Topic: Relax! God Is Working for Your Good [RICK WARREN Devotional 21 August 2021]

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Relax! God Is Working for Your Good

BY RICK WARREN — AUGUST 21, 2021

“In all things God works for the good of those who love him.”

Romans 8:28 (NIV)Everything God does is for your good and because he loves you. The Bible says, “All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful” (Psalm 25:10 NIV), and “In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28 NIV).

This is something you have to remind yourself of again and again, because any time God says “no” to your prayers, Satan will shoot darts of doubt at you. He’s going to whisper lies to you: “God doesn’t love you. He doesn’t care about you; otherwise, he’d give you everything you want!” But Satan is a liar.

You don’t have to understand God’s answer to your prayer to know it’s motivated by love.

God loves you too much to give you everything you ask for. So, when God says “no,” you’ve got three options: You can resist it, resent it, or relax in it.

You can resist God. You can fight him, get mad at him, turn your back on him, and say, “Okay, God, if you don’t play the game my way, I’m going to take matters into my own hands.” I’ve met a lot of people who walked away from God because God said “no” to their prayer. They didn’t trust that he had a bigger perspective, a better plan, and a greater purpose.

Those people walked away from God in resentment and rebellion. That’s the second thing you can do—you can resent it. When you doubt God’s love like that, it makes you bitter and miserable. So many people have lived their entire lives in misery because they’ve never accepted the fact that God only does what’s good in their lives.

There is a third way to respond to God’s goodness: You can relax in it. When you believe that God always has your best interest at heart, you can look with new eyes at the things he does that don’t make sense.

You may not understand it. It may even be painful. But God is still good. He is loving, and he will never stop loving you. You can say, “Even in this, God’s love still remains.”

• What answered prayer have you resisted because it was not what you expected? What has been the result?
• How should believing that God always works for your good change the way you pray?
• Why do you think God allows you to experience pain if he is working for your good?