the intimate knowledge of our Creator. It is then that we allow Him to change and change our hearts to desire what He plants in our hearts and wait with hope that He will bear the fruit of those seeds. When God writes history, there is also a deep inner peace: the marriage of His will and His best is one and the same.

Redeem what has been lost

For many of us, the idea of ​​receiving God's best after such a disaster seems like a distant concept that could never become a reality, but with God, anything is possible. Romans 8:28 inspires us with great hope in sharing: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. »

God can work in all things, not just those we consider redeemable, worthy, or repairable. Even the worst deeds we've done, even the messiest stories we've played a part in, and even the ugliest stories can be redeemed and used when God comes on the scene. Nothing is far enough out of His reach to be used, nothing at all. This can also be true when it comes to love, but can you believe it's true for you too?

Restore what has been lost

Recently, while I was at church, I felt a soft whisper suggest a verse to consider and ponder in my heart, Joel 2:25. Joel 2:25 says, “I will restore to you the years that the locusts devoured. I felt challenged to ask myself if I believe God can redeem, restore, and rebuild what has been eaten in my life. Even though I don't know your story, I can attest for myself that mistakes were made, I trusted the wrong people, and I had deeply precious things stolen from me over the years. In this verse and in this reflection in my heart, I felt an invitation not to let what has been taken, misused or destroyed be the last word, but rather to allow God into these tender and broken from my own life and my story. . God wants to redeem all things, restore all things, and repay all the losses in your life, even the things we consider eternal losses.

Set the command correctly

How then can we allow God to fix what has been so terribly broken or lost? We must start by restoring order to things by putting God back in his rightful place. God should be our first love, because if he is not first, he is last. If we put anything before God, be it a relationship, a person, or a desire, if it comes before God, it's an idol. The thing about idolatry is that once one thing comes between you and God, the list will go on and on...