Planning For Tomorrow

We make all sorts of plans.  We plan our vacations, plan for retirement, plan our work schedule, plan when we will have kids, plan our class schedule and plan on getting our haircut.  We strategize how to succeed, how to invest, how to stay healthy and how to raise our children.  There is though only one strategy in the Kingdom of God and it is as simple as turning on your computer or starting your car.  In Jesus' final instructions before going to the Cross He provided the Disciples with the only plan He had for them to operate as children of God and succeed in what the Father had in store for them.    He put it metaphorically so that it would be clear as day to us what it was.  "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing". (John 15:4-5 NIV) Our laser-like attention and focus must be on this one effort.  Remain in Christ and let nothing take you from it.  Anything that distracts you from keeping your mind fixed on Christ must be hated with all the disgust you can muster.    It is not that we are to leave this world in abandonment to some monastery in the hills.  God never gave His disciples an assignment like that.  He left them in the hard scramble of life and did not pull them from it until He called them home.  It is in the crash of living that we are to remain in Christ and stay there in Him when anything from disaster to triumph arrives.   There is no panic or fear of "night" for the one whose mind is fixed on Christ.  We can be as peaceful as a cooing dove if we will do this one thing without fail.  Look to Christ in the earthquake and the storm, in the sunset and the gentle breeze.  Refuse to give in to the temptation to fuss about what you will wear or what you will eat or how mistreated you are but glue your mind to Christ and tomorrow will "take care of itself".

But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves.  For I will give you...   Luke 21:14-15 NIV

Undecided

It is one thing to choose Jesus Christ for your salvation; another matter altogether to decide He is Lord.  We circumvent the question  by passing over its implications.  Are we ready to pray a while longer with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane?  Do we have the heart for storing up in our own bodes the blows intended for Christ?  Have we really taken up the call to "make disciples of all nations"?  Is there a flinch, a hesitation to the demand to let the world run roughshod over us that we might be salty salt and a city on a hill?  It is a clear sign that we are not altogether given over to the determination that Jesus Christ is Lord over us when we get bent out of shape over how He has mistreated us, how He has mishandled us, how He has misappropriated our skills and talents.  "What a waste of my time or abilities", we whine .  "How foolish that I must endure this", we complain.  Are we ready to declare that Jesus Christ is Lord over us wherever He has us land and that the complaint we mutter over our trying circumstance is nothing but full out mutiny?  We certainly have a right, even as God's child, to be upset that we have not gotten a fair shake in life and that we deserve better treatment than we have received.  But we mustn't lie to ourselves that Christ is Lord over us.  He is not.  We have let our wounded ego get the upper hand.  If Christ wishes to crush us with troubles and disappointments that the sweetness of Him might seep out of us, then so be it.  He is Lord.  If wants to break apart our plans and aspirations that something of us that is altogether His might become consecrated bread for the world, then rejoice for He is Lord.  Once the boy gave Christ his loaves and fishes, they were God's to do with as He wished and it would have been a ridiculous absurdity for him to complain when the disciples gave some of that bread and fish to a neighbor he despised.  It was God's alone to dispense as He saw fit the moment the loaves and fishes were handed over to Christ.  Once you declare Jesus Christ is Lord, you are His to do with as He wishes so settle down and with the same faith you had at the beginning when you made your decision to give Him your life, hold to that decision now as you discover He really intends to do with you as HE intends.

...then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve… Joshua 24:15 NIV

Forgetting Where We Are

We have bought into the proposition that everything is natural and random, originating in the mindlessness of circumstance.  Even as far back as the exodus out of Egypt the presence and activity of God was lost on the exiting Israelites.  When Pharaoh and his army of charioteers barreled down upon the encamped Israelites, the half-crazed Hebrews lost their minds over the perceived danger they faced.  It was as if they had forgotten altogether the plagues upon the livestock and the deadly hailstorm and the deaths of the firstborn; all of which did not touch them but ripped into the Egyptians.  If the Israelites could be oblivious to the hand of God back then given their experience with His work, it is not unreasonable that this same sociological circumstance would be present today.  The mob reacts to every bit and parcel of circumstance as bad luck, good fortune or the natural outcome of hard work and ingenuity.  The Holy Spirit alone brings to light the absolute and constant interplay of God within our world.  If Israel could stare at the photograph of God's intervention and see nothing, how likely is it that we will see it.  We must rely upon Holy Spirit to part the curtain as it were and make it so we  recognize all the ways our Lord is working in and among us.  Only then can we rest peacefully as we do our work and make our plans and evaluate our situation.  Nothing frustrates our joy more than the blackened goggles we stretch across our eyes given us by Satan to block out our discernment of what is really happening.  Satan cannot inhibit our view of God; he can only encourage us to block Him out of our sight.  You must choose to see God right there with you when you drop the dinner on the floor or your stocks tumble off the table.  You can see Him if you will look with Holy Spirit fixing your mind on what it should be noticing.  The worst of your day is never lost in circumstance...it is just as surrounded by angels as the shepherds who watched their sheep at night.  At no point have you been overtaken by your troubles and hardships...you are in just as good a place as Israel standing before the Red Sea.

"...It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"   Exodus 14:12NIV