Tuesday, February 24, 2015

God Will Not Cooperate



GOD WILL NOT COOPERATE 
(It's His World, We Just Get To Live In It)


After over thirty years of being a Christian I have learned a few valuable lessons. This is probably one of the most crucial ones; God will not cooperate.

If you want to know what frustration is, try to bargain or reason with God. Want to know how to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.

Sometimes we get the idea that we can change God's mind about something. There are even a few scriptural accounts where it appears that Moses and Abraham convince God to go along with their plans. The problem with this is that you cannot negotiate with someone who already knows the end from the beginning and knows your thoughts before you speak. Want to know what is really happening in those passages? It's God demonstrating that He knows things always go better with us if we think it was our idea.

Once in a while you will see a bumper sticker that says, "God Is My Co-Pilot". I always pray for people who have that on their car because if you think God is about to sit quietly in the passenger seat while you drive your life outside of His will you are either sadly mistaken or you are in the wrong car. Soon enough you will discover that things go so much smoother when you scoot over and allow God to be the Pilot.

We all know the passage where Jacob wrestles with God and refuses to let go until God blesses him. The problem with that is God had already promised to bless Jacob before he was even born. Jacob didn't need to wrestle the blessing out of God's hand, but God allowed him to wrestle anyway. Truth is, God loves to wrestle. I think what we need to consider is, what will we do with God AFTER he gives us that blessing we wrestled from Him? Will we let go of Him? Often, we do exactly that. We vow to not let go of God until He blesses us, and then after He blesses us, we let go of Him. Bad idea.

I firmly believe that God will drop trouble into our lives just to hear our voice after a long silence. 

Save yourself a lot of trouble and just surrender now. God will have His way...(just ask Job or Jonah)...and His way, believe it or not, is much better than all of your beautiful plans and dreams.

Die to yourself daily and things will go SO much better in your life. Practice daily saying, "I Give Up!" and watch God do amazing things with your life. His will, His Kingdom, will come to your life, to your house, to your job, and things will be like Heaven...where His will is always done without question or gripe or complaint.

I recently discovered a phrase used by the early Church Fathers that says, "Conversatio Morem!". It translates to "Constant Conversion!" which honestly is what we all need to embrace. We all need a daily, constant surrender to Jesus in order to fully walk in The Kingdom of God.

"Man makes his plans but God orders his steps."
-Proverbs 16:9

Life in the Kingdom begins with surrender. The sooner you can practice this in your actual life, the sooner you can begin to live in the Kingdom of God, where His perfect will is always done.

God will not cooperate.

-kg

NOTE: This article originally appeared on the weekly [Subversive Underground] e-newsletter.

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