LIFE IS WHAT WE MAKE IT, WE ARE WHAT LIFE MAKES US, OR GOD DECIDES?

When I was young, I thought I was so smart. Does anyone else know what I mean? One of the first “articles” I ever wrote was “Life is what you make it.” I was about 14 years old. I listened to my elders and looked at older people and realized that for certain, we get out of life, what we put into it. And that if I wanted to be successful at anything, that I better do my best at it. I thought of what career I would choose and how I would work to attain those goals. I considered negative factors too such as not “hanging around with people” going “wrong directions,” so that I would not be deterred. Not that I would snub others, but they would not be part of my inner circle.

I finished school and was ready to pursue those dreams and goals. But I had met the man I would marry and life would take me in other directions. It has been a great life. Only it really would seem that the life I thought I would make, turned into the life that made me. I am today, the result of right turns and wrong turns, opportunities and shut doors. That man that became my husband, can make a great argument that “you are what life makes you.” You rise to occasions, you go through mountains or around them. Sometimes you retreat or get the wind taken out of your sails. But through those pressures and circumstances, you are forged.

To the secular world, they might say that we are both right or a combination of both ideas, is somehow true. But to a person with godly wisdom, they know that the most important element is missing. God is our Creator and is centric to all of us, whether we realize it or not. Each of us are uniquely created for, and by the Lord. We are not accidents, and we are not our own. God gives us a measure of free will, but it is not unlimited. God does not just start us off in life, to then abandon us. King Solomon through his book of Proverbs, has said much about us as people, and God as God.

• Proverbs 16:9 A man's heart plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps.

We can make all the plans we desire, but someone above, has plans for us too. Many people have made the most determined plans for things, and were allowed by God, only to be redirected in various ways or with serious readjustments. In reality, every step of the way, God is keenly aware of what is best for us and is working within the system He set up, to help us, and He constantly considers how all the circumstances involved, will not only affect us, but others too.

• Proverbs 3:33 The curse of the LORD is on the house of the wicked, but He blesses the home of the just.

Even if one never read or heard, Proverbs 3:33, one would know in their heart that it is true. Sometimes it looks the opposite, like the evil ones are getting ahead and we are not. But wisdom still rings true.

• Proverbs 24:19-20 Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the wicked; for there will be no prospect for the evil man; the lamp of the wicked will be put out.

If we never read or heard the following verse either, we still know in our hearts that God is aware of us and our motives, and the resulting actions.

• Proverbs 3:11-12 My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor detest His correction; for whom the LORD loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights.

Even great nations are brought down and raised up for God’s purposes. No one in this world, could have orchestrated the rebirth of the nation of Israel in 1948. Most people throughout history, who were scattered from their home nations, blended into other peoples and nations. But so many Jews kept their faith and married others of “like faith” and passed it down, that their language and ethnicity survived for almost two thousand years. And even when Hitler and his comrades tried to wipe them off the face of the earth, they failed. They are here today, thriving and shining with their ethnicity, faith and language intact. Additionally, about 600 years before Christ, when Israel prospered and got more caught up in their prosperity than the One who blessed them, God gave them chance after chance to heed His correction until their day of reckoning came. God raised up Babylon to bring them down, but at the same time He saved a remnant of His people that were carried away into captivity. Seventy years later, the Lord raised up the Medes and Persians, to bring Babylon down, and then put it in their king’s heart, to aid in re-birthing the Jewish nation and even in rebuilding Jerusalem and their temple.

We are purposed. And the Lord considers our purposes, corporately and individually.

• Ephesians 1:11 In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will,

• Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

The Lord said of His people, pertaining to the remnant that was taken away to Babylon, that the season there would pass and that He would deliver them once again. And I believe His heart is that way for all of us. For all who will yield to Him and put their lives in His hands, can truly have a purposeful and blessed life. The Lord works with every individual during their lifetime, working to help them. Only He knows when it is best to intervene or not. The Lord is not just good, He is goodness. The Lord is not just wise. He is wisdom. The Lord is not just loving, He is love. “He is” every attribute of the Holy Spirit. And just as good and evil cannot truly mix, only Jesus and the pardon He offers, can bridge that gap. Only by repenting, seeking the Lord and His ways, do we find the best in life and that life eternally in Him.

• Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope."

Life is what we allow God to make it and life is what God shapes and fashions of us. Even for those who reject Him and His best for them, in so doing, it is still true.

Eli Cockrell