Monday, October 28, 2013

Getting Out of the Way of God’s Will

STUMBLING BLOCKS were common for the Jews in struggling to allow a new thing of God – the salvation of Gentiles – in the early church. This sort of stumbling block proved to be a nemesis that would put many Jews further behind the Gentile number in terms of faith. In real terms, those who started out as “The Elect” quickly were becoming the disqualified for the effect of the stumbling blocks to their faith.
We, too, are faced with many and various potential stumbling blocks – to both faith and obedience.
We will too often become our own stumbling block, falling over ourselves as we wrestle with our pride, envy, and lack of diligence, etc. God has an infinitely better plan for us than we can conjure or establish, yet we are the ones who can sabotage that plan for God’s purposes quicker than even look at another person.
Too often in my own life have I found myself putting my foot in my mouth, or going ahead of God, or doing things I haven’t needed to do. So many times I’ve lacked the plain wisdom to get out of my own way. God guides us to better outcomes. By a steady and obedient diligence we can get out of our own way.
Getting out of our own way is getting out of God’s way, so the purposes of God might be established through us unto all of life.
God seeks willing compatriots of the charge he is bellowing through eternity – consistently, through creation, to allow God room to move and operate. The biggest of these seems the matter of combining our thoughts on love and the want for everyone’s best, with the will of God as it’s manifest in and through us.
Getting Out of Our Way & Getting Out of the Way of God’s Will
The easiest way in the bringing of God’s will,
To bear over air, land, and sea,
Is the giving up of any claim we may have,
By just letting the world just be!
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There are so many things that frustrate and anger us about our world – but almost every frustration distracts us from what might be done to help. Attending to God’s will is, at first, a solemn and cheerful surrender.

Being in the position of real use is being in the position of real surrender.
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The more we can let the world be as it is, not getting frustrated by it, the more we may be of use by God by getting out of our own way, and out of the way of the will of God.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

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