Freely God

I am a planner by nature, I like things to be clear and laid out. I like things to make sense. Anyone else with me on this? So I often find myself challenged to allow God to be freely God in my life. We are all so busy and in order to keep pace we try to make things orderly, make them sensible etc. However, I have learned that God does not fit into my pre-planned to do list. It isn't even necessarily intentional that I try to fit God in a box but I sure find myself confronting that often. How much freer would I be if I just took God at His word without trying to rationalize it or make it fit my understanding. How much heartache would I avoid?

One of satan's favorite tools to use is our own logic. He loves to get us using our rationale. In Genesis 2:15 we see that God tells Adam and Eve that they can not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil but in Genesis 3:1 when Satan questions what God has said Eve not only responds rationally she ends up adding to what God has said. Genesis 3:2 "And the woman said to the serpent. "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, "You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die." In getting her to rationalize the enemy gets her to apply what God said to what makes sense to her. If we can't eat it we should not touch it either. The trick here is that when she reaches out to pick the fruit she does not die so "rationally" if that part of God's instruction were wrong then the next part may be also. It lends credence to Satan's questioning what God says. The next thing you know she has broken covenant with God as had her husband.

The Bible says in Isaiah 55:9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." If we simply trust that God knows best we would respond very differently when we felt Him speak. We can only do this if we release our ideas of who God is and how He works. So often we ascribe things to Him from personal experience, from our relationship to our earthly father or simply by what "make sense" when in fact they are not a reflection of Him at all. It is when we hide our heart's in His Word, learn His character and know His eternally abiding love for us that we can trust that, though we may not understand, He is for us. I think of Job when he said "though he slay me, yet I will trust Him". What an awesome relationship he must have had with the Lord. It didn't matter what he was going through, what he lost, what he was facing he had unwavering faith that God was with Him.

What wonderful things can happen when we allow God to be freely God in our lives! There is a peace that passes all understanding that comes to our hearts. There is a freedom that we don't have to have it "all together". We don't have to know every detail of how things are going to work out, and in what order and what happens next. We get to do the one thing that God put us here for, we get to live and move and have our being in Him. There is also a clear path for Him to do anything that He desires to do in and through our lives. If we focus on our relationship with Him rather than on what He is doing, how is doing it and what he has planned next we will walk in the deepest understanding of Him. Ephesians 3:14 - 21 sums it up wonderfully;

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."