Are you content with God's answer?

The other day I was at work, and the two-year old who I look after was reading pooh bear on the couch. Well, it was towards the end of the day, I was sitting down to fold some washing. My feet were in need of a break, so once I sat down, I was in no mood to get up if I didn't have to. So, I am folding the washing, and next minute the two-year old asks: What is this, Mary?

I got up and looked at what he was pointing to and told him that was piglet in a sleeping bag. 

I sat down again to fold my washing when I hear: Mary, what is this?

I got up again, went over to him and looked again at what he wanted to know, and then told him what it was. Then I went back to my chair. 

Again, I hear: Mary, what is this? 

Well, this time I was in no mood to move, so I was like: I don't know, honey, cause I can't see it. 

"Mary, what is this?" I hear again, him pointing to the same thing. 

"I don't know, honey, I can't see it!" 

Back and forth we had this chat for a few minutes until I couldn't handle it any longer. 

"Sweetie, I can't see it!!! I don't know what it is!!!!!" I had caught his attention and was saying this in a stern voice.
The little guy looked at me with disbelief in his eyes, then turned to the next page in his book, thoroughly disgusted that I wouldn't take the time to answer his question. (Hmmm...maybe telling the kids that I know everything wasn't such a good idea after all??) The thing was, I had answered his question. But it wasn't the way he wanted. He had wanted me to come over and tell him the answer to his question. But when I gave him an answer he wasn't wanting, he didn't listen to me and kept on asking. 

Well, my friend, unfortunately that is often what we are like with God. We ask him to give us an answer to something, or to do something, but when he doesn't respond how or when we want with what we want, we presume him dead, or hard of hearing. When really, the problem lies with us. We are not content with his answer, or we have what we want to be the answer so stuck in our mind that we are not going to listen to anything else. Sometimes God's answers are vague. He might just want us to hold on, or maybe he doesn't think we need to know the answer to that question. Whatever the case may, we can know that God will always answer us. It may not be the way we want, but he will always answer us. And his answer is ALWAYS best because he knows our future. He knows what lies ahead for us. So we can trust him. 

So the big question is:

WILL YOU BE CONTENT WITH HIS ANSWER?

Trust in God

 All day long I am chased. They follow me.  They attack me. They walk over me and fight constantly to have my mind and soul. They fight to have my being. They want to live in me a life that is not at all pleasing to my creator. They thrive on sin. Who is 'they'? Me, Myself, and I. I long for the glory. I long for the credit. I long for the praise. I am my biggest enemy. And often I leave myself worried and afraid.

Yet when I am afraid I will trust in God. He is the one that needs to be living and working through my life. He's the one that needs to be on the throne of my heart. What a relief it is that I can go to the Lord in prayer and confide in him. He will look after me and fight for me. He wants me. He loves me. He gives perfect peace and love. For this I am thankful, and will strive to live my life for God. 

Being Broken

Broken is not actually a positive word. For when something is broken, then that usually means we have to fix it. But the beautiful thing about us being broken, is that Jesus Christ must come and fix us himself. And that means working on us, and shaping us, and fixing us to be new again in him. But fixing something that is badly broken takes a lot of work and a lot of time. Therefore, Jesus is still working on me, and fixing me. In order to be fixed, we must first come to the place that we are shattered, broken to little pieces, and then ground to powder. We have to be that broken so that we are beyond repair. God uses us when we are broken. In fact, thats when he can use us the most. For we are fully relying on him to help us. 

I have been reading a book called 'The Calvary Road.' by Roy Hession. I have been so encouraged reading it, so I decided to pull out a few snippets from the first chapter about being broken. 

"To be broken is the beginning of Revival. It is painful, it is humiliating, but it is the only way. It is being 'Not I, but Christ,' and a 'C' is a bent 'I'. The Lord Jesus cannot live in us fully and reveal himself through us until the proud self within us is broken. This simply means that the hard, un-yielding self, which justifies itself, wants its own way, stands up for its rights, and seeks its own glory, at last bows its head to God's will, admits its wrong, gives up its own way to Jesus, surrenders its rights, and discards its own glory, that the Lord Jesus might have all and be all. In other words, it is dying to self and self attitudes."  The Lord cannot live in us, and work through us, until we first die to self and self attitiudes. 

"It is so often self that tries to live the Christian life(the mere fact that we use the word 'try' indicates that it is self who has the responsibility). It is self, too, who is often doing Christian work. It is always self who gets irritable, envious, resentful, critical, and worried. It is self who is hard and unyielding in its attitude to others. It is self who is shy, self-conscious, and reserved. No wonder we need breaking. As long as self is in control, God can do little with us, for the fruit of the spirit, with which God longs to fill us, is the complete opposite of the hard, unbroken spirit within us and presupposes that self has been crucified."

"Brokeness in daily experience is simply the response of humility to the conviction of God, and inasmuch as this conviction is continuous, we shall need to be broken continually. This can be very costly, when we see all the yielding of rights and selfish interests that this will involve, and the confessions and restitutions that sometimes may be necessary. For this reason, we are not likely to be broken except at the cross of Jesus,. The willingness of Jesus to be broken for us is the all-compelling motive in our being broken, too." 

"We see Him taking on the form of a servant, willing to have no rights of his own, no home of his own, no possessions of his own, willing to let men revile him and not revile again, willing to let men tread on him and not retaliate or defend himself. We see him broken as he meekly goes to Calvary to become men's scapegoat by bearing their sins in his own body on the tree. "

"Those who have been in tropical lands tell us that there is a big difference between a snake and a worm when you try to strike at them. The snake rears itself up, hisses, and trys to strike back...a true picture of self. But a worm offers no resistence, it allows you to do what you like with it, kick it or squash it under your heel...a picture of true brokeness."

