I just feel like I should share with you something that I have been learning. To do that, I'll have to start with a story.

Some of you already know, but I had a little excitement on this week. I work in a credit union, and I happened to be on the teller line this particular day. I was sitting there minding my own business when a woman walked in, and she robbed me. She claimed that she had a gun, and I don’t know if she did or not, but I wasn’t about to give her any reason to prove it to me, so I just did what she said. We hear about robberies happening all the time, and I know we don’t give a lot of thought to it. I never really did. We think "oh, that's terrible" and then go on with our lives and forget about it. Don't lie, I do it too. But let me tell you, when someone is standing right in front of you saying that they have a gun and that you won’t get hurt as long as you do what they want, it gets pretty personal. That's not something you quickly forget. And I can tell you that you don’t really think about it in that instant, you just do it. It doesn’t really settle in until later. This happened to me on Thursday, and I didn’t really start to think about it until yesterday. I started to get angry-- how dare she. How dare she not only rob my company of thousands of dollars, but moreover to rob me of my own personal security. I went to work that day feeling safe, and I left early feeling violated. I have to carry that with me. She had no right. I started to dwell on these things and it was getting to me. I expect it to be hard to go back to work tomorrow.

Well, for a while now I have felt that the Lord is preparing me for something big. My mom said that maybe this was it; that He was preparing me for the robbery. I told her no, that’s not it… I don’t know what it is, but I know that He’s preparing me to DO something, not for something to happen TO me. But then, because I am way too analytical, I tried to figure out where this fit in. Why did this happen? In a startling revelation around 8:00 last night, I realized that this was part of my training for whatever it is He has in store for me.

That’s not a comforting thought. I cried.

I asked Him “what in the world are You doing in me that I needed to go through something like THAT?! What are You trying to teach me?”

And then I realized: God wasn’t unaware of this. He wasn’t sitting in His recliner watching the football game and suddenly realized I was in trouble and He jumped up to save me. He was watching it unfold. He knew that morning when I left for work that I would face this. He knew the day before that I would face this. He knew last week, last month, and He knew the very moment that I was conceived, 24 years and 3 months ago, that I would face this. It wasn’t an accident. I remembered Psalm 139:16, which says “Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.” And I just imagined, before I was even born, God writing out the details of each day of my life in that book. And on the page titled “Thursday, November 5th, 2009” He wrote “Bethany will be in a potentially life-threatening situation, and she’ll be scared, but I will protect her."

My point to you today is that no matter what you’re going through, whatever trials you face, He knew about it long before you did and He has a plan. If you are His, there is nothing to worry about. So, what I’m learning is that no matter what happens to me,  it’s all part of the plan. God knows what He’s doing. Not just in my life, but in yours too. Please, please rest in knowing that our all-powerful, ever-constant, unfailing, creator God who loves you wrote it out in His book, and He will not make you finish it alone.