July 8 2018

"Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." Habakkuk 3:18

When the Galilean boy brought his bread to Jesus, what did Jesus do with it? He broke it. God will always break what is offered to Him, then He blesses and uses it to meet man's need. Is not this true of your experience and mine? You give yourself to the Lord, and all at once everything invariably goes so wrong that you are tempted to find fault with His ways. To persist in such an attitude is to be broken, yes indeed, but to what purpose? You have gone too far for the world to use you, but you have not gone far enough for God to use you. This is the tragedy of many Christians. Do we want him to use us? Then day by day let us go on giving to Him and not finding fault with His ways, but alternately accepting His handling and dealing with us with praise and expectation.

Today in the Church as the body of Christ, many there are that grumble and moan deep in their hearts. These should realise and know that it is God who is the one that is metering out to them all that comes to them in their environment. The things that are 'not good' have been allowed by God to draw us into a closer dependency on Him. Other things are ordered by God to break us of our love of self, our self-centredness and stubborn independence and our lack of fully trusting in Jesus as our life. No one really likes to be going through the direct dealings from the hand of the Living God; but this is necessary, as it is God's only way for us to grow in Christ and to be transformed into His likeness; which is after all, the type of person that we really want to be anyway. May we rejoice in the God of our salvation and praise Him, knowing that all these things are working together for our good and for His glory; shortly to be seen by others in us!

There are no short cuts to becoming a spiritual man. However, we can prolong the process by complaining and finding fault with God. We need a deep revelation of God's love for us so that we can know that indeed all things are working together for our good and God's glory.