LEAVE ROOM FOR GOD - January 25th, 2014

But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me... Galatians 1:15-16a (ESV)

Chambers devotional references the King James Version of this verse, which begins But when it pleased God...  This slight change in phrasing emphasizes God's timing more than we might notice in some of the other translations.  When it pleased God.  Not when it pleases us.  Not when we hope or expect or sometimes even pray.  But when it pleased God.  I must admit that I sometimes find God's timing frustrating.  But God's timing is not based on hubris, or some sort of tyrannical power-trip, but rather His overwhelming, unfathomable love for us in combination with His omniscient consideration of our past, present and future.

Chambers opens today's reading:

As workers for God we have to learn to make room for God – to give God "elbow room." We calculate and estimate, and say that this and that will happen, and we forget to make room for God to come in as He chooses...Do not look for God to come in any particular way, but look for Him. 

God almost never does things the way I think He will. I see my situations and circumstances solely through the lens of my own experience and somehow fail to take into account the truth of Isaiah 55:8-9:

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
    “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. 

I sometimes joke that I have such good ideas for God, but He never seems to use any of them.  Sometimes I become so caught up in how I expect (or want) God to work that I fail to see His work unfolding when it comes about in the way HE intends.  As believers, perhaps we should focus less on the logistics of HOW he's working and instead, as Chambers says, simply look for HIM.  Am I immersed in His Word?  Am I praying over my situation?  When the answers there are "yes" then we need to let God work as He will.  He will show up in His time in the way He intends for His purpose.

And let us not forget that God's purpose always takes into account factors that we do not know or understand.  I want God to work in a certain way because of my own perceptions and those perceptions are almost entirely based solely upon my circumstances and/or the circumstances of those I know and love.  But God is all-knowing.  He sees the way my life intertwines with the lives around me and He sees the way my life WILL intertwine with the lives around me.  He knows my past and present, but also my future, and sometimes I forget that part. 

As believers, we were set apart before we were even born.  God saw us in the womb and knew, even when we were but a few cells, who we would be and how He would call us for His glory.  I don't deserve to be considered for this call.  I'm weak, impulsive, self-absorbed and short-sighted so much of the time.  But God, by His grace, chose me, just as He chose you in spite of your faults and failures, and revealed His precious Son so that we could share in the promise of salvation.