Finding Peace While Living In The Everyday

My Utmost For His Highest

If You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. —Mark 9:22

“The height of the mountaintop is measured by the dismal drudgery of the valley, but it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God. We see His glory on the mountain, but we never live for His glory there. It is in the place of humiliation that we find our true worth to God— that is where our faithfulness is revealed. […] But God wants us to be at the drab everyday level, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship with Him.”  CHAMBERS

Sometimes what is written about living in the valley – living in the everyday – may seem intangible to the reader.  I think about that when I am writing these devotions.  I know the struggles in life all too well.  I know the feeling of hopelessness, even desperation as I have faced the challenges that living on this planet is sure to bring.  And I know that you, who are reading these words, have faced difficulties of your own.  (Matthew 5:45) “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”  As Christians, we are not spared from the effects of the fall in the Garden.  I know that I refer to that event a lot, but that is really the starting point of the deviation from God’s intent for creation.  His heart is that Man would walk in fellowship with Him .. in obedience to His will.  But He gave us the choice to choose otherwise.  And as one man said, we chose poorly.  So we suffer from the effects of that choice.  Certainly Jesus came to give us eternal life and the forgiveness of sins, but then there is the consequence of sin that God chose not to remove.

If we choose to walk with God in obedience to His will, we will find that we can persevere in the midst of the trials.  If we choose to deviate, go our own way, we will feel the weight of the consequence of sin.  It will be as if we were not born again at all. Even though we have the certainty of heaven, we will miss what God intended for us in this life.  What I am talking about is making a choice, every day to walk with the Lord.  He has told us what is necessary to shore up our faith, read the Word, pray, worship with other believers.  But all too often, we make the same mistake as Adam and do what we think is best.  We choose to ignore God and live with the struggle.  Perhaps all the while wondering where God is.  Well, He has not gone anywhere.  ELGIN

“In The Garden”

“I come to the garden alone, While the dew is still on the roses,

And the voice I hear falling on my ear, The Son of God discloses.

And He walks with me, and He talks with me, And He tells me I am His own;

And the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known.”

Bondye Beni Ou (God Bless You)