our god is greater

"FOR MY THOUGHTS are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.

"As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts."

:: Isaiah 55:8-9

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"In explaining the growth of his faith, psychiatrist Gerald May writes, 'I know that God is loving and that God's loving is trustworthy. I know this directly, through the experience of my life.

There have been plenty of times of doubt, especially when I used to believe that trusting God's goodness meant I would not be hurt.

But having been hurt quite a bit, I know God's goodness goes deeper than all pleasure and pain—it embraces then both.' "

::

I LOVE that.

What I love about it most is when I read it recently in Ruthless Trust, it was one of few sentences on the page I had not feverishly underlined the first time I read the book. I go back to this book from time to time, and reading that sentence the other day, I just felt this sense of peace.

It spoke to that which I have struggled to give voice to.

That even though I am going through a difficult season, I feel, no I AM blessed.

As my counselor also reiterated, there is a nearness we experience in trials, a nearness of God carrying us, provision for us moment to moment, when we are in a place where moment to moment reliance is what is getting us through, it is difficult to put into words how God has ministered to me in this trial. He has been so, so good to me. To experience His goodness and His love in ways that I cannot even begin to describe. To feel Him near, to know He is holding me, and holding us and saying to us day after day, I will carry you.

I will give you and I will be all that you need.

To be in that place of poverty and need for Him, is not, as we hear countless of times, to be without or to have less, but more. That even going through something hard does not mean that that suffering is bad or that God is not being good to us, it is much deeper than that, all of which I cannot explain save to say that is part of the beauty and the mystery of God.

So we find that we have not less, but more. Treasures that can only be found in the darkness. Where we are called to a wide open space, encountering a God we never knew, a God we've never seen before like this, a God who is loving and loves us and is good, whose love goes far deeper... whose ways and whose thoughts are far deeper. Higher. Greater.

::

Our God is greater, our God is stronger
God You are higher than any other
Our God is Healer, awesome in power
Our God, Our God…

- Chris Tomlin, "Our God"

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“Joy is not an absence of struggle or sorrow, but the taste of the presence of God as he surprises us with his gracious love, whatever our circumstances.”

- Dan Allender