Enjoying His Direction Upon Your Life

 

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. Isaiah 55:7-9 NLT

We have many desires in our lives and sometimes we really want to pursue them badly. It becomes tricky when we are so focused on getting them that we put our desire above His will in our lives. I believe we all are guilty in this area throughout our journey with God. We cannot wait until His timing, or we cannot accept a ‘no’ answer from God. We want that thing and only that thing and we demand God to give it to us. That’s why the above verse comes in handy for us Christians as a reminder that He is God who directs us and not us directing Him to go where we want to go.

I want to share our recent journey with God about my daughter, Faith this year. End of 2021, she told me that she wanted to move school for high school (year 7). At that time she was in year 5. The current school was very small, and she wanted to go to a much larger school for high school. I said to her if she could get into a selective school, she can move out. In NSW there are several selective schools that are owned by the government and they are only for bright students who pass the selective test. These schools are government funded and students do not have to pay school fee.

So Faith was motivated to study to prepare herself for this test. The test was in March 2022 and I have prepared her for 6 months prior to the test. However, in the week of the date of the test, Sydney was poured by heavy rains daily. A few days before the test Sydney was in flood. Many people had to be evacuated from their homes and many schools had to close due to severe floods. Therefore government decided to cancel the test just less than 24 hours before the test. The test was postponed for 3 weeks. I was a bit uneasy at that time because Sydney was in the Covid outbreak at that time as well. I had tried my best to keep Faith healthy in preparation of this test and now the test was postponed.

Now Faith was already enrolled in our local private school as a backup just in case she didn’t get through the selective school. Because she demanded not to come back to her current school even if she didn’t pass the test. This local school also runs a gifted class for students who are gifted/smart and they need to do the test to get into the gifted class. I also enrolled Faith in this test just in case she has to go to this school and if she can go to the gifted class.

Both the gifted class test and the selective test was only two days apart at the end of March 2022. However, a day before gifted class test Faith started to feel unwell. When I tested her, she got positive for Covid. The rule in Sydney at that time was if one family member got Covid positive, the whole household member must isolate until 7 days and if there are more household member got infected, additional 7 days are added for isolation and so on. So by law Faith was not allowed to go out to do both tests. I was devastated because we have prepared Faith for these tests and none of them she could attend. Not attending these tests will result in being rejected as they did not offer any makeup test.

I was very disappointed with God and didn’t understand why He closed the door to Faith. I can understand if she failed the test and couldn’t make it to the selective school. But not being given a chance to do the tests is something hard for me to accept. First was because of the flood and second because of Covid. For months I couldn’t get my heart right with God. I felt sad for Faith who has studied hard for this preparation. As her Father, I expected Him to show His love for Faith by at least letting her do the test.

So because Faith couldn’t get into a selective school, we just had to stick to her new local school for 2023. Last September Faith and all the new students had to do tests in the new school to help the school allocate the students to their classes.

Suddenly early December when I was driving to work, at 8 am Faith’s new school rang me. She told me that the school has assessed her September test and the school was happy to offer Faith a gifted class after seeing her test result. It was a wonderful surprise for me in the morning knowing that God did remember us. Even though Faith didn’t do the gifted test last March but He can do another way to put her into the gifted class.

After receiving the news, suddenly I felt that God was trying to say something to us about this particular area. I felt that God was saying He had His reason why He didn’t want Faith to go into a selective school, hence he closed the door right in the beginning. What I felt was like protection He is putting on my daughter. He gave a gifted class to Faith in the new school in His own way and He must want Faith to excel in this school. I do not know the exact reason, but my part is just to trust His perfect plan in Faith.

I believe it saddened Him when I was mad at Him in the past few months because I refused to understand Him and still accused Him of not wanting to make me happy and feel proud of my daughter’s achievement. I want to feel a proud moment when I know my daughter can go through selective school and I was angry that I couldn’t get that feeling. However, my Father in heaven can see much further in the future. I might only know that I will be proud if she can go through selective school. But I have no idea what she will face later on. Only He knows.

Therefore, I believe many of us have faced this kind of situation in our lives. Next time when this situation happens to us, before we get very mad at Him, let us meditate on the above verse and try to understand that His way is not our way. His thought is not our thought. But the good news is His thoughts are always the best for us, in Jesus name, Amen!