Affected by God

Have you ever found yourself reading a powerful book and praying...I wish this could happen to me?  I wish I was in these situations, I wish had this faith.  I wish I would show that kind of love.  I wish I had that kind of compassion….  So often we see and read amazing things and we recognize them and we want them, but we fail to recognize them when they are played out in front of us.

I have found myself in this situation.  I will have been reading something that moves my soul.  Something that I know I should do, but I can't even imagine.  I envy the author for their great faith.  And then something happens around me.  A phone call.  A knock on the door.  Something.  And I am annoyed!  I am busy reading and this disturbance is interrupting me while I am having a moment with God.  Here I am before a chance to minister.  A chance to live out what has just amazed me so much, and I totally miss it, oblivious, because I am absorbed thinking about it.  The book in my hands suddenly becomes worthless, for while it is full of amazing thoughts it doesn't change my heart.

We are stuck in this mindset of affecting others.  We have this desire to be the catalyst of change.  And we will do it on our time.  We will change that person when we really feel like it.  We will worry about that person when we are finished worrying about ourselves.  In this scenario, we are the higher power.  We make the decisions.  We get the credit.  We are not accountable to anyone.

I would say that this is wrong.  I would say that rather then affecting others, we need to be affected.  But by God.  Rather then having this feeling that we need to motivate ourselves, we need to have the feeling that we need to surrender ourselves.  When we surrender ourselves to God, he moves us.  We are no longer anxious or self-conscious, for we are not the one in control. 

A lot of people don't like  this idea of allowing something to control them.  The irony is, that we are all controlled.  As much as we try to pretend that we live by our own power, we are all slave to something.  We see it often: someone is a slave to their emotions.  Someone is a slave to their appearance.  Someone is a slave to their children.  Someone is a slave to society.  It can be subtle. You can fool yourself into a guise of self-control, but you are still affected.  We are all affected by what's outside of us.

Except God.  He is constant.  God is eternal.  God is not affected.  He is always loving.  He is always just.  And he always hates sin.  It only makes sense as creation, to allow ourselves to be affected by the creator.

But we often get in the way.  We allow the flesh to take credit for the spirit.  While the spirit is being affected by God, the flesh is claiming its works for itself.  This is where I fall.  My flesh allows me to think that the great spiritual accomplishments God completes are of my own power.  These thoughts lead to ignoring the spirit and putting the flesh in a position of authority, and this leads to sin.  There is a constant state as a Christian that we must maintain.  Surrender.  We must die daily.  We must pick up our cross and follow Him.

To be continued...