Whatever My Lot

Enjoy this message from Pastor Tyler Schoenberger called "Whatever My Lot" on Sunday, October 25, 2026 at Reach Church in Bear, Delaware!

Life rarely unfolds the way we hope, and most of us carry something we wish we could change. Whether it is a limitation, a loss, or a circumstance we never asked for, Ecclesiastes 7:13-14 speaks directly into that tension. The writer is honest and blunt: no one has a perfect life. Time and chance happen to us all. The crooked things, the tangled and difficult circumstances we wish God would straighten out, are a universal part of the human experience. The real question is not whether we have them, but what we believe God is doing through them.

Romans 8:29 makes clear that God's primary goal for every believer is to conform them to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. And the uncomfortable reality of Scripture is that He most often uses the very things we wish He would remove to accomplish that work. The difficulties, the disappointments, the seasons of suffering we never would have chosen are the tools He uses to shape us. Romans 8:28 promises that He works all things together for good, but that good is not simply comfort or ease. It is Christlikeness. God takes the crooked things in our lives and works them toward that eternal purpose.

This requires trusting that God is sovereign not just over the good days, but over the hard ones too. If He is not sovereign over our pain, then suffering is meaningless and nothing can be redeemed from it. But if He is, then even the worst seasons of life are not outside His reach. The image of a stranded sea turtle being dragged back to the ocean captures this well. What looks brutal from the outside is actually rescue. The hands that feel like they are turning your life upside down are the same hands that bear nail scars. He knows what suffering feels like, and He is not dragging you through the sand to hurt you. He is bringing you home, and shaping you along the way into something that looks more and more like His Son.