Trust in the Moment

Today, Chuck Missler impressed upon me the same point that I prayed about last night.  I am listening to Acts 15, and he said some things about how some people think that God spoke more directly to disciples in Acts than He does today.  Chuck pointed out that Acts was written by Luke after the fact, with the benefit of hindsight, but if you sketch out the happenings of Paul’s ministry at this time, it was actually a series of seeming failures and disappointments, at the time.  ONLY later are they able to look back and see how the Holy Spirit was guiding their every move and even later (our current perspective) are you now able to see that those disappointments for Paul created the context for Jesus’ later seven letters to seven churches.

I need to realize / trust that the Holy Spirit is at work in my life, regardless of whether I can see, intuitively, what the purpose is of each circumstance.  Thinking further about this, it ties straight into the message from Doyle on Sunday as well… interesting.

Thank you Lord for your perfect timing and your directing my life.  Please give me the courage and discipline to look for your moment-to-moment direction and trust that circumstances have meaning only when looked at in the context of your work in my life.  I concede my life to doing your work, and look forward to the journey of growth in our relationship.  Thank you for all you have blessed me and my family with, but please keep us humble and focused on You.

In the Moment

I prayed last night in a way that was somewhat new to me. I have gained insight recently that I should be focusing much more on the relationship with God, rather than focusing so much on what He wants me to do. God wants my love, and THEN he can entrust me with his work. Love is first in his heart, then He can provide direction.

So what I did was pray to Him in a more personal way. I was completely up-front and honest and personal rather than formal. I immediately received an answer.

I commit to inviting God to be involved in moment-to-moment decisions throughout my life.

Mysterious Ways

God works in mysterious ways… I accept that anything I have felt God calling me to may be for other reasons that I intuit

Schooled by the Psalms (Christianity Today)

• “Learning to pray is learning to desire the things God wants to give, and then asking him for them… He desires things for us that we may not even desire for ourselves…”
• Psalms was a primary book for learning how to pray for Ben
• “Learning to pray is like playing the violin with virtuosos… in the beginning… it’s all screech and scratch… as time passes, however, he begins little by little to sound more and more like the virtuosos.”  “By praying the Psalms back to God, we learn to pray in tune with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
• There are “one size fits all” psalms (like 103)
• Conquer guilt (51, 130)

Trusting and obeying God

• There was a great analogy that he used for trusting God even when his direction is not the humanly intuitive direction:  He described a scene where he was driving somewhere using a GPS device, and the GPS was telling him to go in another direction than where he knew his destination was.  Point was that he didn’t know there was a mountain range in front of him and the GPS was directing him around something it knew was in front of him, but he didn’t.  God’s direction needs to be trusted and obeyed – he is all knowing and loves us – or we get ourselves into trouble.
• Doyle also talked about obeying as NOT what we do to earn grace but what we do IN RESPONSE to grace.  His analogy was that he loves his wife so much that he would never do something that would hurt her – like an affair.  He doesn’t stay faithful because of the marriage contract, he stays faithful (obeys) because he loves her so much.  The same is true as we obey God and Christ.

Vacation

[My wife] and I are going to Kirkwood for a week vacation (just the two of us). I’m really looking forward to it. I’m planning to focus the time on us. It’s important for us to be ‘fireproof’; another baby will certainly bring its challenges. We need to proactively focus on our relationship, and I want my love for her to be evident and unquestionable.

Experiencing God critique response

• The critique offers that the only way God speaks to Christians today is the Bible. I find this very difficult to swallow. My experience says that God’s voice can be heard, if our relationship is right with Him. Plus, how can any person have the gall to put a limit on God’s power or will? The critique offers a couple of passages: Read the rest of this entry »

Relationship is key

I have been too focused on doing and not focusing on my love relationship with Him. My prayer needs to focus on the relationship: thankfulness, telling Him how I feel about things, releasing thoughts and emotions to Him, expressing my frustrations, etc.

Love, Serve, Glorify

Love Him… Serve Him… Glorify Him

Too busy for the King

Don’t be so busy serving the King that you don’t have time for the King
– Chuck Missler