By Jessica Rivera

Recently I’ve found myself wondering why the heck everything seems to be working against my favor. I’ve been feeling like everything happening to me is so unfair. For starters, my parents thought it would be best for me to stay home for the next year and take courses at a community college, and I fought them so much about it, but relented. I thought, “God, why are you letting this happen to me? I’m trying to live by Your Word, and I have a strong community encouraging me in my walk with You.” On top of that, I really like a guy, but our situation is not the best for dating, if we are ready to date each other at all. I thought, “God, why won’t you let it work out with this guy? He’s strong in his faith, and we have a great friendship.”

I’m ready to be out of this season of my life.

But why do we see life as a cycle of punishments and blessings? Why do we consider ourselves lucky when we get our own way and disappointed when we don’t? We need a change in perspective. God is always good and His way is always better. We need to align ourselves with God’s will.

I need to be thankful and trusting through it all.

Too many times we think God isn’t fit to handle whatever it is we are going through, or to handle our lives at all. And usually if that’s not the reason we’re not trusting Him, it’s because we think He won’t give us the results we want, but what we want doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, does it?

We just wrapped up studying the book of Habakkuk at my church. (Habakkuk is that teeny-tiny little book in the back of the Old Testament between Nahum and Zephaniah, which are also teeny-tiny but important nonetheless.) In the book of Habakkuk, Habakkuk sees evil people in Judah and asks, “God, why aren’t you punishing them?”

Like we do so many times, Habakkuk wonders, “God, do You even know what You’re doing?”

In Habakkuk 1:5, the Lord responds to Habakkuk and says, “Look at the nations and watch – and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.”

I don’t see it yet, but I know going to community college will be a blessing. I may need to be here for my family. I may meet someone in class who needs to hear about God’s grace. And God has a man that he wants me to serve, love, and do life with forever, so closing the doors on a potential relationship is saving me from heartbreak, a burden I was never meant to bear. These are just my guesses of how God will use my circumstances. (God has a funny way of outdoing me.) But I have the ability to guess because I have seen how He has provided for me in the past, and I know His character.

Thinking about God’s past faithfulness in your life is the biggest faith-builder.

The truth is, as much as I want to, I struggle to trust God with my life. It’s definitely not something that just happens. It takes faith; it takes knowing who God is and having a relationship with Him. And it is by those things, that we can be encouraged to trust God with our lives. God’s ways are higher than our ways and God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. It is important to realize that sometimes we can’t understand God; we just need to trust Him.