God shows His mercy in a lot of ways. And He shows His patience in even more. He patiently waits and watches as we finally get it together. He welcomes us even after we’ve lived in the world’s filth. And He loves us in the midst of our decisions to live in ways that are un-loving to Him.
As we sit and focus on us. He sits and watches over us, even in our selfishness. In the selfishness of our thoughts, decisions, and emotions He grants His divine mercy when we finally come out of it. And even before then.
Today I realized that a lot of times we pray that God be okay with the decisions we make. What we really should be praying for is that God gives us the strength to make decisions that are okay with Him.
I shouldn’t ask God to be okay with my decision to cut our one-on-one time short. I should ask God to strengthen me to say no to everything else that is going to get in the way of our time. I shouldn’t ask God to be okay with my decision to skip tithing when I should be asking for his guidance to tithe the amount that is okay with Him.
I’ve lived in a world where things have been backwards for too long. Sometimes I forget to approach things with the thought process that it is just as much spiritual as it is physical. I forget that God has to be everything about anything that I’m doing. Although I may not be the only one, I am the one who forgets this.
It’s a lot easier to pray for the job I want than it is to pray for the job that God can use me the most at. It’s a lot easier to pray that God give me a million dollars than it is to pray that God teach me how to budget. But, while it is easier, it is selfish. And as God has revealed to me, it turns out to not have been that much easier either.
So now what do I do? I pray that God retrains my life. Not just my spirit, not just my mind, not just my emotions, but my entire being. Because somehow, somewhere, it got mixed up.
It got mixed up in the worldliness. It got mixed up in immediate humanistic solutions. It got mixed up in the selfishness. And now it’s got to be fixed.
Because the truth is, when I make decisions that are okay with God, He stays God and I stay me. But when I make decisions and want God to be okay with what I decided to do, unconsciously, the roles are reversed. And any time you choose to use your own power instead of God’s, you choose weakness.
Today, I am making decisions that are okay with God, instead of asking Him to be okay with my decisions. On this day, I have chosen strength for the rest of my days.