One of the many traps that humans fall into is the belief that God needs our advice on how to do His job.
The truth is that we’ve all slipped into prideful moments of thinking that God needed to be doing (fill in the blank) for our lives or our congregations rather than how He was or wasn’t helping us at the time.
We’re smart people, right? We know just what it takes to be the best person or congregation possible, right? We know what it takes to be successful in a publicly approved way, right? So that means that God should implement our to-do list for Him, right?
“Lord, I need you to change my spouse’s heart toward church and toward me so that my life can be happier…”
“Lord, this job stinks and I don’t understand why you haven’t answered my prayer to get a new job that would remind me that You are God and cause me less stress….”
“Lord, don’t you understand how stressful it is to put up with a rebellious adult child who lives for himself/herself? Why can’t you change our child’s heart so that my spouse and I don’t argue so much over who should be saying what?”
“Lord, why aren’t You having more influence with those other church members who need to be doing more around here? Do you need to change Your approach?”
The list could go on and on, but you get the point, I’m sure.
We’re tempted by our selfish nature to desire a god who functions as a compliant Genie and when He doesn’t, we gripe.
The more we mature in faith, the less this happens, thankfully, and the more we realize OUR need to change.
For we increasingly understand that, even on our best days, our level of knowledge and wisdom is like a speck of sand compared to the solar system-sized level of knowledge and wisdom possessed by God.
Like the old hymn says, we are to trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus. Let’s just trust and obey.
You see, our life is a gift from Him. It was given so that His power might flow through us. And all praise for His blessings in our lives should flow to Him.
It’s all about Him. In fact, here’s the passage from my daily devotional reading that prompted the above Morning Devotion.
“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen” (Romans 11:34-36)
Like Paul wrote, “Amen!”
As always, I love you
Martin
