“Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if only you had been here.’”

John 11:21

 If only. Words of regret, resentment, disappointment, and sorrow. Sometimes those words are because of our own decisions and missed opportunities. Other times those words are directed towards someone else. And many times, in our walk of faith, we wonder where God was or where he is in our difficult seasons of life.

We may ask why something happened the way it did, or ask why the results weren’t what we wanted them to be.

But here’s the deal. None of us know what God knows! And sometimes for us to see His true glory, we have to push through our hard times of doubt.

When Martha expressed her words of disappointment toward her friend Jesus, she was unaware of what God was really doing. She was unaware of God’s greater plan to use her brother’s death to make His power known.

But she didn’t allow her doubt to overshadow her faith in Jesus. He asked her to believe, and she never lost faith that He was who He said he was, even in her great sorrow.

Sometimes though, we do. We allow our disappointments to move us away from God, rather than toward Him. We forget that Jesus will comfort us in the midst. We close our hearts to the validation of our pain as He weeps with us. And it’s hard for us to trust that He is in control. But He alone knows that even though this “if only” wasn’t what we wanted, there will be something better down the road.

Solomon expresses his reflections in Ecclesiastes, “In my search for wisdom and in my observation of people’s burdens here on earth…I realized that no one can discover everything God is doing under the sun. Not even the wisest people discover everything. (Ecclesiastes 8:16–17). And this can be very true with our “if only’s”. 

We only see the result as it stands now. We don’t see what God is doing through it or the final result of our sufferings, our disappointments, and our doubts. And none of us can fully understand the greatness of our God.

If we believe that Jesus is who He says He is, we can anticipate that the final results will be grand! We can be thankful that God is using our “if only’s” for His greater good and that one day we will fully understand! Or even better, someone else might understand and believe through our experience.

Are you ready to see God’s glory? Move toward God and give your “if only” to Him. Then put behind dwelling on what could have been so you can look forward to what will be!

#SaturdaySoulSearch