"God meant it for good."

In my book: The Patriot Band, which I just finished, and in my devotions reading about Joseph, one major thing had appeared over and over again; God has planned everything ahead of time, and knows what’s best.  

You know, a lot of times things don’t go the way we want. I’m sure Joseph didn’t want to be thrown into a pit, sold as a slave to Egypt, thrown in to prisoner for something he didn’t do, and then after he interpreted the cupbearers dream, the man forgot about him for two years! In my book one of the main character’s family gets their house burned, his Dad condemned to die, and he and his mom sent to work in an enemy fort. In both stories, the way that they got through was faith in God. It doesn’t say how Joseph felt until Genesis’s chapter 50.

“You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” That’s what Joseph said in verse 20. Wow! After all he went through, Joseph said that to his brothers? Yeah. He could have killed them with a wave of his hand. But he kept that mindset the whole time. Think about if we lived like that. Everything that happens, God means it for good! Nothing that happens isn’t in God’s plan. If we trust God things seem different. Our mindset is “God is doing this for a reason, I have to trust him.”

My younger brother Elijah has OCD/Autism. One year ago we started a diet called the GAPS diet. I would recommend the book highly. For the first seven months Elijah grew worse. He had rages of angers all day long which were often violent, Showers sometimes lasted seven hours, and so on. Around the end of August, after taking him off of probiotics which were supposed to help, (He was getting too many) he greatly improved.

Now Elijah is practically like a normal person. His showers are a little longer than most people’s and he has some noise intolerance, but he is like a new person. Now this was a HUGE trial. It seemed like there was never a moment’s rest, but by trusting in God, and through his wisdom showing us this diet, Elijah is healing.

You may be wondering how this difficulty proved God’s wisdom. Here it is. 1. My family, along with me, was helped in weight loss, allergies, acne, and more. 2. Here is the even better part. One of my aunt’s for the past seven years has had depression, mind and body problems. Her daughter this fall came because she felt God wanted her to come and help Elijah in any way she could. She was fine to be on the diet with us, and after the first two months she began feeling better. She had no depression and felt better. (She like my aunt had had depression.) She told her mom, my aunt, and she decided to do it. After just three weeks she began to feel better, less depression, feeling less tired, she was able to do more things and had a more positive outlook on life.

That is why God put our family through this, and that is why I can, “I didn’t know it was for good, but God did.”