Exploring His Wonders

God will take you where you haven't intended to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own.

A note on life, and what God is teaching me.

Sunday morning my pastor preached on how life falls apart without Jesus, and how Jesus holds everything together. He used this clip as a sermon illustration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4zgJXPpI4
I had no idea how much God was wanting to teach me about Him and my dependency on Him.

• That Jesus, by definition, is the source of everything
• He holds everything together
• Salvation come by dependency on Christ
• Christlikeness equals growing in dependency
• It is the Spirit’s role to help you be more dependent
• You can do nothing apart from dependency
• God loves dependency

Jesus is full of infinite power. Our problem is not that he is insufficient; our problem is that we are too self-sufficient! And the sooner we realize that we need his help, the better.

This week, He has taught me this:

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness." (James 1:2)
The way we respond to difficulty reveals what is important to us.
How much more would we rather remain comfortable than Holy, or affirmed by people than to live in a way that is pleasing to Him.
Lord forgive me for many times when I am dissatisfied with your grace, and give way to thinking my way is better than your way.
Even chaos is ruled by the God of grace. What does the response of our hearts to difficulty reveal about what is actually functionally ruling our hearts?
Perhaps we do not take joy in the face of difficulty because our agenda for our life is different than the agenda of our Redeemer.
How high on our values system is a life that in Gods eyes is holy?
It is only when I remain under the heat of those difficulties that I begin to recieve the transforming grace that is the purpose of these difficulties.

But I must be careful to not let bad attitudes creep into my life and bring me down, for when I do. I begin to question the goodness of God and to question if He is as good as the Bible says he is. This gives me an attitude of impatience and irritability. These attitudes move into bad habits and those habits turn into a backing away from Gods call to me . I begin to feel like my prayer isn't doing anything and back away from the daily reading of His word. This gives me reasons to not attend weekly worship services or small group studies. I then back away from that fixed direction and firm purpose God has established for my life, resulting in a coldness to Christ and an acceptance of the distance between me and my Redeemer.

"And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be(I) perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." (James1:3)

Steadfastness is a call even in moments of difficulty, so that the grace of testing may have its full effect so that we may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing. Your Redeemer will not quit until you are in full possession of everything He deemed to give you when he sent his son to live and die and rise again. There will be a day when you stand before Him and lack nothing and will be completely and fully formed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

However, I am not there yet. So the work of refinement will go on. I will encounter things I did not wish for as a part of Gods grace to transform me.
Therefore, I will count it all joy, He will work in the small and large moments to complete that work of transforming grace.