Being a Christian and all, I tend to read a lot of Devotional books. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. I guess I should say I tend to read a devotional book once in a while. Lately, I have been reading "My Utmost for His Highest". For me, "lately" is the last year. At this point I am a little more than half way through the 365 single page studies, so as you can see, I keep my own pace. Anyway, today's single page devotional was titled "The Go of Reunification". The concept goes something like this, We have things about us that need to be removed so they can be replaced with those things that God wants to use in us, so we can more fully be "unified" with God. The text follows the concept of "If I know how to handle this, then I will probably screw it up". The implication being that I need to let God handle things, and quit trying to handle so much myself. It makes a lot of sense to me, I have certainly seen the results of my screw-ups when I do things my way. Anyhow, it finishes up with another thought along the same line. "Luke 9:61. The person who says, "Lord, I will follow you but...," is the person who is intensely ready to go, but never goes." I think the author finishes with an important point. If we are excited about going out and allowing God to work through us on the highways and byways, but we always seem to find something else we need to do that seems more important, It might be useful to do a little searching to make sure we aren't just making up excuses for our own fears about what will happen when we go. Now I'm not trying to lay a guilt trip on anyone, I know that everyone has times in their life when physical, emotional or financial considerations keep us from doing what we would like to do. What I am really talking about is those times when you and I clearly sense that God is telling us to do something, but we just somehow don't want to do it, and so we make excuses. Remember the problem with excuses, is not that they don't work with people, it is that they don't work with God. God does have a lot of patience, and He will give us a second or maybe even 70 times 7 chances. He loves us that much, and He loves us so much, he can't leave us the way we are.

¶ 11:32 AM