Walking With God

Walking with God is risky business. The study of His Word and fellowship with Him demonstrates that He orchestrates every event, circumstance, and experience of life. He transforms life in a way that enables us to take the risks necessary to follow Him.

Risking is stepping into the unknown, but that which is completely known by God. Stepping into the unknown does not mean stepping into oblivion. It means stepping into the known will of God - something you may not see right now as tangible but something more real that life itself. It requires stepping into His hand - the trusted hand of a faithful friend.

Why does the Christian life involve risk? Because everything seems risky when our natural instincts are opposed. God's ways and thoughts are not our own. Often, the directions of His will seem unnatural and uncomfortable. That's because they are supernatural. The Spirit of God is the only one who can give us the power to complete them.

The more we rely on God alone in every aspect of life, the more we experience His power.

A Gentle Spirit, November 9

God's Without Reserve

They who are God's without reserve, are in every state content, for they will only what He wills, and desire to do for Him whatever He desires them to do; they strip themselves of everything, and in this nakedness find all things restored a hundredfold.

Streams In The Desert, January 7

Conformed To His Purpose

Jesus doesn't take us aside and explain things to us all the time; He explains things to us as we are able to understand them. The lives of others are examples for us, but God requires us to examine our own souls. It is slow work - so slow that it takes God all of time and eternity to make a man or woman conform to His purpose.

My Utmost For His Highest, January 12

Putting God First

What will it mean in practice for me to put God first? This much at least. The 101 things I have to do each day and the 101 demands on me which I know I must try to meet will all be approached as ventures of loving sacrifice to him, and I shall do the best I can in everything for his sake.

And then I shall find that, through the secret work of the Spirit which is known by its effects, my very purpose of pleasing God gives me new energy for all these tasks and relationships-energy which otherwise I could not have had. Self-absorbed resentments dissolve zest for life. Happiness in doing things and love for others grows great when God comes first.

In God's Presence April 17, J.I. Packer

Managing Our Schedule

Nobody is too good for the meanest service. One who worries about the loss of time that such petty, outward acts of helpfulness entail is usually taking the importance of his own career too solemnly. We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God...It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this, but actually they are disdaining God's crooked but straight path. It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.

Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoffer

Getting Unstuck

Every once in awhile in life, we get stuck spiritually. Sometimes, we are aware that we are stuck, but we do not know how to get moving again. Other times, our walk with God seems to be generally okay, but we have a nagging sense that things aren’t quite right, but we can’t pinpoint the exact problem. Then at times, we don’t even realize we are stuck. We have spent so long stalled out in a place that is unhealthy for us but that we have grown comfortable in. We lose interest in going forward, and we don’t even realize we stopped growing ages ago.

This is such a contrast to how many of us start out in our Christian walk. In the beginning, we turn to God for everything. We want to learn and grow so we seek Him regularly. We are so young in our faith that we depend on Him for everything.

What exactly leads us to getting stuck? Over time, a change can occur in our lives. Though we may have matured some in our faith, and have a solid foundation of knowledge about Christian things, we stop seeking God as much as we used to. We still want to walk with Him, but we depend less on Him and start relying on ourselves more and more. We begin trusting our own judgment and perspective about things more than God’s. We rely more on our own strength to get through hard times and do not seek the Lord’s strength to hold us up. Instead of praying for the small things our lives, we lift up only the big things that we really need God’s help with.

As a result of depending more on ourselves we grow further from God, and end up living our day-to-day life disconnected from Him. Instead of answering to Him, we start answer to ourselves. We begin to indulge attitudes and develop habits in our daily life that are unhealthy and ungodly. There is a noticeable lack of peace and joy within us. And our daily life grows more difficult, not because bad things are happening to us, but because we are relying on our self and all our flawed human wisdom to navigate through life instead of relying on God.

At this point, disillusionment often sets in. It starts to feel like God has let us down. We aren’t sure where He is or how He is working in our lives. Our prayers feel like they are bouncing off the ceiling and that God is not particularly interested in us anymore.

So how do we get unstuck in our spiritual lives? A great step is to start shifting our view of God. As Christians, we have a tendency to view God as a God of law, instead of a God of grace. A God of law says, “Do it yourself. Pull it together and then we will have a better relationship.” We believe we must get ourselves in shape so as to be worthy of a closer relationship with God.

So how should we view God? We should think of God as a God of grace, which is the opposite of the law. And what exactly is grace? Grace is unmerited favor from God that cannot be earned. A God of grace says to us “I will help you in all things. I will help you walk with me.” He desires good for us and is on our side. He wants to guide, teach, and mold us instead of us trying to figure it out on our own.

