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There is an old youth choir song I remember from days gone by, and every so often I catch myself humming the tune.
It spoke of our Heavenly Father having a great big family, so many children belonging to Him, and yet somehow there was never a line to stand in while waiting for His attention.
The thought that stayed with me was that He could love me with all the tenderness of a father loving an only child.
The older I become, the more precious that truth feels.
I look over my life now and cannot help but see the favour of God everywhere.
I do not say that because everything has gone the way I wanted it to go.
Anyone who has lived very long knows better than to describe life that way.
There have been years I would not willingly live again, prayers whose answers confused me, circumstances I begged God to change, relationships that hurt, financial pressures that kept my mind awake long after my body was exhausted, and seasons when I could see very little beyond whatever trouble was immediately in front of me.
Those things were real.
Yet somehow, when I stand far enough away from them to look back across the whole landscape of my life, they are rarely what rises to the surface.
I see His hand.
I see circumstances that seemed disconnected at the time eventually coming together in ways I could never have arranged.
I see doors opening that I did not possess the ability to open, and others closing that I once resented until years later gave me enough perspective to understand the mercy in them.
I see people God placed along our road at exactly the right time, provisions arriving when there seemed to be no reasonable explanation for where they would come from, and answers to prayers that exceeded the request because I had not known enough to ask for everything He intended to give.
Even some of the hardest seasons have changed appearance with distance.
The pain remains part of the story, but I can see now that pain was never the only thing happening there.
God was sustaining, directing, correcting, protecting, teaching, and sometimes rearranging an entire future while I was occupied with trying to survive the present.
Psalm 5:12 says, “For thou, LORD, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield.”
I love the word compass there.
Surrounded.
There have been days when I did not feel surrounded by blessing.
I felt surrounded by problems.
Yet my feelings were never a reliable measurement of the reach of His hand.
Looking backward has taught me that God was often doing some of His most important work during seasons when I understood Him the least.
Perhaps this is why Psalm 30:5 has become sweeter with age:
“For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
In His favour is life.
I have lived enough mornings after weeping nights to know something about that.
I have also come to understand favour differently than I did when I was younger.
The biblical idea carries the sense of grace, kindness freely bestowed rather than something purchased through deserving it, and that reaches directly into one of the deepest comforts of being a child of God.
I do not have to keep earning my Father’s affection.
There is no invisible scoreboard in heaven where yesterday’s performance determines whether He will receive me warmly today.
I do not approach Him wondering whether another one of His children has pleased Him more and therefore received the portion of tenderness I needed.
My Heavenly Father has no dysfunction hidden behind His fatherhood.
There are no emotional games.
No affection withheld to manipulate obedience.
No silent treatment intended to leave a child frightened and guessing.
No wounded ego requiring everyone in the house to arrange themselves around His moods.
Some people have difficulty believing this because the word father carries memories that hurt.
An earthly father may have taught you that love was safest when you performed well.
Perhaps attention depended upon pleasing him, or correction came wrapped in humiliation.
Maybe you learned to study his mood before entering the room because you never knew which version of him would be waiting there.
Then Scripture asks you to call God Father, and all those old memories try to follow you into the throne room.
But our Heavenly Father must be understood through His own revelation of Himself.
Psalm 103:13 says, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.”
He knows His children completely, including the parts we would rather conceal, and His knowledge of our weakness does not produce the instability we have sometimes experienced in human relationships.
“For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” Psalm 103:14.
What tenderness there is in that.
He knows exactly what I am made of.
He knows where I am weak.
He knows the failures I regret and the places where sanctification is taking longer than I wish it would.
And still I live within His favour.
The reason for that security becomes even more precious when I remember that my standing before God rests in Christ.
At salvation, I did not bring God a righteousness impressive enough to make Him favour me.
Isaiah describes our righteousnesses as “filthy rags.” I came needing the righteousness of Another.
Scripture says, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21.
That changes everything.
When the Father looks upon me as His redeemed child, my standing rests in His beloved Son.
The same Christ of whom the Father declared, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” has become my righteousness.
Isaiah spoke beautifully of being clothed “with the garments of salvation” and covered “with the robe of righteousness.” Isaiah 61:10.
I did not weave that robe.
I could never afford it.
Christ provided it.
Bought and paid for with His blood.
So when I speak of living beneath the favour of God, I am not claiming some special position where God has decided to make my earthly life easier than everyone else’s.
His favour does not promise a life untouched by graves, diagnoses, disappointments, financial hardship, family sorrow, or unanswered questions.
Psalm 84:11 says, “For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.”
Sometimes I have disagreed with God about what qualified as a good thing.
I wanted the door open.
I wanted the circumstance removed.
I wanted the answer immediately.
Years later, I could see that His wisdom had been kinder than my request.
That realization has changed the way I look at my life.
I find myself noticing His favour in places I once might have called ordinary.
There is a family around me that has been shaped through years I could never have planned.
There are people at my table whose presence represents prayers prayed long ago.
There is truth I understand now because God patiently led me through seasons when I knew far less than I thought I knew.
I am surrounded by evidence that He has been good to me.
Undeservedly good.
And perhaps that word undeservedly is necessary because gratitude becomes thin whenever I begin imagining I earned the life I have been given.
I have wandered.
I have complained while standing inside answered prayer.
I have taken gifts for granted after the newness wore away.
I have worried about tomorrow while surrounded by evidence that He faithfully carried yesterday.
Still, His mercies arrived again this morning.
There is something about gratitude that changes our eyesight.
When I begin thanking God deliberately, I notice things I had walked past while preoccupied with what I wanted changed.
The life I was calling frustrating contains prayers I once begged Him to answer.
The people who occasionally exhaust me are people I cannot imagine living without.
Even some scars have become reminders that the Lord carried me through something I once feared would consume me.
Perhaps you are in one of those seasons today where the favour of God feels difficult to find.
I would never tell you to pretend the hurt does not hurt.
Scripture gives us far too many tears for that.
David grieved.
Job grieved.
Jeremiah grieved.
Our Lord Himself wept.
But I would encourage you to look again.
Ask the Lord to show you where His hand has been.
Trace your life backward.
Remember the provision.
Remember the person who appeared at the right moment.
Remember the prayer answered differently than you expected.
Remember the strength that somehow lasted until morning.
Remember Christ.
And when everything else feels uncertain, begin there.
The greatest evidence of the Father’s favour toward us was given at Calvary, where the beloved Son stretched out His hands and made it possible for sinners to become sons and daughters of God.
“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:26.
My Father has a very large family.
And somehow, when I come before Him, I never stand in line.
There is room for me at His throne.
There is mercy when I fail, chastening when I need correcting, grace for the weakness I cannot hide, and a Father who has never once confused my place within His family with my ability to perform perfectly.
He loves every one of His children with a fullness that cannot be divided into smaller portions.
That is the favour I am living in.
And when I look backward over my life, through the tears and mistakes and years I once thought had gone terribly wrong, I can see His hand covering far more of the story than I understood while I was living it.
“With favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield.”
He has.
He does.
And today I simply want to dwell in His favour, will you join me?
Biblical Womanhood
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I wrote “When You Can’t Control It: A 6-Week Bible Study for Those Who Are Tired of Worrying, Overthinking, and Carrying Everything” for the friend whose mind has been working three shifts while the rest of the house sleeps.
You love your people, take your duties seriously, and have slowly begun carrying outcomes, hearts, decisions, and futures that God never placed under your authority.
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