Words Of Encouragement For Your Day (Friday 07/13/2012)

I am Finally Letting Go; So I Can Let God Have His Way

Ephesians 4:22-24 New Living Translation (NLT)

²² throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. ²³ Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. ²⁴ Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.

            I have heard it said that the character definition of insanity is doing something the same way and expecting that the results will be different.  It never ceases to amaze me that when I look over my life I have made some of the same mistakes more than once. I was determined to get’er done my way or in my timing.  Even understanding the principles of God and understanding that I was supposed to be telling God “not my will but yours be done” and still doing it my way, and ending up frustrated because nothing has changed and things are still not moving or progressing the way that we understand that they should. This is like looking at an item that you know is too heavy and being determined to move it any way.  You approach it and try to pull it, without success.  Then you may grab it to try to drag it, when that radiating pain shoots through you back you realize that isn’t working either; then for some insane reason you believe that if you place your back against it and try to bully it by pushing your body weight into it, it might move.  But again “Epic Fail!”  The task is too much and too hard to be done alone, or to do our way.

            This is what our life is, it is too hard and too much to do alone, but yet we insist on playing Frank Sinatra and doing it our way. We refuse to renew our mind and our spirit and do it God’s way.  We rather appease our ego, and our flesh rather than surrender to God and allow Him to become the dominate part of our lives that can and will lead us into “All Truth,”  We can undoubtedly be kind of silly sometimes; we can see we are all dirty and living in a hog pen, and know all the while we have a Father who can comfort us and provide for us, but instead of shaking off the mud and allowing God to clean us up inside and out, we rather take one more turn in the mud thinking that after all the mud is cool, not realizing that we are filthy and the longer we roll in the mud the dirtier we get and the harder it is for us to come clean.  It is only when we realize that the pig pen is what it really is, a smelly, nasty, lonely place and full of hogs that will trample us and given the opportunity harm us and even kill us, do we see the need to let go of us and our way.  For some of us it is about getting caught in the hog pen, and people really seeing what we have fallen to that causes us to want to get out, and let go and let God, have His way with us.

            So my question is how days will you have to find yourself rolling in the pig pen before you see that your ways, ideas, attitudes, perspectives got you there to begin with?  God has so much for us, but we cannot have His best if we are giving Him, our worse.  It is the Spirit of God in us that will bear witness to the Spirit of God.  When we lean NOT to our own understanding, and realize that we have to be renewed, revived, revitalized, recreated do we let go of all that “we have made us,” and allow God to make us over to what He needs for us to be; in order to get us to His intended, purposeful place!  Remember life is like Burger King, we can have it our way, but we soon find out we seldom get what is on the picture or what we paid for.  But with God we always get just what “He” paid for!