But we must also remember who we are in Christ in order to really understand grace. 2 Corinthians 5:21 states “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” When Jesus was crucified on the cross, our sin was poured out on Him. When we come to faith in Christ, He pours into us His righteousness. There is nothing we can do to earn that righteousness or be worthy of it. It is God bestowing unmerited favor upon us, and it is given freely as a gift out of God’s desire to reconcile us to Himself. God sees Christ’s righteousness in us instead of our sin when we accept Christ as our Savior.

In other words, it is like the student who wants to get an A in a subject in which God is the teacher. Under the law, the student must work and earn his A and any favor he might win from the teacher. Under grace, we no longer have to work to earn an A from God. He freely grants us an A and his favor because of Christ’s work on the cross and our belief in Him. Christ does the work for us. There is nothing we can do to get a higher grade or increase God’s favor toward us. It is a finished and fully completed work by Christ.

Walking in grace will help free us from any ruts in our spiritual life. We will experience a new freedom knowing that God is our help and hope, and that He is the source of all good things. Of course, we are not to take advantage of God’s grace by disobeying his commands and indulge in sin. Instead, out of our gratitude to God for His great grace our desire to serve and obey Him will increase and we will again move forward and grow in our walk with God.

By Taylor Martin Wise, Copyright 2009

Gratitude

Gratitude has made my life much happier. It has also acted as a magnet for blessings. The more grateful I've become, the more I've had to be grateful for.

An ancient prayer expresses this thanks: "Blessed art thou, O Lord, who givest us this bread and this wine, the fruit of man's labor." This prayer recognizes that our blessings depend in part on our labor: we shape ourselves, our world, and our history. But all, finally, is a gift of God, and we ourselves are the finest of His gifts. Our gift to God is our gratitude.

A Gentle Spirit, January 11

Service

Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion...Service is what I bring to the relationship and is the reflection of my identification with the nature of God. Service becomes a natural part of my life. God brings me into the proper relationship with Himself so that I can understand His call, and then I serve Him on my own out of a motivation of absolute love...The Son of God reveals Himself in Me, and out of devotion to Him service becomes my everyday way of life.

My Utmost For His Highest, January 17

Inauguration Day

Men come and go; leaders, teachers, thinkers speak and work for a season, and then fall silent and impotent. HE abides. They die, but HE lives. They are lights kindled, and, therefore, sooner or later quenched; but HE is the true light from which they draw all their brightness and HE shines forevermore.

Streams In The Desert, January 17

Choosing To Serve

The holidays are a busy time of year for everyone, and even busier if your home is a central spot for friends and family. For the first time this year, my home was the gathering place for my family. All the cooking and sleeping and socializing happened at my house, which of course meant a great deal of preparation, shopping, and cleaning beforehand.

During the planning stages, I considered how I would handle all the people in my house. Would I be helpful or irritable when a guest needed something? Would I be cheerful during our time together or exhausted by the end? Would I be a dictator or a servant?

Often times in daily life, we forget that we have many opportunities to choose our attitude toward others and the circumstances of our lives. Our natural tendency may be to complain and fuss and have a bad attitude when relationships or situations are not how we would wish, but we can choose to put our ill-tempered feelings aside and instead respond in word and deed as Jesus would have done.

Of course, choosing to act like Jesus is not always easy. At first, it is very difficult, because it is a discipline that must be practiced. Just as those of us who want to get in shape after the New Year will be successful if we develop new habits that become part of our lifestyle, so will we be successful imitating Jesus if we practice to such an extent that it becomes habit.

In the meantime, the Holy Spirit is within us cultivating our hearts so that responding like Jesus is not just a habit but second nature to us. We still at times have to make the choice to turn away from our old tendencies, but through the work of the Holy Spirit, our desire to please Christ and imitate Him is stronger than our desire to indulge our old habits.

And out of our desire to please Christ grows a sweet willingness within us to serve and help others, in order to lead them closer to Christ, and bring glory to Him.

The summer before my senior year of college, I traveled to France to do mission work. It was a stressful six weeks. Not only was the trip poorly run, but I did not speak the language and experienced a great deal of culture shock. We also had limited personal time, which was trying for me since I need quiet to recharge, because we were so busy trying to spread the gospel and reach French students.

Shortly after I returned home, I participated in a service project that consisted of offering household help to disabled senior citizens. My small team was assigned to help an elderly man who was mostly blind. When we arrived at his apartment, he listed off projects he needed done, and before I knew it, I had been assigned the worst job on the list, which was to clean his toilet.

I went to check the toilet, and it was pretty rough. It is quite a unique experience to clean a blind man’s toilet, and it takes a lot more elbow grease than would normally be required. The surprising part was that once I dove in and got started, it really wasn’t so bad, and I was even happy that the toilet was going to be really clean for him. Being happy and willing to perform a task like that was not in any way a typical reaction for me at that time in my life.

I believe I was able to respond that way because I had spent the previous six weeks in France learning the importance of putting my feelings and opinions aside and focus on what I was called to do that summer which was reach out, serve others, and spread the gospel. What I had been practicing was starting to turn into a habit.

