I wonder quite often about the choices I make. The choices we make as a family each and every day. Are we doing the right thing? Are we doing the best thing? Do we really know what we are doing? How can we be doing whatever...better? Should we? Could we? Am I off track in what I understand God's Word is teaching? Are we the only ones who think like this? What will it cost us? And when I refer to cost...I am not referring to the financial aspect! Am I really willing to have it cost us...whatever?!
Last year, the Lord turned our world upside down, shook it up, and then set it down again.
He taught us that His ways are not our ways! His ways and times are above ours. And in His love, grace, and mercy, He brought us to this new year. What God did in 2010 forever changed us. It has changed how we think. It has changed how we view things. It has changed what is important to us. I take all the events of the last year, I take what I have been studying in my Bible, I take in what is happening all around me...and I ask again, "What are You trying to teach me, Lord? Are we understanding Your Word or are we totally missing something? What difference could we possibly make for You? We are willing...You have our attention...What do you want us to do? Can or should we do more?"
I have come to realize...that because of these changes...there have been other changes. And since He is the One who is in control, I am going to trust Him that these changes are for my benefit...even when I feel uncomfortable...convicted...alone.
This morning, as I finished studying the chapter in a Bible study I am doing, I looked up a verse in John 15...but I got side-tracked when I realized what passage I was in. So, I started at the beginning of the chapter...then kept reading...and I will have to finish the last question in the study later. My thought process changed...the verses grabbed my attention:
"Abide in me, and I in you," It is an imperative sentence...a command.
"I am the vine, ye are the branches:" This is a declarative sentence...telling us something.
"...for without me ye can do nothing."
Then comes something called a conditional conjunction...If. One clause of a sentence is dependent upon the other clause being possible.
"If a man abide not in me,"
"If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you,"
"If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love;"
"...that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."
"Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you."
"If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you."
"If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. "
"Remember....If they have persecuted me...if they have kept my saying..."
"If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin..."
"If I had not done among them the works which none other man did..."
And this is what filled my heart with peace and thankfulness today...verse 26-27...because I know what God has been doing in my life...in our lives...that make this part possible!
"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning."
And "If" I continue to abide in Him in obedience to His words, I can find joy in what He wants me to do each day...and His Spirit will lead in each decision I make. The only thing I need to worry about is what God is doing in me. If I am obeying Him...a condition of my heart...everything else falls into place! I needed to see that very clearly today. It's a good thing I learned my parts of speech and types of sentences years ago...comes in handy when studying the Bible!
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