9 Thoughts that Help Me Trust God when I Don’t Understand

I don’t always understand what God is doing in my life. I struggle sometimes when He takes His time answering my prayer—or when His answer isn’t what I wanted or expected. At other times, He just seems strangely silent. In all these times, I turn to thoughts like these:

1. His ways are not my ways (Isa 55:8). That means I shouldn’t be surprised when I don’t fully grasp what He’s up to. Sometimes He answers differently than I wanted to remind me that He’s God—and I’m to trust and follow Him. 
2. I have never seen Him forsake His people. The psalmist reached that conclusion long before I did—”I have not seen the righteous abandoned or his children begging for bread” (Psa 37:25)—but I cling to that reality when I don’t understand. 
3. His calendar doesn’t always fit my calendar. His plans are not limited to my plans, and He seldom responds exactly according to my ideas of what He should do. Or when He should do it. 
4. My seeming emergency is not His emergency.  I’m the one who gets stressed by apparent crisis. He’s not stressed . . . at all. You don’t have to operate in crisis mode when you control eternity. 
5. He always knows what’s best for me, and I can only think I do. God knows exactly where He is in the process of conforming me to His image (Rom 8:29). He knows where I still need to grow—and He knows the best way to get me there. 
6. He sees the whole picture when I can see only in part. And, I, like so many others, tend to see only what I want to see. I see the struggle, and He sees how the struggle will grow me. 
7. Occasionally, God gives me no details of what He’s doing, but I later learn He was protecting me from something. That’s the kind of lesson I usually learn only after time has passed, when I’ve had time to reflect. Until that time comes, though, I need to trust Him. 
8. David’s God is also my God. That is, David knew when he faced Goliath that the God who had taken of him yesterday with the lions and the bears would take care of him today with the giant (1 Sam 17:34-37). God’s always been faithful to me, too–and I need to remember that truth.
9. If what I don’t understand keeps me weak, that’s a good place to be. That’s because His strength becomes most real in me when I’m weak (2 Cor 12:6-9). The problem is that I often fight against my weakness with all my might—and I miss the point of what God is doing. 

What would you add? What helpful thoughts do you have when you don’t understand?