Confession. Yesterday Kelly and I skipped church and liked it. There are times where it’s better to step back from the normal routine and encounter God in a different context, so we stayed home and spent time together, journaled, prayed, worshiped, and watched this sermon from Graham Cooke. We both came away from the two hours or so we spent together in the Lord’s presence thoroughly refreshed, challenged, and inspired.
Graham’s sermon was on questions God asks of his people, and one that’s been echoing in my mind since we heard the message yesterday is, “When will you prove me?” When will I prove God in my experience? When will I truly entrust myself to my heavenly Father so that he can prove his love, goodness, and glory? So often we keep ourselves safe and secure in our familiar old ways of acting and thinking that we prevent ourselves from proving God in the ways we so desperately need.
Oh, we’ll sit and read our Bibles. We’ll spend time in prayer. We’ll go to church, small group, Bible study, and do service projects, but when it comes to the painful grit of our lives we pull back into our strongholds for safety rather than casting ourselves upon God and proving him. When a relationship gets rocky we cut it off, convinced that what we need is “healthy boundaries” rather than the hand of God. When work gets stressful we run to our favorite television show to escape rather than pressing into the difficulty and letting God prove himself in us. When fear of failure builds we jump ship and move to the next thing.
Where in your life is God asking you to prove him? Where is he asking you to step forward in frightening faith? For me this morning there are two major areas that he’s brought up consistently over the past couple months. One is financial provision as Kelly moves from full time work to being a full-time mom in just a couple weeks. The other is a recurring sin that’s plagued my life for years and that I give in to far too easy. God’s challenging me to “resist to the point of shedding blood” (Heb. 12:4) and prove Him to be able to strengthen me and satisfy me.
And what a joy it will be when God proves himself to us! To get to know – to experience – the power and glory of our Savior is a fuel that sustains the lagging soul.
Let’s not be people who are dominated and decide things according to fear, who spend our time trying to be safe. Instead let’s prove God – taking Him at His word and acting accordingly with the eager expectation and confidence that we do indeed serve a Lord who is more than able to do above and beyond all we can ask or think. May we, together, see the mighty hand of God move in our lives this week as we prove him time and again.
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