John Henry Newman, an Anglican leader in nineteenth century England, said that “to take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once and for all: it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us.”

Tasteful or distasteful, we are called to serve and respond to others and the situations in our life as Jesus did. It is one important way in which we imitate Him. In Mark 10:45, Scripture says “for even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” God desires the same for us, and as our practice becomes habit, He develops within us the qualities that distinguished Jesus from others around Him. As those same qualities become a marker in our own life that we are followers of Christ, our life will have a sweet fragrance that will win the respect of unbelievers and point them to the Lord Jesus Christ.

By Taylor Martin Wise, Copyright 2009

Chiseling Our Souls

God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other sorts of affliction, as his chisel for sculpting our souls. Weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away.

Living with your complaint uncomplainingly, and remaining kind, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel less than good, is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace in your life.

In God's Presence by J.I. Packer, March 19

Looking Inwardly With Courage

We can only be used by God after we allow Him to show us the deep, hidden areas of our own character. It is astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves! We don't even recognize the envy, laziness, or pride within us when we see it. But Jesus will reveal to us everything we have held within ourselves before His grace began to work. How many of us have learned to look inwardly with courage?

We have to get rid of the idea that we understand ourselves. That is always the last bit of pride to go. The only One who understands us is God.

My Utmost For His Highest, January 12

Traveling Light

The Christian life is a climb. For Christians, keeping in shape spiritually and traveling light are important. To keep in shape spiritually, we need spiritual nourishment and exercise.

The definition of traveling light may vary from one individual to another. But most of us need to trim off some excess weight. We have too many social involvements, an overabundance of good but unnecessary meetings...remember the caution: "Beware of the bareness of a busy life." It is up to us to keep in shape and travel light.

A Gentle Spirit, January 2

Becoming Real

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath..."Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, and not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real...It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to those who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Improving Your Serve, by Chuck Swindoll

Our Most Exquisite Work

Sometimes it is very dark. We cannot understand what we are doing. We do not see the web we are weaving. We are not able to discover any beauty, any possible good in our experience. Yet if we are faithful and fail not and faint not, we shall some day know that the most exquisite work of all our life was done in those days when it was so dark.

If you are in the deep shadows because of some strange, mysterious providence, do not be afraid. Simply go on in faith and love, never doubting. God is watching, and He will bring good and beauty out of all your pain and tears.

Streams In The Desert, December 13

God And Grief

I sat at my desk recently trying to compose a condolence card to a dear friend of mine who lost a loved one. I considered all the usual phrases of kindness and compassion that people offer to others during times of grief, but none of them would do. They were all too shallow, too generic, and too simplistic. For how do you offer comfort to someone who has lost a child? How do you offer real solace to someone who has lost a loved one, or suffered a tragedy, or is burdened by a constant affliction?

I struggled to find the right words, and none were coming to me. Instead, my thoughts kept returning to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Mary has always stood out in the Bible as a model of submission to God’s will. Her reply in Luke 1:38 to the angel Gabriel to the news that she, a virgin, is pregnant with not only a child, but the Son of God is simply “I am the Lord’s servant…May it be to me as you have said.” Her faithfulness and complete trust in the Lord is inspiring.

Yet there is more to Mary’s story than her response to Gabriel. She is described as having “found favor with God.” In modern Christianity, the idea of God’s favor is often associated with success, prosperity, and good health. As Christians, we sometimes find ourselves working to gain favor from God through our actions or character development, and hope and pray we will be blessed by God materially and physically as a result.

But Mary’s life was not marked by material or physical blessings. In fact, much pain was brought into her life as a result of being favored by God. She was impregnated as a teenager out of wedlock, which carried the risk of being stoned for immorality. She delivered her child, the Savior of the world, in a dirty barn, surrounded by livestock. She was forced to flee her homeland, to protect her baby from those who were searching and hoping to kill him. And she watched as her perfect and sinless son was crucified on a cross at the young age of thirty - three years old.

Instead, Mary was blessed in different ways by being chosen to be the mother of the Son of God. Not only was she given a child, but also the gifts of motherhood and a family. And as much as those things filled her life with joy, or seemed specifically ordained by God for her life, they were still His to give and His to take away. Her joy did not stop God from removing what she most valued, in order to accomplish His purposes.

Despite the suffering she endured, God did not abandon Mary in her pain and grief. He gave her the opportunity to see Jesus’ gospel message begin to spread to the ends of the earth, and the gift of salvation offered to all men through her son’s death. He allowed her to see His purposes fulfilled, and that the death of her son was not wasted and the pain she felt was not in vain.

Just like Mary, God will show us His purposes when we lose something we hold dear. If we open our hearts, despite our anger and grief, and trust God, He will redeem our pain and suffering and show us how “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.“(Romans 8:28)

By Taylor Martin Wise, Copyright 2009