I love this group! xxxooo Many things that are discussed here stay with me. I think in part, because they come from a people who desire to serve the LORD and are guided by the quiet peacefulness of the Holy Spirit. I received this daily devotion in my email today and remembered this thread and the question I have pondered for the almost seven months since that time.
Daily devotions for 09-29-2005:
Title: Maybe This Year...?
Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
"I hardly know where to start," a letter begins. "My story is not one involving men. That's the problem. Male companionship seems not to be found, and, I fear, may never be found. They never ask me out twice. I'm always 'dumped.' The problem is I want a relationship. I have this overwhelming desire...."
Someone else said to me, "I fell deeply in love. He fell deeply in love, too--with someone else."
Another letter tells of the agonized yearning of one couple for a child. Since God has not removed the desire, they ask, may we not conclude that He wants us to employ whatever means we can (e.g., in vitro fertilization) in order to have a child?
God's not having taken away a perfectly normal human desire does not by any means indicate that we are free to pursue its fulfillment in any way we choose. A woman who had, after years of struggles, quickly lost sixty pounds told me that she had been expecting God to take away her appetite. When she realized He did not intend to
do so (she had been asking for the removal of our God-given protection from starvation!), she stopped gratifying that appetite in the wrong ways.
Will the young woman find a mate? Will the couple have a child? Maybe this year will be the year of desire fulfilled. Perhaps, on the other hand, it will be the year of desire radically transformed, the year of finding, as we have perhaps not yet truly found, Christ to be the All-Sufficient One, Christ the "deep, sweet well of Love."
"Why won't God let someone into my life? I feel left out, abandoned. When will it be my turn?" The petulant letter goes on. "I feel deprived! Will He deny me the one small desire of my heart? Is it too big a treasure to ask? I sit in torture and dismay."
Life is likely to continue to hold many forms of torture and dismay for that unhappy person and for all who refuse to receive with thanksgiving instead of complaint the place in life God has chosen for them. The torture is self-inflicted, for God has not rejected their prayers. He knows better than any of us do what furthers our salvation. Our true happiness is to be realized precisely through his refusals, which are always
mercies. His choice is flawlessly contrived to give the deepest kind of joy as soon as it is embraced.
Joseph Eliot, in the seventeenth century, said, "I need everything God gives me, and want [or feel the lack of] nothing He denies me."
In Moses' review of God's leading of the children of Israel he said,
2And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.
3 And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.
4 Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.
5 Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee.
6 Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.
7 For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;
8 A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;
9 A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. Deuteronomy 8
The cause of our discontent: We simply do not believe God. The wilderness experience leads to the Promised Land. It is the path God chose for us. His Word is established forever, and He tells us in a thousand ways that His will is our peace, His choices for us will lead to fulfillment and joy, the way of transgressors is hard. Do we suppose that we could find a better way than His?
One of George Eliot's characters says:
"You are seeking your own will, my daughter. You are seeking some good other than the law you are bound to obey. But how will you find good? It is not a thing of choice; it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience. I say again, man cannot choose his duties. You may choose to forsake your
duties, and choose not to have the sorrow they bring. But you will go forth, and what will you find, my daughter? Sorrow without duty--bitter herbs, and no bread with them."
Instead of seeing His everlasting love, tenderly bending down to our humanness, longing over each one of us with a father's speechless longing; we sometimes think of Him as indifferent, inaccessible, or just plain unfair.
The worst pains we experience are not those of the suffering itself but of our stubborn
resistance to it, our resolute insistence on our independence. To be "crucified with Christ" means what Oswald Chambers calls "breaking the husk" of that independence. "Has that break come?" he asks. "All the rest is pious fraud." And you and I know, in our heart of hearts, that that sword-thrust (so typical of Chambers!) is the straight truth.
If we reject this cross, we will not find it in this world again. Here is the opportunity
offered. Be patient. Wait on the Lord for whatever He appoints, wait quietly, wait
trustingly. He holds every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year in His hands. Thank Him in advance for what the future holds, for He is already there. The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. Psalm 16:5 Shall we not gladly say, "I'll take it, Lord! YES! I'll trust you for everything. Bless the Lord, O my soul!"
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