"Strengthen ye the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, 'Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come...He will come and save you.'" Isaiah 35:3, 4
The strength of the believer is the God in whom he or she trusts. I know that sounds basic, but it is the basics that we most often forget. Our strength and salvation is of the Lord, and nowhere else. Anything, no matter how practical, noble, logical, spiritual, or asinine, anything that distracts you from God is to your detriment.
You are not struggling to find a job in order to find a job; you are getting to know Him. You are not stressing over schoolwork just to stress over schoolwork; you are getting to know Him. You are not sick right now in order to find a cure; you are getting to know Him. Your marriage/relationship is not rocky right now so you can fix it; you are getting to know Him, and sometimes getting to know Him will involve finding the job, succeeding in the schoolwork, finding the cure, and fixing the relationship. Other times, however, it does not. The key is that those things do not become the thing that captures your full attention. Only God should arrest your gaze, only He is captivating, only He is your magnificent obsession. Everything else (when it becomes the thing) will drive you into the ditch.
The Lord knows we are easily distractable. The world is a noisy, attention getting (often ear-splitting) place. Learning to fully focus on God is all a part of living the life of faith. It will take strength, yes; but fortunately, you have the life of God living through you, and nothing is impossible anymore. As a learning experience, it does not matter if you get distracted (you will!), so long as you realize what's going on and refocus yourself. This realization comes when God gets your attention, and much His attention-getting hurts depends very much on your stubbornness to not realize what is happening. We may get so fixated on something other than Him that He must pry our fingers loose. Pry He will, however, and though it may hurt, it is for our good in the end.
"Death is God's delightful way of giving us life."
-Oswald Chambers
Lord, set me free
From all these things
That arrest my gaze.
Please captivate my soul...
-Jon Vowell
The strength of the believer is the God in whom he or she trusts. I know that sounds basic, but it is the basics that we most often forget. Our strength and salvation is of the Lord, and nowhere else. Anything, no matter how practical, noble, logical, spiritual, or asinine, anything that distracts you from God is to your detriment.
You are not struggling to find a job in order to find a job; you are getting to know Him. You are not stressing over schoolwork just to stress over schoolwork; you are getting to know Him. You are not sick right now in order to find a cure; you are getting to know Him. Your marriage/relationship is not rocky right now so you can fix it; you are getting to know Him, and sometimes getting to know Him will involve finding the job, succeeding in the schoolwork, finding the cure, and fixing the relationship. Other times, however, it does not. The key is that those things do not become the thing that captures your full attention. Only God should arrest your gaze, only He is captivating, only He is your magnificent obsession. Everything else (when it becomes the thing) will drive you into the ditch.
The Lord knows we are easily distractable. The world is a noisy, attention getting (often ear-splitting) place. Learning to fully focus on God is all a part of living the life of faith. It will take strength, yes; but fortunately, you have the life of God living through you, and nothing is impossible anymore. As a learning experience, it does not matter if you get distracted (you will!), so long as you realize what's going on and refocus yourself. This realization comes when God gets your attention, and much His attention-getting hurts depends very much on your stubbornness to not realize what is happening. We may get so fixated on something other than Him that He must pry our fingers loose. Pry He will, however, and though it may hurt, it is for our good in the end.
"Death is God's delightful way of giving us life."
-Oswald Chambers
Lord, set me free
From all these things
That arrest my gaze.
Please captivate my soul...
-Jon Vowell
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