I grew up with the story of Chicken Little running around exclaiming, "the sky is falling, the sky is falling." She told it to anyone who would listen. She did have something fall on her head but it wasn't the sky, it was an acorn. Big difference! We, are so given to this kind of perspective as humans aren't we? As I have said here many times, God has been about the business of busting my perspectives over the past six years. Just when I think possibly we are going to take a break....an acorn falls on my head! Often these perspective shifts are truths that I know and yet somehow they have not consistently marinated in my heart. If they have not taken up residence in my heart, I will not respond out of them. Instead, I am prone to run around and exclaim; "the sky is falling, the sky is falling."
We have acorns all around us that are hitting us on top of our heads, they force us to respond. To name a few, terrorism is rampant and appears to be loosed to do whatever it wills, slavery, sex trafficking, no water, no food, and our political conundrum, to name a few. Then we have our own personal acorns. These are the acorns that fall in our dailies. When one smacks us on our head it forces us to respond. The truth is we live in a very broken world. Sin broke everything! When we let our attention be captured by the brokenness it has the ability to drag us around, dictating how we will respond, think, and feel. But, we as God's people according to His great mercy have been given a living hope, this world is not our home. And though we live in the consequences of the brokenness, it does not have the power over us to dictate how we live. The acorns/trials that we find distressing us are used by God to proof our faith. (1 Peter 1:3-12) Fun? Not hardly.... Necessary? God said they were.... Worth it? Yes! I can be mad at the acorn for falling, let it drag me around, and or let it consume my thoughts and emotions, or I can let God use it to capture my thoughts and emotions to be conformed to His.
I was wrestling with my own acorn and asking God, "what do I do with this?" In His faithfulness He had Jim and I read our devo together this morning. I don't usually do this, but today I'm going to re-print the words we read. I pray they help some of you that are dealing with some brokenness in your lives and not knowing what to do with it.
Always learning....
Much love,
Kim
Excerpt from; New Morning Mercies, A Daily Gospel Devotional
"Living in this present broken world is designed by God to produce longing, readiness, and hope in God. It's not natural for us to think about our lives in this way, but the difficulties we all face in this broken world are not in the way of God's plan. No, they are part of it. The fallen world that is your address is not your address because he didn't think through his redemptive plan very well. You are living where you're living and facing what you're facing because that's exactly how God wanted it to be. The hardships that we all face between the "already" and the "not yet" are not a sign of the failure of God's redeeming work, but rather a very important tool of it.
What we are all going through right here, right now is a massive, progressive process of values clarification and heart protection. God is daily employing the brokenness of the present world to clarify your values. Why do you need this? You need it because you struggle in this life to remember what is truly important, that is, what God says is important. You and I place much more importance on things than they truly posses, and when we do so, these things begin to claim your heart allegiance. So God ordains for us to experience that physical things get old and break. The people in our lives fail us. Relationships sour and become painful. Our physical bodies weaken. Flowers die and food spoils. All of this is meant to teach us that these things are beautiful and enjoyable, but they cannot give us what we all long for--life.
In this world that is groaning, God is protecting our hearts. He is protecting us from us. Our hearts can be so fickle. We can worship God one day, only to turn and give the worship of our hearts to something else the next. So, in love, God lets pieces of the creation die in our hand so that increasingly we are freed from asking earth to give us what only he can give. He works through loss to protect us from giving our allegiance to things that will never, ever deliver what our hearts seek. This is all designed to deepen our love and worship of him. It is all crafted to propel the joy that we have in him. And in so doing, he is preparing us for that moment when we will be freed from this present travail and give all of our being to the worship of him forever and ever.
Your Lord knows that even as his child your heart is still prone to wander, so in tender patient grace he keeps you in a world that teaches you that he alone is worthy of the deepest, most worshipful allegiance of your heart."
We have acorns all around us that are hitting us on top of our heads, they force us to respond. To name a few, terrorism is rampant and appears to be loosed to do whatever it wills, slavery, sex trafficking, no water, no food, and our political conundrum, to name a few. Then we have our own personal acorns. These are the acorns that fall in our dailies. When one smacks us on our head it forces us to respond. The truth is we live in a very broken world. Sin broke everything! When we let our attention be captured by the brokenness it has the ability to drag us around, dictating how we will respond, think, and feel. But, we as God's people according to His great mercy have been given a living hope, this world is not our home. And though we live in the consequences of the brokenness, it does not have the power over us to dictate how we live. The acorns/trials that we find distressing us are used by God to proof our faith. (1 Peter 1:3-12) Fun? Not hardly.... Necessary? God said they were.... Worth it? Yes! I can be mad at the acorn for falling, let it drag me around, and or let it consume my thoughts and emotions, or I can let God use it to capture my thoughts and emotions to be conformed to His.
I was wrestling with my own acorn and asking God, "what do I do with this?" In His faithfulness He had Jim and I read our devo together this morning. I don't usually do this, but today I'm going to re-print the words we read. I pray they help some of you that are dealing with some brokenness in your lives and not knowing what to do with it.
Always learning....
Much love,
Kim
Excerpt from; New Morning Mercies, A Daily Gospel Devotional
"Living in this present broken world is designed by God to produce longing, readiness, and hope in God. It's not natural for us to think about our lives in this way, but the difficulties we all face in this broken world are not in the way of God's plan. No, they are part of it. The fallen world that is your address is not your address because he didn't think through his redemptive plan very well. You are living where you're living and facing what you're facing because that's exactly how God wanted it to be. The hardships that we all face between the "already" and the "not yet" are not a sign of the failure of God's redeeming work, but rather a very important tool of it.
What we are all going through right here, right now is a massive, progressive process of values clarification and heart protection. God is daily employing the brokenness of the present world to clarify your values. Why do you need this? You need it because you struggle in this life to remember what is truly important, that is, what God says is important. You and I place much more importance on things than they truly posses, and when we do so, these things begin to claim your heart allegiance. So God ordains for us to experience that physical things get old and break. The people in our lives fail us. Relationships sour and become painful. Our physical bodies weaken. Flowers die and food spoils. All of this is meant to teach us that these things are beautiful and enjoyable, but they cannot give us what we all long for--life.
In this world that is groaning, God is protecting our hearts. He is protecting us from us. Our hearts can be so fickle. We can worship God one day, only to turn and give the worship of our hearts to something else the next. So, in love, God lets pieces of the creation die in our hand so that increasingly we are freed from asking earth to give us what only he can give. He works through loss to protect us from giving our allegiance to things that will never, ever deliver what our hearts seek. This is all designed to deepen our love and worship of him. It is all crafted to propel the joy that we have in him. And in so doing, he is preparing us for that moment when we will be freed from this present travail and give all of our being to the worship of him forever and ever.
Your Lord knows that even as his child your heart is still prone to wander, so in tender patient grace he keeps you in a world that teaches you that he alone is worthy of the deepest, most worshipful allegiance of your heart."
