Living by Faith-Moment by Moment

I don't know about you but it is hard for me to live in the moment.  I have a tendency to want to know what the next day will bring.   I guess this comes from many years of schedules of appointments, meetings, and conferences, etc.  When I taught, I lived from bell to bell. When I worked on the job, I lived from meeting to meeting, workshop to workshop, appointment to appointment, project to project.  As a wife and mother, I scheduled doctors appointments, events concerning my children and husband, dinner time, bath time, church and on and on.  My calendar was full of things to do and places to be. 

Now that I am retired, I find it hard to transition into letting go of the schedule and just let things happen. What it really means is I have to let go of control.  I will admit, I don't like that very much and I am sometimes frustrated when things do not go according to my plan.

On a deeper level, it is a matter of faith in allowing the Lord to use me at any moment. When I am preoccupied with what I think I am suppose to be doing, I miss what God intended for me.  In other words, I am working out my own plan for my own purposes instead of following the divine plan. It is a matter of listening and being still.

Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest, states:

"God's purpose is never man's purpose...The things that happen, do not happen by chance, they happen entirely in the decree of God.  God is working out His purposes...A Christian is one who trusts the wits and the wisdom of God, and not his own wits.  If we have a purpose of our own, it destroys the simplicity and the leisureliness which ought to characterize the children of God."

Listening to what God tells me and embracing the opportunities He provides is something I desire-living by faith moment by moment.

"Be still and know that I am God"

Crashed!

On a Monday night, my computer crashed.  It crashed at 5:00 pm.  How do I know the exact time?  I teach an online class at 8:00 pm and I was preparing for the class.  Panic set in.  I had to grab my trusty laptop and was very thankful I had already uploaded the files I was using for the lesson that night to the website.  It worked OK but just wasn't quite the same as my desktop.

It had been acting strange, taking a little longer than usual to boot up, download files, etc.  I did a virus check but I stopped it at 70% of my files with no reported viruses.  The virus checker checked 1.7M files with no viruses.  Even a MAC can only be pushed so far.

Yes, I am hard on computers. Ask the tech guys I worked with over the years. Even in the early days of computers, I pushed a computer to the limits.   I make and edit movies as well as doing photography so I need a computer that has a large hard drive and memory.

Life is like my experience with the computer.  We are comfortable with our life and expect nothing will change.  Comfortable with things around us.  Everything works the way it's suppose to and we are happy.  Then when we least expect it...crash! The old things are gone and the new must come.

Why does the Lord allow those kind of things to happen-the changes to take place? Perhaps, so we will grow and expand into areas He has already prepared but knew we would not do them while we depended on the old comfortable ways.  Perhaps it's so we will appreciate what we have and not become so complacent that we expect it to be the way we want it all the time.  Perhaps, it is to grow our faith in order that we will look to Him and not ourselves for the next step.

Change is never comfortable-never.  But He expects us to meet it with expectation of the new things He has prepared and to remember that we are not alone in the next step.  So whether or not it is an expected change or an unexpected one, He has already prepared the way and we can do all things through Him who gives us strength.

Philippians 4:11-13...I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

The Road Ahead

Walking through life is not always a smooth road.  There will be stones in the path to cause you to stumble, bridges washed out causing us to change direction, strong winds to blow us off the path and of course there are those dreaded deep pits that seem to trap you and keep you from traveling forward. 
We may lose our way for a time but we can trust God to guide us in the right direction. We are assured that God is faithful to guide and protect us regardless of where we are on the journey no matter how far away from Him we are.  Remembering that we are the ones who moved and it is comforting to know that He has always been there waiting for us to notice.

When we became a Christian, He did not promise the road would be smooth without pits or stumbling stones.  He did not promise there would be no hurts, no trials, no torrential rains to wash away our life's plans.  He did promise He would be there to hold us up and give us strength. He promised in Roman 8:28
 "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." 

Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest stated "God's training is for now, not presently.  His purpose is for this minute, not something in the future...It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying to God...God's end is to enable me to see that He can walk on the chaos of my life just now"

We live moment by moment. Trust Him now and each moment.  It's the process of trusting that will take us closer to a maturing faith in Christ Jesus. Give Him the opportunity to walk on the chaos of your life this minute.