Friday, December 10, 2010

Daily Devotional December 10 - Learn to trust God's ways

"Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5

I believe what God says. Every word in this verse is true. But , you may be thinking, that hasn't been my experience. That's the problem with interpreting scripture. This verse is true, but there are many other truths also. Sometimes we base the results of an experience on the way that we perceived the end. We thought that if God was involved it would end differently than it did. So when we don't receive the desired end that we thought should be the end, we think that there must be something wrong with the way that God does things. Why does God let us go through so many things that are unfair or worse?

Read this carefully:
God lets us go through things because, in order for us to receive the full blessing that comes with salvation we must exercise our freewill and suffer at the hands of those who exercise their free will. It is this free will that makes us like God and exercising our freewill to choose the things of God is what makes us godly. It is in your choosing, not in the outcome of your choosing, where God is found.

We live in a fallen world and as long as we are in the flesh, we are subject to its parameters. One of the parameters is that others are exercising their freewill as we are exercising our own. Sometimes there is conflict, because not everyone is following God and not everyone seeks the will of God. The results of this dichotomy is that sometimes you will be the one that disrupts the plan of God by your behavior and sometimes someone else disrupts the plan of God by their behavior.

You haven't always been living a godly life. Now that you are doesn't preclude the rights of those who are not, to continue to exercise their free will against the will of God. As long as free will exists, there will be crime and terrorism, foolishness and sin, pain and suffering, unfairness, liable and fraud. That's the results of free will.

But this same free will that allows for those who stand against the things of God to cause havoc also allows for those who choose to follow God to cause good things to come to pass. It is in the choosing to do the will of God that godliness is found, not in the final results of our work. You may set out to do some great thing and have it thwarted by others with a different plan, but it is in the choosing to set out to do some great thing that your trust is rewarded, not in the outcome of that venture. The path that God sets before you is the direction that you are in, not the results of the day. The path is pure, the road is full of corruption, but it is in choosing the path and taking it that your faith is proven, not in what happens to you along the way.

It will never be that when you find God and you become saved, sanctified, and filled with the Spirit, that your roads will all be cleared and each day will end in peace and serenity. You are following a holy God in an unholy world. That's why God doesn't want us traversing the road in our own understanding. First we will misunderstand God and make false presumptions about God and second we will start to think that our own path is really safer and better.

The truth is:
God is true to us and every word in the scriptures is to assist us on our journey
God is on the journey with us
God intervenes in the journey within the parameters of prayer just as He says He does
The outcome of things isn't always what we see with our eyes
The closer you get to God the more you get to see how we are co-creating with God all the time
It is in exercising our free will to follow God that we are found in God, not in the outcome of each event of the day
Learn to trust the 'follow' and not the 'outcome' and you will see much more of God than ever before.

No comments:

Post a Comment