"Christ now calls us to take our rightful place as worms for him."

"But dying to self is not a thing we do once for all. There may be initial dying when God first shows us these things, but ever after, it will be a constant dying, for only so can the Lord Jesus be revealed constantly through us. All day long the choice will be before us in a thousand ways. It will mean a constant yielding to those around us, for our yieldedness to God is measured by our yieldedness to man. Every humiliation, everyone who tries and vexes us, is God's way of breaking us, so that there is a yet deeper channel in us for the Life of Christ."

"You see, the only life that pleases God, and that can be victorious, is His life...never our life, no matter how hard we try. But inasmuch as our self-centered life is the exact opposite to his, we can never be filled with his life, unless we are prepared for God to bring our life constantly to death. And in that we must co-operate by our moral choice." But if our life is not broken, then we have no need of his life, therefore resulting in never pleasing the one who dies for us. 

 Jesus is our Saviour

Jesus is our Saviour

Our redeemer, and our friend.

He's with us in our trials, 

He's with us till the end. 

Sometimes, in order to try us, 

Hardships our way he sends. 

He lets them batter and break us, 

Until his way we bend. 

But it is not without comfort, 

For with his love, our way does send, 

Sleep for the sleepless nights, 

And strenth and peace to us he lends. 

Sometimes my heart does wish

That hardships I wouldn't know. 

But then I remember if that were true,

Then in his grace I wouldn't grow. 

You think you know best???

 My Dad and I were moving stock today with my sisters dog. Her dog is usually obedient, but sometimes he gets overly excited and will forget that he has a master to listen to. Well, today was one of those days he forgot about my Dad, and decided that he wanted to round up the calves his way instead of my Dad’s way. After the the dog had caused both my Dad and I frustration, my dad turned to me and said: He’s a good dog, but sometimes he thinks he knows best instead of me! 

Wow!! I know he was referring to the dog, but I couldn’t help but think of myself. How often I think I know what’s best instead of God. I listen to a song based on the verse that says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says that Lord.” And it’s sooo true. Often my ways are not the right way. They’re not God’s ways. And often I try my own way, only to realise how foolish I was. God’s ways are soo much higher than mine. I need to listen to him when he tells me to do something, and not be like our naughty dog who doesn’t listen. 

Who will you talk to?

 Today was not my day. It started early this morning with getting all my horses in and waiting an hour for the vet to show up. And then when the vet did come, they decided not to do the procedure. And then to make my morning worse, the heat was almost unbearable. I was sweating head to foot. My hair was oily, and my whole body was sticky. So after walking home, i decided to take a shower before heading into town to get some items for work. But when I got home the power was out, which meant I had to go to town stinky and sticky. So I am walking around town, sweaty, stinky, and sticky, and my ankle is hurting, and I'm running around trying to get all the jobs done. And then someone reminded me as i was about to leave town, of my parents anniversary tomorrow. So I ran around a shop that I thought would have the present I needed, but it didn't. So in a super grumpy mood, I purchased my items and stalked out of the shop, trying to hurry in time to go to one last shop. As I was hurrying to my car, this man stood in my way. Me thinking he was a creep, tried to go around him. Then I saw that he had some books and was obviously trying to get my attention to talk to me about them. "Great!! Now I have to try and talk my way out of a religious conversation with a Mormon or JW." I thought to myself, shaking my head at the man, trying to  indicate that I didn't want to talk. But he persisted, and I remembered someone saying that you should be kind to these people as they usually dont receive a lot of kindness.  So with my arm full of stuff, and sweating so bad because of the heat, I angrily turned around at him and tried to act interested. Turns out the guy was training to be a Monk, and was trying to raise money by giving away books, that held the secret to gaining good characteristics, for a gold coin donation. After explaining that I was a Christian and I told him how to get to Heaven, I then went on to tell him that I was in a big hurry to go. Walking back to my car, I felt guilty about being so rude, and so I gave a tract to one of his friends and asked him to give it to him. 

As I drove away, I suddenly became aware of my extremely rude attitude to someone who was lost and going to hell. I had told myself that I was far to busy to help him. How wrong my attitude was. How could I be too busy to help him? How could I be soo selfish to not stop and help him. Help him find the way to Heaven. 

I thought about this illustration. 

You are in a big room with a lot of people, and theres only one door and its locked. And someone is coming to set the room on fire, and everyone is trying to find the key to the door. Say you figure out where the key is and you've unlocked the door, wouldn't you tell everyone that the door is open and they can go through also, or would you quietly slip out and leave them searching for the key?  Surely you wouldn't be to busy to save a persons life? 

I was very convicted over these words. But they are so true!! We often are in such a hurry, that we do forget about the people around us. We forget to show them the unlocked door so they can escape hellfire. 

What are you doing about the lost souls around you?

I hope and pray that I may be more aware of them, and try to help them with God's help. 

Entrust your soul to a faithful Creator.

 1 Peter 4:19 says, “Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” 

1 Peter 4 talks a little bit about serving and doing good even if we get mocked or suffer for it. And that verse 19 says that when we are doing good and suffering for it, we need to entrust our souls to a FAITHFUL creator. 

Entrust means to assign someone the responsibility of something. We are to assign the responsibility of our soul to our faithful creator, and he who promised is Faithful. And he, our faithful creator, has promised to give us strength. 1 Peter 4:11 says, “…whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies,” We get given the strength we need to serve and do good, even tho we suffer for it. 

So the next time you’re tempted to complain about the suffering, or give up doing good, stop and remember to  assign the responsibility of your soul to your Faithful Creator.