Define Wonderful

"God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." My sister as I were taught this as the first of four spiritual laws when we were teenagers. I think our interpretation of what wonderful meant was perhaps different from how it was intended. When we talked together in our mid twenty's after our first experience with life's difficulties we both questioned if what we had gone through would be considered wonderful.

I think the problem that both my sister and I had was in the way we understood what was being offered. I thought that God was like an ingredient that I could choose to add to the recipe of my life and if I choose to add Him my life would be wonderful. I looked up wonderful in the dictionary and this is what I found, "inspiring delight or admiration, extremely good, marvelous." We weren't dummies. Both of us thought this would be the perfect ingredient for a perfect life.

When the Lord appeared to Ananias giving him a message for the beginning of Paul's ministry it was not to tell him how easy his life was about to become. Instead the message was, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name." (Acts 9:15) Two things stand our to me. First, Paul was chosen to be an instrument of the Lord's. That sure takes the emphases off him and puts it on the Lord. Second, the Lord told Paul he would suffer for Him; that doesn't fit my definition of wonderful.

Study of the Scriptures has corrected my misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian. I no longer consider God to be an ingredient that I add to the recipe of my life. Now I understand that, "he chose us in him before the foundation of the world." (Ephesians 1:4) I now understand that there are good words that God has planned in advance for me to do.

Lord, I still have to remind myself that I am a Christian not because I chose You so that my life would be wonderful but that You chose me. You lavished your love on me and adopted me into Your family. Open my eyes to see the magnitude of Your plans for me.