Our Negotiator

January 30

The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal Author Unknown
It's true. We don't always prevail in our negotiations. We don't always walk away from the table feeling like we've attained all the points we desired. Sometimes that's due to compromise and often it's due to irreconcilable differences. When the latter is the outcome, our negotiations appear futile—until God is factored into the equation. When we have placed our confidence in Him, we are not undone by seeming setbacks; no, we are steadfast on the path of faith that causes us to believe that HE is leading us in the way we should go. We always trust Him because, “We walk by faith, not by sight,” II Corinthians 5:7.

The course on which He takes our journey may not be the most direct and we may not attain our goal expeditiously, but when we "...know Who we have believed, we are persuaded that He is able to keep that which we have committed to Him," (II Timothy 1:12). We may not always be sure why or how we are where we are but we trust the One who has promised to take us safely to our next destination. When we have placed our lives in His hands, we understand that our walk may at times necessitate our traveling through the darkness of the storm where we are barraged with perplexity but we also know the light of His Word guides us one step at a time (Psalm 119:105).

And we are sure that ultimately, we will emerge into the bright place of blessing to which He has been guiding us! We will discover that He has provided blessings along the way that we hadn't even realized were ours—and some blessings will have come through the adversity we endured! We will see that the attainment of the good things we'd desired were not the result of our clever or resolute negotiations but because we were able to leave the nuts and bolts of the matter in the hands of the Savior who loves us.

Jesus doesn't desire for His people to fail—and HE will never fail them (See Hebrews 13:5), but He does desire us to trust Him no matter how things may appear (See Proverbs 3:5). Sometimes that requires allowing Him to be our Negotiator when we seem to have reached one of the impasses in life. Because we know HE IS FAITHFUL (I Thessalonians 5:24), and we can TRUST HIM IN ALL THINGS, we place our absolute faith in Jesus and His faithfulness. He has already worked out the best deal for us because He loves us—He negotiated our salvation before the world began! (See Revelation 13:8).