In our culture we put a lot of emphasis on doing. But what happens when God tells us not to do what we would normally do to fix our problems; to decrease the impact of our trials?
Do we tell God to go take a heavenly hike, and let our anger take us to places that He forbids so we can make our lives full of what we want, or do we let ourselves feel the sting of letting go of our dreams for God’s?
Are we willing to bear the weight of commitment brutally enough to push our belief in God to the next level?
Are we willing to stand up and fight on until the truth takes up such residence in us that we can live for nothing else?
Will everything you would continue to live for advance the vital causes of any one but yourself? Could you even be sure that it would make good your own?
The path we desire for ourselves may look bright and beautiful ahead, but nothing can be godless and yet bless us for a lifetime.
We must ask ourselves what is my lifetime going to look after I’ve followed this path? Will I soon be looking back over +40 years of regret because I thought I wanted so much less than God?
Quit telling Me what my limits are, God told me today. This isn’t the first time. But, I struggle with this idea of God being unconfined by anything that I think is a boundary for His work because it exists in my life.
Quit thinking that I can’t love you to pieces and put you together again, this time My way; this time so much better than you were before you were broken.
Quit telling Me with your prayers that you will live with less than what I want to give you; the excuses you make for Me do not please Me.
Quit equating My perfect love with nothing and nothing with My perfect love; your reasoning cannot tell the glories of what it means to know Me.
Quit expecting that if I am loving You completely I can’t give you much besides; that I can not be letting you experience the full capacity of My love if you have anything else with it.
Quit thinking you are some sort of expert on Me and what I can do in your life just because you’ve seen a few things; you have a lot to learn yet.
What does God look like in your storm? The Bible calls Him the Lion of Judah, the one who does not grow weak or weary, the Lamb of our salvation who changes not. Is that what you see?
When the stormy gusts rush through, rattling your soul, do you look into the depths of chaos before which you can do nothing, or do you turn and satisfy yourself with the beautiful order and calm emanating from our Lord?
If you are missing His mercies, maybe its time to ask yourself, Am I truly taking shelter under His wing or am I needlessly missing the comforts awaiting me there?
Unshakable. Is that what you see in your God, or are you trying to keep an eye on both Him and the happenings around you?
Are you missing the fact that He has reared the storm you’re in to confront you and your life-watchers with who His wonders? Do you forget the One you serve is the same God who wooed Jacob with a wrestling match and brought justice to Pharoah’s slaves by coming to Egypt in the spirit of death?
The might and love of God that we see in places where only He can stand are strong enough to change the world, beginning with our own hearts. Why? Because watching God becomes a journey in itself.
If the image we have of God is of a being quite like us in depth and form and devise, than it is no wonder that we fear the storm we are in is too big. And yet, the God that we serve is at once in the storm that touches us, and in the heart that is touched.
It is love to excite us in the deepest places of our beings so that He might be invited there. Only Love would draw close to to all of our ugliness and gore.
Indeed, the blackest parts of the storm are not the places that remove the sun from me, but the ones in which I have removed the Son from myself. And in walking me through these regions He allows me to be disturbed by what disturbs Him. There is nothing to be feared in the evil around me or the events over which I have no control. What keeps me in turmoil is the evil in my life that I am responsible for — the frightful motions of a heart without the fullness of God-knowledge.
It’s a thought that makes me shiver. What kind of lies are we deluded by to enable us to think that we will not be destroyed by such choices?
I know that worldviews like this shouldn’t be a surprise, but that doesn’t make it any less devastating to think about. I can’t help questioning what I hear, searching for the light of some deeper reality that we don’t readily see.
Why are we so intent on ruining our one chance at life? Why is living for ourselves so much more appealing than living without the threat of death? What are we thinking?
Acting on broken thoughts; gorging ourselves on philosophies devoid of meaning — we have nothing because we miss Christ. But we like this lack of true potential for the liberty we in managing it; after all, our greatest fear is in knowing fullness that in some way requires us to be emptied. Truly we are missing the whole nature and delight of pure and unadulterated life.
If we knew the cost of this defiance of our own deepest cravings, would we continue on so debilitating a path?
At Home with God 