Each morning when I awake I read a devotional anthology for daily inspiration. After I have read the devotional I often read a Spiritual Anthology, both are based on bible verses and have served for much gain in a heartfelt rest in the spiritual provisions and direction The Lord has had for my life. This morning I read a devotional titled restful activity, and so I blatantly use the title supplied as mine for blogging purposes, as well as some of its content. I believe The Lord has a specific message for me and I will attempt to bless Him today as I use the helpful inspiration of men who long ago sought and wrote of the peace and rest found in actively seeking a life in Christ as total supply with all their heart.
Before I get into the thoughts from my readings I would like to comment on a sequence of the 60 minutes TV show last night. The title was the Lost Boys, and it was about a large group of children [over 1000] all male, age's 5 to 16 or so, who walked 1000 miles [most barefoot] to escape the terror of Muslim oppression upon their Christian villages in Southern Somalia. There were no girls on the march as the Muslim soldiers captured and sold into slavery their sisters and killed most of their their moms and dads. Well you can imagine their plight and suffering. Through it all many retained their confidence in God by their Christian faith and awaited their fate in refugee camps; finely by the Grace of God many through the kindness of The USA resettled here. My heart so breaks for these boys and I fear to contemplate how many more millions surrounding us live in such dire circumstances. Then I look at my life and many whom I come in contact with here in comfort entertainment and ease land, Christians who are caught in their own neediness of material supply, worried about what they will have and how much they may require, holding on for dear life to what they've gathered, surrounding themselves with as much as they can hold, for a supposed and hoped for secure future; only to be then enslaved by their material and wealth horded over the years, and worse losing their peace and a vision of God's provision, on their self centered road of busy acquisition, in a quest for self sufficiency, which eventually serves to bring a veil that enables blindness in them to much of what God might wish to provide in the way of spiritual wealth and knowledge; a far more valuable commodity, but one unfortunately little sought after in this modern world. Making us the perfect example of, "O we of little faith". As faith is not the necessary ingredient in one whose life is predominately occupied with his own need.
Don't get me wrong my friends I too enjoy my comforts, but they no longer are my life, nor do they hold a important place in the establishment of my happiness and restfulness, or is old age security of paramount importance any longer. While prudence is wise, dependence on self is death; as we live in the world of the father of lies on this earth and he ever lives to divert us from knowing The living God: and has used the gathered wealth of the American money culture to great benefit of his goal. Granted we still are wading around in the embers of capitalism and supposed free enterprise in America and who could blame us for seeking opportunity in material gain. But there must be a balance; for it seems as we acquire more and more or worry about what we will need, then we are impaired from observing God as active in our life and get less and less of Him as a observable power for our existence. The question for me, and I hope you, might be: if my god is a secure retirement and a present comfort where is the place for the God of creation as provider and The Son of suffering in my heart as life? What is my preoccupation on a daily basis, the World, my supply, or my place in The Son? Can a cord be struck, a restful activity found, in a busy world of our own making amongst our gathered material, and a all to often, in my case and past desires, a overarching consuming concern for comfort and bountiful provision in old age?
I recently had a conversation with a friend who has cancer which changed my attitude on this subject greatly. She learned through her suffering that her God was truly the God of her circumstance and found Him like never before in the suffering she went through. Now her motivation for life is others, with the hope they might see Jesus Christ in her. I think of the lost boys and how their circumstances, as horrible as they were, could and did glorify our Lord; then I look at the comparative extremely petty concerns of my life for material gain and security in this world and fill like hiding under the covers for shame! Not to mention the horrible loss of the awareness of God's Holy Spirit during my self centered journey to acquire the things of the world.
"In quietness and confidence shall be your strength" Isa. 30:15. It is one thing to be lazy and another to rest. There is also a great difference between constant apprehension, nervous busyness, and a Spirit-controlled activity. In the second we are working with God, having Him do His work though us in His timing. In the first it is all about ourselves.The infinite difference between Christ and self. I once knew a Christian man who every time I saw him and I'd ask how are you; he would reply "busy busy"; I felt for him, thinking he must be missing seeing the Lord's Spirit work in his life, lost in self acquisition the busy preoccupation and application of the worlds goods to his life. I used to feel sorry for my self spending so much time alone and in worry, with much time on my hands, no longer pulling the handle of the financial slot machine which so occupied my thoughts. Now I see my loneliness and dependence as a gift from God and have discovered His abundant supply, a time to rest in His Word and contemplate spiritual truth, a restful activity lived in the power of eternity provided to me and you by a realization of Christ as life and heaven as our current dwelling place.
When we work with God it is not in partnership each contributing their share. Rather it is a position of subordination we must take, we cooperate with His eternal plan. Jesus is our example here He depended entirely upon the Father for all His words and all His works. In other words as He Himself said "we can do nothing of ourselves". If we live and function with ourselves in mind it is only sin that we accomplish, for the natural man is only and constantly sinful in and of himself. That is a life of self effort not faith, a life not resting in God's provision but worldly activity, really of no value except here, not any glory to the God who sent His Son to the earth to save us from dwelling in its sin as a residence. How then my friends do we find the sanctified place, the new residence and come to be aware of the eternal power we have as a gift from God in knowing our heavenly position? The answer is: just in proportion as we yield ourselves as a truly passive instrument resting in the arms of The Father for all that we might acquire or need; we by that power, realized of faith, become a active new instrument of His will and power. The bottom line my friends, as I am learning: it is God's gift of a quiet passivity a heartfelt image of our presence in Christ, a lack of expectation of any true and lasting value in that which we acquire here where we will most completely realize the deepest experience of what the Christian life really is all about! A life of restful activity.
No comments:
Post a Comment