Try Outs: Determining God's Plan

You know when you are entertaining the idea of something and you know it's not God's plan but you convince yourself it could be? How stupid is that?

Do I not believe the Lord is capable of speaking clearly enough for me to understand?

Do I think God leads me to an open door blindfolded and then dips out, leaving me stranded?

Why do I think that feeling unsure means I should act on my ideas to determine the answer?

Where do you draw the line between acting foolishly and taking risks? What I've figured out, in my own limited realm of life, is to look at the motivation behind it. When it comes to taking risks, I usally feel fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of rejection, or loss of control.

When it comes to acting foolish, I tend to feel like I might be missing out on something. Or, it just looks like fun. That stems from not trusting that the Lord always knows what's best for me. I feel like God's best is no fun. I feel my best is better than His best. How do you out-best The Best?

I don't have the formula for determining God's will for your life but trying something out usually doesn't work. If God said it, you don't have to try it out. If you feel like trying it out to see what it's like, then the Lord hasn't spoken yet. Divine declarations kinda take the guessing out of the picture.

Shooting Up

"Our days on earth are like grass; like
wildflowers, we bloom and die. The
wind blows, and we are gone- as though we
had never been here. But the love of
the Lord remains forever with those who fear Him."

Psalm 103.16-17 NLT

Nothing I do will last! I can leave no legacy. The only thing that lasts is God's love. No good deeds, no good reputation, no life-changing event lasts the test of time. Only the love of the Lord lasts. The only effect I can ever hope to have on eternity is to plant and water the seed of His love.

I think of it like being a syringe. Injecting God's love into everything I come into contact with- sometimes the injection brings healing, sometimes protection, sometimes drawing the disease itself out.

The syringe can affect nothing outside of itself, it can only take what it has and use it. It doesn't spend all it's time trying to fill itself up.The syringe doesn't decide what or how much goes into it. It simply seeks the right place to inject and fulfills its purpose continuously.

More importantly, it does not judge the one needing the injection. Injections are limitless. Regardless of the need, the syringe performs.

I'm not the cure- just the tool being used to bring the cure. I'm not the miracle, it's the skill of the hands who hold the syringe. It's not the syringe that lasts, but the healing that the syringe brings.

Heaviness

This came to me in church yesterday.

There are times we feel so heavy, the weight of the world literally on our shoulders. We struggle to carry it, to stand, to even kneel with it.

This creates the opportunity for intimacy with the Lord. It can be an invitation to Him to literally come between us and the weight. His body covering mine, He shoulders the burden. He carries the weight as He carries me. His shoulders bear the weight, my shoulders bear the glory of intimacy with Him.

Heaviness breeds initmacy.