Monday, April 14, 2008

Relying on God

So tonight, a topic came up about support & doing things like the world or like a Christian...and I said how God can make things happen without us having to do things like the rest of the world. This hit me AFTER I said it, because I guess it's one of those things I took for granted in my beliefs. God really CAN make certain things work out without us having to do just like everyone else! The example was about Club 3 degrees, and how they've made it w/o selling alcohol. Well, yeah....just because the other clubs make their money from the alcohol, doesn't mean that this one does. Club 3 relies on God rather than man to support & sustain the ministry that has been put before it. Our God is a big God, the BIGGEST, the ONLY God who is alive and working, just as hard as He has from our beginning & long before that! How can we trust in our own doings when we are powerless without Him? How can we believe that we need to do as the world does in order to make things happen? We are not of the world, the things we produce should not be of the world, what we become should not look like the world. I don't know that there is an accurate comparison that I can give that would show just how different we are, or SHOULD be from the world. I'm reading this book about Ruth & Naomi....how Ruth was a Moabitess who married Naomi's son (a Hebrew) but how Naomi's sons & husband took on the appearance of a Moabite....dressing like them, talking like them, taking wives from that land...and they were accepted in Moab...but God was not pleased, and Ruth saw the difference in her mother in law. She saw enough difference that when given the choice to remain with what she knew, her home, her friends, her mom & dad, she gave it up willingly to follow after whatever that was that Naomi had and she didn't. She wanted to follow this God that had done marvelous things & made her mother in law the woman she was. I want to be like that, we should all be like that...so noticeably different from our surroundings that people are magnetized to our God. So separate in being, so set apart, so "weird" if you will, that people wonder what it is that we have that they do not. Do you have a God that transforms you like this? I do....I just haven't always been open to Him. But a God like that has grace, and I'm open for Him to make me different, changed, renewed, transformed....whatever He has to do in order for me to look more like Him than the world.