Are You Puzzling Over God's Will?

My seven-year-old son loves working with jigsaw puzzles. It’s an activity we both genuinely enjoy. He’s graduated from the 50- and 100-piece puzzles, so I purchased some larger ones for him for Christmas. I may have gone overboard with the 500-piece puzzle with repeating candy bars throughout. He was bored within minutes because of its difficulty.

My dad was in town at the time, so he and I took over the puzzle. The only proper way to begin is to turn all the pieces upright and find the edges, but as we did so, we realized this puzzle’s pieces were odd. We couldn’t always tell if a piece was an edge piece. Some pieces were very large, and some were tiny and thin.

We finished the puzzle in a few hours, over a couple of days. As I was taking it apart to put it away (after leaving it out for the proper amount of time for admiring, of course), I realized these puzzle pieces illustrated how I experience God’s will.

We can see only the close-up view, but our gracious father has the whole masterpiece in mind. One of my favorite passages warns us of this very thing: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5–6 NIV).

God reminds us that we cannot lean on our own understanding. But even if we comprehend his will, only he alone can make our paths straight.

My husband and I lived in several states before we had kids, but in 2005 we moved back to Dallas, where I’d always wanted to live near my parents and raise my family. My plan was to stay at least until we were old and gray. After a few years in Dallas and the arrival of three babies, God had a change in store. As the situation at our church (where James was on staff) changed in such a way that we were in prayer about next steps, God clearly articulated we were to move to Denver.

I hated that puzzle piece at first. I thought it was ugly and didn’t fit in my puzzle at all. It changed the entire outlook of the puzzle for me, and I felt lost. But while God doesn’t promise to tune our hearts toward his will, in his graciousness to me in this case, he did exactly that. Over a period of a few weeks, my heart changed. I could see this odd piece fitting in our puzzle, and I even grew excited about the move to Denver.

Fast-forward to today. We are about three years into our home-based church plant in northwest Denver. I can see the puzzle slowly filling in, and it’s beautiful. I know we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be. Church planting isn’t easy; we regularly experience puzzle pieces that are jagged and even hurt. Those painful pieces go into the puzzle along with the beautiful ones and shape who we are. They mold us to look more like the bigger picture God is creating.

Another familiar and favorite Scripture passage underscores this concept. Paul is writing to the church in Philippi and exhorts them, “In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:4–6 NIV).

God knows what the finished puzzle will look like. He has the box lid with the complete image on it, and we do not. When we experience a piece of his will for our lives that looks like it won’t fit, we have an opportunity to practice leaning not on our own understanding but on his. We can choose to trust him with our whole heart and depend on him to make our paths straight and our puzzle beautiful.

Amy Wiebe is a Jesus follower, wife, mom of three, church planter, finance director, and lover of sarcasm and deep conversation with friends. She also loves camping, rafting, skiing, sewing, and having people over. Amy blogs with her husband at fringechurch.com.