From a couple years ago….
Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of thy peace.
~John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
for “‘In Him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed His offspring.’ Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the Divine Deing is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
~ Acts 17:28-29
This writer is currently experiencing some of the most wonderful events of his life. Within a month, i will (if G_d wills) be in the Philippines, some 9,000 miles from my current home in Arizona. And within days of landing in that beautiful place, i will (if G_d wills) have the hand of my soul-mate in marriage. And perhaps within some days after that, i may actually be living with this soul-mate in Indonesia working on the mission field in some capacity.
And i did not know about any of this just two weeks ago.
What?
Well, i did know that i would be meeting a woman, and that she would be a wonderful princess in the Kingdom of G_d. He had told me this clearly back in December. And i have known that i am called to the mission field. However, it is often jaw-dropping to experience the velocity at which He can operate in our lives. This woman walked into my life on a computer screen one morning through a Christian dating site. She was the first one i had ever spoken with. Same for her. She said hello. We spoke a few words back and forth… and i simply knew it was her. And she knew it was me.
Great stuff this walking in the Spirit. He shows the path, and we are but to go through the door. All we have to do is trust and obey. It is an adventure worth living. Actually, the surrendered life is an incredible ride. Because it doesn’t matter if we are cleaning toilets, or flying around the globe to get married – it is all within the context of His will and all for His glory.
But it gets even better. Stuff like this blows your mind. It totally overloads the circuits. It invokes stress reactions that create physiological responses. And the range of feelings is simply overwhelming.
What is good about stuff like that? What can you do with that kind of stress?
Nothing! And this is very good news.
Can we see it beloved? When we are weak, this is the very best of times for Him to be strong in our life. Human beings were never designed to endure stress like this. We were never designed to survive turns in our path like this in a healthy manner. No, change like this is designed to break us. It is meant to break us of any sense that we have the power to make it through the crises of life on our own.
So, financial meltdowns, health crises, life changes, relational upheaval and the like are actually designed as platforms to show the power of G_d in our lives. These circumstances are made to work together to give the world a proper opinion of the awesome power of our Creator. And in the same way, they were designed to show us our desperate need for Him to work in and through our lives at all times.
We need Him.
We need Him badly.
We need Him badly for everything really.
And as simple as it sounds, it is. All we have to do is yield to this truth and invite Him to take us through our lives in victory. For, as we yield, He most surely takes control and works all these thing together for good in our lives.
This is very good news!
