Today’s post is an excerpt from Martha’s beautiful booklet, Surprised by God. May we all discovery our extraordinary God in our ordinary lives this weekend!
Finding God in the Ordinary
Chambers wrote: “Don’t insult God by despising His ordinary ways in your life by saying, ‘Those things are beneath me.’ God has no special line; anything that is ordinary and human is His line” (“Disciples Indeed” from The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers).
Someone once said to me, “I want to know your secrets of knowing God as you do.” I told her, “All that I know of God I learned in the trenches of ordinary life.”
The Lord revealed Himself. He nudged me toward a card game, and He also revealed His knowledge of me to me. If I hadn’t instinctively followed the Spirit, I would have missed His riches. I wouldn’t take anything for the adventure of it!
When you seek just to know God, you find Him in surprising places.
Our God is everywhere. He rules in every place where He seats us. The whole earth is full of His glory and everything in it and of it belongs to Him. If our eye is on Him, that which is darkness has no relevance. We look at darkness and imagine that our fear is valid and that our fear of darkness is faith. No, it isn’t.
God calls us to be in the light, to walk in the light, and then darkness will be evident. In the light we will know what to do about the darkness. And many times, we will simply leave it alone knowing and believing that it is irrelevant, already conquered. When you are moving in the Spirit of God, darkness is dispelled simply by His mysterious purpose and His conquering Presence.
Danger does not lie in things external. The danger is what nests inside of all humanity. Jesus said in Matthew 15:11,18-19: “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man…but the things that proceed out of the mouth…evil thoughts, murders, adulteries.” It is not what’s ‘out there’ that defiles, but what’s inside. And my ‘inside’ must be open to God’s ‘outside.’
An Ordinary Wonder
So that is what I ask for us…that we may see Him as He is and in all of His explosive wonder, to know Him as never before. May God bless this writing to you that we all may live in the childlike wonder of discovering our Most High God!
1 Thessalonians 5:23 Amplified
And may the God of peace Himself sanctify you through and through [separate you from profane things, make you pure and wholly consecrated to God]; and may our spirit and soul and body be preserved sound and complete [and found] blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah)…
Faithful is He who is calling you [to Himself] and utterly trustworthy, and He will also do it [fulfill His call by hallowing and keeping you.]
This is written as Paul’s prayer for the faithful Thessalonians, but it reveals the incredible ability of God’s great power to cause us, at the end, to meet our Lord Jesus Christ in full purity and wholeness! This is the amazing POSSIBILITY of our completion and the surprising ABILITY of God to perform it for us.
Our possibility. His ability. It remains only for us to believe this, because He said it, and then to…simply ask.
Halleluja! What a precious Abba we have, Thank you for the Wonderful Spirit of Truth Father.
He has often whispered to my heart on my complaints of very wicked things: “let it be to you as nothing…”
The joy of our Lord Jesus Christ is our strength indeed!
Dear Annalie, Your ‘whisper’ of the Voice of Jesus has impacted me and others. Thank you for sharing such an amazing and heavenly word. Truly evil is NOTHING while it tries to make us think it is SOMETHING.
Bless you dear one!
Dear Annalie, Your ‘whisper’ of the Voice of Jesus has impacted me and others. “let it be to you as nothing.”
Thank you for sharing such an amazing and heavenly word. Truly evil is NOTHING while it tries to make us think it is SOMETHING.
Bless you dear one!
“. . . His conquering Presence” — Martha, that is such a unique and powerful description. Focusing on and getting worked up about the darkness or evil around us (other than for reasons of prayer) would seem to ignore or make light of His triumph, not just of events but over our very self, where He wants us to delight in Him: the LIGHT of our salvation and “. . . live in the childlike wonder of discovering our Most High God!” What a marvel that this is His mandate, to live as little children and therefore, His ability to… Read more »
THank you Martha. Bless you all your weekend in the simpleness of Christ.
Oh Martha, what a precious, comforting post about HIS amazing “ABILITY of completing us……HIS TRUSTWORTHINESS, to perform it for us”. MAY GOD BLESS you and KEEP you for passing this brilliant unsurpassing truth on for us children, the sheep of HIS pasture.
“My inside must be open to God’s outside”……separating me from profane things,make me pure and wholly consecrated to God” YES and AMEN