Learning to trust

In the past few days I've started rereading one of my favorite books, Trusting God by Jerry Bridges (it seemed like it'd be a good book to read to help me get my perspective and attitude back in the right place since I've been frustrated and angry with God, you know?), and a few lines in chapter two really stood out to me:

"God's providence is His constant care for and His absolute rule over all His creation for His own glory and the good of His people ... nothing, not even the smallest virus, escapes His care and control."

"He has designed His eternal purpose so that His glory and our good are inextricably bound together ... just as certainly as God will allow nothing to subvert His glory, so He will allow nothing to spoil the good He is working out in us and for us."

"Our suffering has meaning and purpose in God's eternal plan, and He brings or allows to come into our lives only that which is for His glory and our good" (emphasis mine)

It's been encouraging to me to meditate on how God is in control of everything and is also at the same time good, loving, and faithful - that He has both the power and the goodness needed to work out His plan for His glory and for the good of His people. It is the combination of those two characteristics that makes Him trustworthy! And if He is trustworthy, and if He truly does have a purpose for all the things that come into my life, than I probably shouldn't be complaining so much about the parts I don't like!

So my challenge now is to choose to trust God with things that are hard for me - specifically the internal emotional issue that made me so angry earlier this week - even if I don't see why God is allowing it to remain. What I wanted to do for fun, though, and hopefully for encouragement as well, is to try to identify at least one way in which this burden has been used for His glory or for the good of His people. If I can find one in either the past or the present, then it will help give me hope for the future, I think - not hope that the burden will be removed, but hope that He will continue to use it. If not, then I will do my best to trust Him with it anyway, and have that same hope, because He has promised and He is faithful.