Not my will, but your will Lord.

Father, I am reminded today that my struggles are also yours, that you have promised to walk me through the valleys, enabling me to see the flowers along the way.  Right now I am not seeing the flowers, help me to set my eyes on you today and not on my circumstances.

Manipulated/Manipulate

I have been doing a rewind of my life of sorts and pretty sure that I have manipulated as much if not more than I have been manipulated.  How that changes is not me trying to stop, but Christ expanding in me.  My willingness to seek Him, or if you prefer to yield to Him in each situation He becomes more and THANKFULLY I become less. 

New Lessons on the road

Today I was re reading a book by Wayne Jacobson, or rather my girlfriend was reading to me.(I broke my glasses so she had to read.) In the book a conversation ensues regarding trusting God to move in our life not as we would like Him to, but allowing Him to move where He will.   As I go through this season in my life, I am learning that the kind of trust He works out in us has me often saying.....ow, ow, ow, ouch.  Yet when I come through it having trusted Him, I see that the ow's are now ah~.......

Transformed in His image, not our work but His work in us.

Lately I have begun to notice a change, slow yet steadily something inside of me has been shifting these past few years.  It has only been in retrospect that I have been able to have the eyes to see what He is doing in me.   Like a window glass that has been fogged over, I have viewed circumstances in my life, constantly trying to wipe them clean so I can see where I am going, never realizing that God may not have wanted me to see, but rather wanted me to trust in Him to "walk me through".

I have always been a "loving" person, or so I thought.  I was the first kid to give you a hug when you came in the door, the first one to ask "How are you?" when I saw you, often not really wanting to know how you really were. The frst to give you advice when I saw you needed it, even without your asking,  The first to scream "not fair", according to  my own sense of fairness.  And sadly the first to judge you, while not really "judging you."  I was what a friend of mine would call a Pharasie of Pharasies.  Oh, you never would have known that I was, I was adept and practiced in my "legalism".  Hiding behind my "outward good deeds" and my easy going smile all the while I was secretly checking to see if you were "a good influence" or not.

Where did this "philosphy" come from, was it learned over time? was I born like this?  I believe the answers are a little of both.  Regardless of what I think, I have seen Jesus start to take shape in my life over these last few years, wiping the glass clean for me, not to see where I am going, but to see where I have been.

I am going to use the blog as a journal and maybe a sounding board where He and I can start to unravel some of the work He has been doing in me. One of my favorite scriptures is Romans 12:2, and in the Message the translation seems to capture, for me at least, what He has been doing all along with me and in me.

Romans 12:2   (The Message)

Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.