I love it when God brings together lessons from different areas of life to teach me one thing. These past few days God's used my morning devos, my "just for fun" books, and tonights sermon to teach me about who I am right now and where I'm going. Here's a glimpse of what I've been hearing lately:
"Once God has begun the process of sanctification in your life, watch and see how God causes your confidence in your own natural virtues and power to wither away. He will continue until you learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the ressurection life of Jesus. Thank God if you are going through this drying up experience." - Oswald Chambers
These words were the exact explanation I needed to hear about what I've been feeling lately. When I got my perspective switched around I realized that this emptiness and inability I've been feeling was really a good thing. It's a sign that God's working on me, drying up all of "me" so I can start filling up on the real life from Jesus.
"When we are at our wits' end for an answer, then the Holy Spirit can give us an answer. But how can He give us an answer when we are still well supplied with all sorts of answers of our own?" - Karl Barth
This quote really hit me hard. I've totaly been acting this way, asking for answers and then turning around to go search for my own. If I believe the Spirit really will give me answers then I need to learn to be still and wait after I ask. I'm not showing confidence in God when I say I trust that he is going to answer me but then I have my "just incase he never answers" list ready to go over on the side.
"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." Ephesians 2:10
God cares enough about me to spend time forming me as his art work. He goes before me and has given me a purpose and the abiblity to accomplish it .
I'm learning that this life is more about becoming the person I was made to be than it is about what I do for an occupation. I'm reading The Me I Want to Be by John Ortberg and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller and they, combined with these other "lessons," are helping me understand the importance of just focusing on God and letting him have total authorship of my story. This time I have on Earth is limited, I've got to keep discarding my self and keep filling up with the Spirit so that I will be a utensil God can use to spread his love to a thirsty world. Its not about me getting filled up for my benefit, its about others being loved, served and blessed by an encounter with God that just might happen through me.
We sang a song at church tonight that said "the temple is filled with your Glory" and it really hit me what a huge statement that is. If I'm giving my body to God to his temple then I'd better be living a life worthy of God's glory and I'd better not be doing anything that would hide his glory from others.
Tonight I still feel empty, but for some reason I am content. I know that when God is finished ripping out and drying up the inside he will fill me again, let his glory shine, and send me out to walk in the good works he has prepared for me to do.
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