"Be thou exalted" (Psalm 21:13) is the language of victorious spiritual experience. It is a little key t0 unlock the door to great treasures of grace. It is central in the life of God in the soul. Let the seeking man reach a place where life and lips join to say continually, "Be thou exalted," and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once. His Christian life ceases to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes the very essence of simplicity. By the exercise of his will he has set his course, and on that course he will stay as if guided by an automatic pilot...He has met his life problem at its center, and everything else must follow along.
~A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
I have been reading a lot lately about the our tendency to compartmentalize our faith. In an effort to organize and balance our lives, we set aside a little bit of time in the mornings and on Sundays for God, and that is where our relationship with Him stops. Thus, we draw a dividing line between the spiritual and the secular that ought never be drawn. I really like how Kenneth Boa puts it in his book Conformed to His Image, "We must not view our life in Christ as merely an add-on to our life in this world; instead, we must learn to see it as the wellspring of our being and the meaning of our existence.”
When Christ has ceased to be at the center and "wellspring" of our lives, permeating even the minutest details, our hearts become disordered and out of focus, and a "thousand minor problems" begin to riddle us from all sides. Restore Christ to His rightful place at the center of our being, and, as Tozer says, we meet our problem at the center, and everything else must fall into place.
As I think about this, a couple of the Psalms of David come to mind.
"You number my wanderings;
Put my tears into Your bottle;
Are they not in Your book?"
Psalm 56:8
"How precious also are Your
thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would be more in number than
the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You."
Psalm 139:17-18
Even if we neglect to center our lives on the Lord, He is still lovingly watching over us. Just imagine, the God of all creation keeps your tears in a bottle--He knows exactly how many you've cried. We cannot even begin to number His thoughts of us. It is simply mind-boggling.
What I have experienced in my own life is that, no matter how wise I think I am, God is infinitely wiser (I mean, He's God, isn't He?). Each and every time I follow the Lord's leading I am glad I did. Whenever I decide to take my own advice over the prompting of the Spirit, dire consequences follow. It's inevitable. Keeping the Lord and His will central in my life is simply an invaluable practice. Unfortunately, I am still not very good at it! However, life provides one with many great opportunities to learn and grow in this area. ;)
So there you have it--my ponderings for the day.
Oh--I made a very cute pencil skirt a couple days ago! I just happened to have enough pretty wool fabric to put together a "Very Easy" Simplicity skirt from the 50's. I finished it in a few hours and wore it to work the next day. Looked great. I'll get some pics up soon!
Have a fantastic day!
~Bess
1 comment:
It's easy to push God into the corner when we're relying on ourselves. To be honest with you, I find that most days I can manage on my own. Except for the fact that small fact that without him I wouldn't exist. But besides that, there aren't many things I can't deal with by myself. But then of course something comes along and blows me out of the water, or rather into the water, and I need his saving arm to reach in and grab me. Maybe give me a little CPR, depending on how long I let myself drown before asking for help. The point is, it reminds me of something Miles J. Stanford said in that book you gave me "The Green Letters: Principles of Spiritual Growth."
"Faith is dependence upon God. And this God-dependence only begins when self-dependence ends. And self-dependence only comes to its end, with some of us, when sorrow, suffering, affliction, broken plans and hopes bring us to that place of self-helplessness and defeat."
He was actually quoting James McConkey.
Post a Comment