The Purpose Driven Life devotional caught my attention again today.
"Have you ever considered that heartbreak is part of God’s plans for you, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”? (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV) We put so much energy into avoiding the hurt when God would have us embrace it. He wants us to know that he can heal our hurts, even use our hurts for his benefit, and for us to faithfully believe that sometimes the circumstances we think are harming us are actually positive situations God is engineering."
That's a tough one... I don't know if I've "embraced the hurt." At this point, just being honest about it seems like a huge step in the right direction... and I haven't exactly mastered that step yet. My knee-jerk reaction is to hide the pain and pretend everything is OK. But I like the idea that pain and harm are not the same thing... and who defines harm? Just because we think something is harmful, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is...
The author goes on to say "avoiding the pain in our lives is actually an act of faithlessness. God calls us to faith in him during difficult circumstances; we’d rather place our faith in avoiding the circumstances."
Umm, ouch. It's tough to imagine having faith during the difficult circumstances when you've been taught that true faith is your ticket out of the difficult circumstances.
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