A TIMELY REMINDER

"I will praise You, for I am fearfully and 

wonderfully made... Your eyes saw my 

substance, being yet unformed, And in 

your book they all were written. The 

days fashioned for me, When as yet 

there were none of them." 

(Psalm 139:14a, 16)

Timely reminder from a post I wrote on my other blog many years ago A Reminder To Me (And To You Too If You Need It).

It's a great little story about contentment from my Streams in The Desert devotional   that I had shared to Facebook and that came up in my FB memories today. 

A king goes into his garden one morning and finds everything withered and dying.  He starts asking the plants what the problem is. The oak says it doesn't want to live any more because it's not tall and beautiful like the pine tree, the pine tree is upset because it can't bear grapes like the grapevine, the grapevine bemoans the fact that that it doesn't produce fruit as large as the peaches on the peach tree, the geranium is disheartened because it's not tall and fragrant like the lilac, and so on it goes throughout the garden until the king gets to the little violet and and comments on how happy he is to see at least one flower bright and perky.  To which the violet responds, "I know I'm small, yet I thought if you wanted an oak or a pine or a peach tree or even a lilac, you would have planted one. Since I knew you wanted a violet, I'm determined to be the best little violet I can be."

What a great reminder that God loves me just as I am, and that I'm a Divine original (which you are too) created for a special purpose that no one else can fulfill. Summed up so beautifully in the little poem at the end of the devotional:

Others may do a greater work,

But you have your part to do;

And no one in all God's family 

Can do it as well as you.

WHEN I CAN'T, GOD CAN

Now all glory to God, who is able,

through his mighty power at work

within us, to accomplish infinitely

more than we might ask or think.

(Ephesians 3:20, NLT)

Every year our church starts out the year with 21 days of prayer and fasting (not necessarily from food). This year we've been learning how to pray through the Psalms, and every morning at 7:00 AM, there's been an interactive devotional on Facebook led by one of the pastors. Although a replay is available for later, it is only actually interactive for those who watch live, so I've been getting up much earlier than normal.

At first it was really hard because I'm not an early riser, and also because it doubles, and sometimes even triples my usual morning quiet time, getting the rest of my day off to a very late start. As a result, instead of trying to be in control of my day my way, I've had to trust the Lord to enable me to get everything done I need to do in much less time than I normally have to do it in and that never seems to be enough either.

Amazingly, as I relinquish my day to Him, trust Him to order my steps and orchestrate my time, and am obedient to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, I've been able to accomplish a lot more and with a lot less stress. I feel myself drawing closer to Him than I have in a long while and never realized how much I've missed it.

Today was almost like a throwback to something that happened many years ago (documented here) when the Lord revealed to me that even though He is invisible, He could still teach me how to do anything I thought I needed a human person for, and do it even better.

For weeks I've been struggling with a book cover template that I couldn't figure out how to get to do what I needed. My daughter tried to help me, but she couldn't figure it out either, and I had already exhausted all other sources I thought could show me how to get it to work. Finally, I decided to start over from scratch, but that didn't work either, despite all my prayers.

Then, suddenly, when I was about to give up, ideas started to flow, and step by improvised step, the Holy Spirit led me through a complex way of getting around it that I most definitely could never have come up with on my own. 

RANDOM MUSINGS ABOUT TRUSTING GOD AND ABOUT THE PAST

Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do

not depend on your own understanding.

Seek his will in all you do, and he will

show you which path to take.

(Proverbs 3:5-6, NLT)

The old year ended with some unexpected sad surprises that reminded me for the millionth time not to take things for granted.

Going into the new year my greatest desire is to be able to be totally yielded to the Lord and trust Him with the things that concern me the most, to be sensitive to the promptings of His Holy Spirit and to let Him guide me in the way I should go instead of relying on my own intellect or trying to be in control of my circumstances.

With some doubts and mixed feelings, I decided to start the year by doing the Draw the Circle prayer challenge again even though I don't have anyone to do it with this time around and the instructions say it should not be done alone.

One good thing that has already come out of it are the reminders at the end of Day 1 of things not to do that I have done many times in the past, and that have led to disappointment, frustration, and in some cases pain and heartache. The two that were the most convicting were: "Don't try to manufacture  your own miracles," and "Don't try to do God's job for Him." 

Trusting God means not making assumptions about how He will answer prayer, or having expectations as to how or where His help will come from. I've done that many times as well, especially when I've had a financial need, and then been frustrated and disappointed when it didn't happen the way I anticipated it would. 

Finally, I'm getting it through my head that what I was doing was not really trust. I was putting God in a box and trusting in a source He may or may not have chosen to use instead of in Him alone. He has never failed me yet, and most times the source and timing were not at all what I expected it to be.

Another area I need to be open and yielded to the Lord in, is in how He chooses to use me--even at this late stage of my life--and not have expectations or make assumptions. That never worked out the way I thought it would either. 

I remember how early in my walk I wanted to be involved in a music ministry and tried to make it happen, and then felt devastated when it didn't. My attempts at leading Bible studies or sharing my testimony did not work out the way I expected or wanted either, nor has my desire to make a difference in people's lives through my writing. But maybe, unbeknownst to me, someone has been touched, and that was part of God's purpose and plan, and all He expected of me, and if so, that's all that really matters.