I have also come to the realization that I am not very good at keeping up with this blog. I don't think I'm alone, but my once a week plan is way out the window! I'm resolving to try harder! : )
Here is a picture of the clinic that has been built in Eburru Kenya (compliments of Bud and Jim from their trip last month). It's amazing what has happend in the last 4 years since the team I was with had the first church service with 8 people!! Now they have a growing, thriving church and facilities such as this clinic that are being built and supported. Pastor Steve and his nurse wife are very passionate about Eburru and give everything they have to bring Jesus to this remote village in the mountains. I look forward to hanging out with them this summer AND working in this clinic.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Planning....
I'm a planner. Always have been. I find myself planning my future (near and far) based on what I know and what I would like to see happen. Lately I've been challenged on surrendering my own plans and looking to see what God may want for and from me. I've had a good idea what that is but my compliance is usually very conditional. This devotional today was very timely and sums up exactly what I need to learn but am still resisting to some degree.
From Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest:
"After sanctification, it is difficult to state what your purpose in life is, because God has moved you into His purpose through the Holy Spirit. He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation. If you seek great things for yourself, thinking, "God has called me for this and for that," you barricade God from using you. As long as you maintain your own personal interests and ambitions, you cannot be completely aligned or identified with God’s interests. This can only be accomplished by giving up all of your personal plans once and for all, and by allowing God to take you directly into His purpose for the world. Your understanding of your ways must also be surrendered, because they are now the ways of the Lord.
I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. I should never say, "Lord, this causes me such heartache." To talk that way makes me a stumbling block. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or do anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. Self-pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. Doing this creates for me my own cozy "world within the world," and God will not be allowed to move me from it because of my fear of being "frost-bitten.""
God is good and I always see Him dealing with me ever so gently....
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