Isaiah 55:6-7 (The Message Bible)
Seek God while He's here to be found, pray to Him while he's close at hand.
Let the wicked abandon their way of life and the evil their way of thinking. Let them come back to God, who is merciful, come back to our God, who is lavish with forgiveness.
I been thinking a lot about God lately.....
Trying to wrap my feeble brain around why some folks are ready to move from their addiction....
Why some aren't....
Why some seem so pliable and easily influenced by God's Holy Spirit to change their ways....
Why some seem so hard, stiff-necked, and rebellious to the point that they thumb their noses at God, proclaiming their own self sufficiency.
Years ago, when I first came to Rapha, I would try to pick the ones who came into the program that I thought were going to make it. The ones I thought were going to walk away from the program completely healed and ready to embrace this new way of living. Well, as it turns out, my ability to cull the whole bunch was not very good. In fact there wasn't any rhyme or reason I could see as to who would or would not find recovery.
I have seen a man with a Phd. become totally undone because God spoke to him. Literally spoke to him. This man, who was smarter than smart (his Phd. was in physics) did not believe in God. Went out of his way to tell everyone that he didn't believe, and that those of us who did were a bunch of backwards goobers living in the dark ages.
I'll never forget the day his world was unraveled by two words. He was the last one in the chow hall eating lunch. I was walking from my office to the classroom, when Ron stepped out on the porch of the chow hall, holding a chicken leg, with the strangest look on his face. He just stood there staring. I asked him if he was o.k.. No answer. Again I asked, "Ron are you o.k.?" Still no answer. Still staring out into space, Ron said, "He spoke to me....God spoke to me." When I asked him what God had said, Ron replied that God had said two simple words...."I'm real!" Ron was never the same after that. His arguments fell away under the weight of those two words. All doubt had been replaced by the hope and promise of hearing those two words.
The first two words of the verses from Isaiah I posted this morning are "SEEK GOD!" Seeking God can take many various forms. It can be a determination in the heart of someone desperate to connect with God. Or it can be like Ron who did not believe, but had put himself in a place (Rapha) where God was at work and speaking to hearts. See this is the hard thing we have trouble believing. That Ron, even with all his doubt and rebellion, would be a candidate for having an encounter with God.
At the same time, I have seen men who could not read or write...men who were crude and rude also be undone by an encounter with God. The one thing I've taken away from my own journey in recover is that God's ways are not like mine.
His thoughts are higher (way higher...I mean beyond the moon higher) than my mine. I think sometimes we forget who we are dealing with when it comes to God. I think maybe Isaiah 59:1 states it best....."Look! Listen! God's arm is not amputated---he can still save. God's ears are not stopped up---he can still hear." I know some folks don't want to hear it, but I'm going to say it anyway...."God is the answer to all our problems....God's presence in our lives ,as we turn will and life over to his care, is the only hope we have of experiencing real life. Life that can stand in the middle of our daily storms and battles and fill us with peace so that we can navigate the path. Life that transcends our own understanding. It's not the we have to understand the how's and why's of what we have found.....we simply have to live daily by faith.
Faith that tells me "God is who He claims to be...and God will do what He has promised He would do." How can I not rest and cease my own efforts to change me when I think on those words?
Maybe it's time we take a look at God's promises and start doing life in a different way.
What's the worse that could happen?
We just might find sobriety and real life in the process...
Have a great Thursday!
God on you..
mbb
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