Boundary lines in our lives are those uncomfortable places where we stand longingly looking at the green grass on the other side of the fence. God has given us great and gracious room to live and work and enjoy our lives. Boundary lines give us security so that we do not step out of our place. David said that the boundary lines of his life have fallen for him in pleasant places. But, like our first parents, we want to be gods, to go rogue against the plans and purposes of God. The boundary lines are designed to teach us:
1. We are not sufficient. If we had no boundaries, we would believe we are self-sufficient and in need of nothing, not God or other people. Limitations cause us to trust God. As well, the ways in which we are limited are often the ways in which others are gifted. We are made to be in relationship with God and each other.
2. Our design defines us. God sets the boundaries of our lives from the very beginning. Intelligence, physical strength, vulnerability to disease, gender and disability. He arranges the boundaries, just like our times and circumstances, in order that we may feel our way toward Him and find Him.
3. Our boundaries are sovereignly dispensed. Like Paul's thorn, they teach us grace. God does as he pleases in the affairs of men. Because He loves us, we learn to trust Him.
4. The motive for God's design is His glory and our good. As Matthew Henry has reminded us, God has twisted interests with us so that these two goals are really one.
A man's got to know his limitations. We look to God to increase our borders (like Jabez) but we learn to rest in our limitations (like Paul) when God does not arrange things as we would desire. A well-adjusted believer holds both ideas in his head: He can ask God for great things, wider borders. He will also be grateful for what God has done in his often inscrutable wisdom. No boundary line is without purpose. All boundary lines will one day be explained.
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