There are a few wise men from the past hundred years I would liked to have met, three that come to mind right away, C.S. Lewis, Jim Elliot, and Oswald Chambers. Tonight, as I was getting ready to go to bed, I read June 1st from My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. Yesterday in Sunday school we talked about trusting and following God in the little and big things, one of the many verses we looked at was Proverbs 16:9
"A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his steps."
Here is one paragraph from June 1st:
"It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we see the activity and mistake panic for inspiration. That is why we see so few fellow workers with God, yet so many people working for God. We would much rather work for God than believe in Him. Do I really believe that God will do in me what I cannot do? The degree of hopelessness I have for others comes from never realizing that God has done anything for me. Is my own personal experience such a wonderful realization of God’s power and might that I can never have a sense of hopelessness for anyone else I see? Has any spiritual work been accomplished in me at all? The degree of panic activity in my life is equal to the degree of my lack of personal spiritual experience."
hmm....so much in this little paragraph, what jumps out at me is "it is much easier to do something than to trust in God" and "The degree of hopelessness I have for others comes from never realizing that God has done anything for me."
trusting and realizing/acknowledging what God does for us are not foreign ideas or hard concepts to grasp, but often not easy to put into practice. In a time when Iwant to know what the see the big picture, I want to see past the next little step God has for me, this is a good reminder, it is much better to live and serve, here and now, than to worry about things a year or two or ten from now. Well, unfortunately, that's all for now, maybe we'll revisit Oswald's June 1st in the near future.
