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This quote spoke to me, taken from OZ Chambers. The great thing to remember is that we go up to Jerusalem to fulfil God's purpose, not our own. Naturally, our ambitions are our own; in the Christian life we have no aim of our own. There is so much said to-day about our decisions for Christ, our determination to be Christians, our decisions for this and that, but in the New Testament it is the aspect of God's compelling that is brought out. "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you." We are not taken up into conscious agreement with God's purpose, we are taken up into God's purpose without any consciousness at all. We have no conception of what God is aiming at, and as we go on it gets more and more vague. God's aim looks like missing the mark because we are too short sighted to see what He is aiming at. At the beginning of the Christian life we have our own ideas as to what God's purpose is - 'I am meant to go here or there,' 'God has called me to do this special work'; and we go and do the thing, and still the big compelling of God remains. The work we do is of no account, it is so much scaffolding compared with the big compelling of God. "He took unto Him the twelve," He takes us all the time. There is more than we have got at as yet.
Over and over the truth of His unconditional love for us has to become the fixed but fluidness to our purpose for being where we are, not where we want to be or do what we have determined is His call upon my life..it is NOT about me trying to fill that need apart from Him!
Rich
4 comments:
Excellent post, really truly excellent. I think it points out a lot of what we tend to miss when we talk about God's purpose. No, we don't know. We may never know. And it probably does not matter whether or not we know. I stumble into and through things that seem to have been put in my path for some seemingly divine purpose and what I get through them (usually situations where people I do not know all that well or sometimes at all need help that I have no idea how to give but the resources just show up on cue from all kinds of unexpected places), I am not even sure when I have been. But it's all okay. I feel the love of God in my life, so stumbling along in whatever direction I am nudged works fine for me. If God wanted me to do more than stumble, He would hold my hand more firmly, so I assume there is a purpose to the stumbling even.
Elizabeth,
Thanks for sharing what you liked about this piece as well as your comments.
This came to mind after reading what you said..."Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven."
Elizabeth,
I stumbled upon this and thought it fitting with our observations and involvement with Him in our daily living!
“If we are in communion with God and recognize that He is taking us into His purposes, we shall no longer try to find out what His purposes are. As we go on in the Christian life it gets simpler, because we are less inclined to say - Now why did God allow this and that? Behind the whole thing lies the compelling of God. "There's a divinity that shapes our ends." A Christian is one who trusts the wits and the wisdom of God, and not his own wits. If we have a purpose of our own, it destroys the simplicity and the leisureliness which ought to characterize the children of God.”
Thanks. I like this. (A while back I realized that I no longer feel the need to know why. That is a liberating feeling.)
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