Cookies, Cars, and....Broccoli??

Tonight I bought a car! My other one had some problems, and I finally bought a better one. The past few days we’ve been looking at different cars, and at first I really wasn’t that excited about my dad helping me pick one out. I figured he’d want me to buy something that looked like a family car, practical by all means, but not something I would like my friends to see me driving around town.

“Yes, dad, I know this minivan only has 30,000 miles on it and has a perfect engine, but I like that sports car over there with 180,000 miles on it and the hubcaps falling off….”

(Not really, but you get the idea)

But you know, as we started to look at cars, he showed me some cars I really liked. He did look at the practical side, like the price and mileage, but he also looked at what I liked in a car. Saturday we found a car I liked, so we went to look at it. As the salesman came out to let us test-drive the car, he told us there was another, similar car I might like as well. It was black and shiny, and definitely looked newer. I loved it! We took it for a test drive, and it was perfect, except it had quite a few more miles on it than the other car. The other car also had a few extra features, and it looked like the practical choice to me.

The salesman asked if I wanted to test-drive the other car, and I was about to, but dad stopped me. He said, “You don’t like it, do you?” And I told him no, not really. I liked the black one.

So dad told the salesman we didn’t need to drive the other one. Tonight I drove home with the black one because dad understood my desire to have a nice-looking car. It’s a good car, but it may not last as long as the other one. I know that. I still like the black one better, and dad was okay with that. He knows that I’ll be much happier paying for something I like than something I never really liked in the first place.

As I was thinking about this, I started thinking about how we so often don’t want God to help us make decisions in our lives because we think He’ll make us do the thing we don’t like. We get this idea that God is like a mom who always wants you to eat broccoli, and never cookies. But God isn’t like that!

If you want to be healthy enough to enjoy cookies, you have to eat some broccoli and other stuff you don’t like because that’s what your body needs. If we always ate cookies, we’d get sick and die.

But you know what? Cookies are awesome!

And the things God has for your life are awesome, too! Sometimes we have to go through things we don’t understand, and sometimes we don’t get what we want when we want it. But it’s not because God doesn’t want us to be happy. It’s not because God hates cookies…. In fact, He loves “cookies”! He loves the sweet things in life, the things we love.

He just knows that in order for us to enjoy them, sometimes we have to go through things we don’t understand. Maybe you have to keep working in that job you can’t stand because God has a promotion around the corner. Maybe that girl or guy in your life had to leave to make room for that person God is sending you. Maybe that door to your ministry closed because God wanted you available for something He’s about to open up.

He knows your desires! He wants you to be happy! The phrase “joy of the Lord” isn’t just some spiritual lingo that actually means a depressed feeling you get when you do God’s will. You really can be happy doing God’s will!

If we believe that God's plans are the best for our lives, and then we try to bargain with God, doesn't that mean we're trying to get God to allow us to have something less than His best? Wouldn't it be better to just trust God and wait on His timing? He really does know best. We just have to trust Him and believe He has our best interests in mind. If He sent His Son to die so you could have eternal life when you were so lost you didn’t know you needed it, don’t you think He will take care of the smaller things, too?