Is it from God?

I am not one of those people that claims just about everything that happens in my life is some sort of a sign from God. As I figure it, there are things that come from God, things that come from Satan and things that come from the good ole wildcard we call a fallen world. I am not saying that God isn’t sovereign over everything, I just don’t think that everything that happens in my life has some sort of hidden meaning from God.

Now, when things happen that seem to be indicating something more than everyday life, I still tread lightly. I remember when I was a new Christian and we were going to a very small church. I can’t remember exactly what happen (hope you weren’t expecting a good story) but our church was trying to do something that would help it grow and things just weren’t happening as expected. The verdict? Satan must be blocking our efforts.

I remember at the time thinking, how do you know that? What if God is blocking our efforts because he’s not happy with our actions or it’s not part of his will. Are we suppose to chalk up everything that seems bad to us as Satan and everything that seems good to us to God? That seemed too easy.

That particular incident happened many years ago but I must admit, my ability to determine God’s will (or God’s nudging) is no better today. I hear so many people talking about God’s will in their lives and how this or this happened and they knew to do that. And I hope that what they are discerning really is God’s will all the time. But I tend to be suspicious. Certainly they must be befuddled once in awhile. Certainly they must have followed a few rabbit trails.

So while I admire the people who seem to have such a solid faith that they can deem the twists and turns in life as from God or not, I am not there. I try not to say that a set of circumstances in my life are happening because God wants me to do THIS. Because not only could I be mistaking the push of God for something else, but I could get the THIS wrong. So I walk tentatively, pray about things, and try not to rush into anything. That may not be the best way to do it, but that is what works for me at the moment.

But what is funny is that my whole point of starting this post was to tell a story about some things happening in my life (and related to my blog) that I felt have been orchestrated by God for a purpose. Somehow though, I ended up writing a very loosely related post without even touching on the content of the post I intended to write. While I can’t be certain, I am going to chalk up this occurrence to my wandering mind that likes to go tangential (i.e the fallen world category).

I guess I’ll be back later to write the post I intended to write here. Unless I was wrong and this was God’s will and I’m not suppose to write that other post. Hmmm.