Center: Mom (Hope Mills)
This past month has been filled with peace regarding my future days in this earthly realm. I do understand how precarious things are becoming and can’t deny God is on the move to very possibly wrap things up. In spite of my natural inclinations to try to prepare for all eventualities, I find myself almost unable to care.
Last weekend after considering several articles on swine flu, listening to speeches from the current government summit and partaking of numerous articles meant to make us wake up to what is happening in America, I threw up my hands and said, Lord it is certainly all out of control. So, I decided to go to the beach....lol My thinking was this fall sure could be a turning point for this sorry old world. If so, I would sure like to smell and feel the ocean before the storm hits……lol
The Lord woke me up early the next morning and reinforced that we should have a day at the beach…..I enjoyed the thirty minute drive to the Harbor House Café where I spent almost two hours reading from Lettie Cowan’s, “Streams in the Desert”…….. I found her book last year while sorting through some of my mother’s old things. Most of the pages were underlined and some had small notes in her handwriting. It seemed everything I read impacted me, as if mom and I were having breakfast together, sharing different parts of our life. I cried several times almost unaware of my surroundings. Yes, we both had come to understand, late in life, that God is in charge and that his plans are for our eventual GOOD. Regardless of the pain we each suffered. Finally, spent on the thoughts of our mutual struggle, my mind cleared of any lingering forebodings. I finished my beach adventure free from care.
This morning I found this by John Gavazzoni in one of Jan Antonsson writings…it drove home last weeks thoughts and reinforced my peace.......He wrote:
Gavazzoni~
"Daring to extrapolate the full implications of Jesus' statement,"Without Me, you can do nothing," I reached the conclusion years ago that the point of intersection of the sovereignty of God and the collective believers' subjective state is an intersection of the Father's decision to act, and our fully recognized state of utter helplessness until He does.
"I expect to see indication of the impending, final, consummate move of God in an accelerated realization of our poverty of spirit; that is, of having no autonomous spiritual resources in ourselves. As long as we imagine that God is awaiting our facilitating of His purpose, we deceive ourselves into thinking that we are not, in fact, spiritually bankrupt in and of ourselves and bereft of any ability to contribute to the doing of God.
"Nowhere are we told that we are to be God's helpers, but rather, "God is our help in time of need." But we must face how great our need is. Does the Lord simply step in to add His strength to ours? Is that the meaning of the Lord as our Helper? No, certainly not! He is the Helper of the utterly helpless, not of those who merely need Him to supercharge their efforts...
"There is no positive place in the administration of God for joint-enterprise; no place for, 'If you will do your part, God will do His'; 'God helps those who help themselves'; 'God is waiting for you to......'; 'You need to let God....';'
"The Lord has granted us in Christ a noncontributing, fully participating partnership in the fulfillment of His purpose for man for His glory, a glory that He freely gives by grace to us without any element of meriting the same. Thus, nothing can substitute for a good dose of failure to qualify one for this mode of participation. The world exalts those whom it judges to 'have the right stuff,' but it is very apparent in scripture's record of the history of the men and women within whom God worked, that their preparation for service brought them, not to a place where they said, 'I'm ready, Lord; I've got the right stuff,' but rather, if I may paraphrase a rhetorical collage of their combined attitude: 'What, me? You've got to be kidding, Lord. I don't have what it takes'." End Quote.
John has given us another excellent way to understand that everything we have and do is only by God's grace: "Grace is the gift of Christ, who exposes the gulf which separates God and man, and, by exposing it, bridges it." (Barth)
Love you and pray his keeping grace grows until we are aware it has no bounds, in our precious Lord Jesus……..
Joian
