His Own Purposes

Luke 18

“31 And taking the twelve, he said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. 32 For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. 33 And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.’ 34 But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.”

“God called Jesus Christ to what seemed unmitigated disaster…Jesus Christ’s life was an absolute failure from every standpoint but God’s. But what seemed failure from man’s standpoint was a tremendous triumph from God’s, because God’s purpose is never man’s purpose. There comes the baffling call of God in our lives also. The call of God can never be stated explicitly; it is implicit. The call of God is like the call of the sea, no one hears it but the one has the nature of the sea in him. It cannot be stated definitely what the call of God is to, because His call is to be in comradeship with Himself for His own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what He is after.”

I’ve recently begun to sometimes ask myself: “why are you praying this?” Do I really want more of God in my life, or do I just want the things He can give me? I have to question which is really more important to my heart: knowing God and His character, or Him answering my prayers, making my dreams about how I think my life should go come true. When was the last time I felt really good about saying “Alright God, have your way. I don’t care what it looks like but do it.” It’s a scary thing to let up our own purposes and our own visions of what God’s will looks like to truly allow Him reign over our actions, opinions, plans and reputations. His plans are not always going to look pretty or neat or have finite endings to them, but the process and the life that He leads us through through the trial is truly his objective, not the final product we look so forward to. And He can lead us because He Is Trusworthy. All He wants is our reliance upon Him; He asks our hearts without reservations (am I seeing a theme here?).