November 26, 2013

If we had known, if we had any idea of the ways of God when we first believed, maybe… just maybe we would not have made so many mistakes. All the signs were there. God was even speaking to us through His word but we were not listening. We thought we knew the way. Then we found out that, Phil 2:13, “… it is God which worketh in [us] both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Knowing this is one thing, but living it is another. It would take some years and the work of the cross and the work of the Holy Spirit to make this part of our experience. But we had to go through the failures. We had to go through the disappointments, the letting of self down, and letting other folk down. We had to start over and over again to learn that in self we can do nothing. We had to be broken from the bondage of people and self, probably the greatest of sins, before we realized the way that God wanted us to go. Nothing we could learn from a book, nor a school setting, but we had to go through it. We lived trapped in the world, and now we know that only the word of God could free us, only the word of God could bring us out. The bottom line, we had to learn how to turn our lives over to God completely, and to trust God and His word. We had to learn that all God wanted from us was an obedient heart, a heart filled with faith and a burning desire to do His will.