What if there is another beautiful side to the Lord we haven’t seen yet? A quality about His heart that we haven’t quite experienced yet — a depth that is yet to be discovered. That’s not saying He would be doing something “out of character”, but God often does the “unexpected” and uses the “unlikely” doesn’t He? Sometimes He does do what we would often consider “strange”or something we’re not used to.
But any surprise from the Lord is a good kind of surprise, a delightful kind of surprise that He intends and has in mind for His children.
I’ve always said that I don’t like surprises, that I like to know what to expect, I like to know what is going on. The “unknown” has been a fear of mine for most of my life. I’ve often had a negative view of “surprises”. I’ve even asked Jason to please never do a surprise party for me because I just absolutely do not like things like that.
Surprise is out of my comfort zone.
But what would happen if we would be willing to say, “God, go ahead, surprise me! I’m okay with that because I know I can trust You! I’m willing to be surprised because I trust You. I know that You are good and want to do a good work in me and with my life. I trust you and I trust your wonderful surprises.”
What would happen if we allow ourselves to be delighted in the things we don’t know – the unknown, and trust Him, that we know that He knows what’s best for our lives, and that He is good…It’s a kind of “letting go” isn’t it? It’s a kind of like taking my foot off the brakes isn’t it?
To know that God is good, and that I can trust Him… then I can trust His surprises for my life. I can let go of feeling like I am only okay with what I think I know about my life. Am I pushing away the wonderful surprises of God? Am I being unwilling to let Him surprise me because I think it’s too much of a risk?
The more I get to know Him, the more I can trust that any surprise that He would have in store for me would be a wonderful kind of surprise. That’s not saying it would be easy, but I’ve got to just let go and trust, and stop thinking of surprises as a bad thing. If I’m doing this, I’m going to have my foot on the brakes and what if that could stop something the Lord is wanting to do?
We have to learn to trust Him so that we can let go of that fear of the unknown.
I remember as a child, I was like 5 or 6 I think. It was my birthday party and I was sitting in the middle of the room, surrounded by all of my family. They were all watching me as I opened my gifts. At that age I wasn’t to the point of really being “shy” yet, but I was starting to be a tiny bit uncomfortable with attention. I got ready to open a gift from my parents, everyone was like “ooooo I wonder what it is?” And I knew that gifts from my parents like this were good, they usually saved the best for last, and I did have a particular doll in mind that I had been hoping for. So here I am, opening this gift, starting to smile and look around at everybody as I get excited about discovering what is in this box… and then when I opened it up, suddenly all I discovered was a box of straws. I went from excitement and to confusion, disappointment and MAJOR embarrassment. Realizing what a fool I looked like as I had acted excited about opening this gift, and then when I opened this “surprise” it wasn’t a good one. Everyone was laughing at me and I was so embarrassed that I started crying and then I was even more embarrassed about that. Then Mom and Daddy, realizing what they had done, definitely not intending on this happening — they quickly uncovered the doll they had gotten for me –the surprise I was hoping for and tried to tell me they didn’t mean to embarrass me so badly, and here, this is what we were going to give you…
Was I an overly sensitive child? Oh goodness, yes. My parents didn’t mean anything by it and I know they felt so so bad about it. They thought I would have a laugh with everyone and it would be all good fun. But in that moment I went from being excited about gifts and surprises to extreme hesitancy and fear. On guard.
My point is, we don’t have to worry that God is going to give us a “box of straws”. He has good gifts in store for His children. We can trust that His surprises are good surprises for us. We can trust that whatever He has in store for us is for good, and for the good of the Kingdom. He has good surprises up His sleeves.
–Heather ?