4:49 PM
I just remembered this Scripture from way back. It's about when God met Elijah. If I am not mistaken Elijah was depressed at this time and God meet him. The great thing about this is that God meet him in a gentle whisper and not in some awesome wind or fire or earthquake. This scripture makes me remember the time when I want to meet God in a Grand-Entrance-kind-of-way and I begun wonder why God didn't appear. I begun asking, "Did God heard me?" All along God is whispering and calling me in quite awhile. Many times we miss the whisper of the Holy Spirit because we want God to come as we want Him to come and not as He want it done. So our prayer should be,"Lord, come just as you are." So when the Lord comes in a gentle voice we can hear him say, "What are you doing here, Josiah?" It's going to be wonderful. :)
1 Kings 19:11-13 (New International Version)
The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by."
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
4:17 PM
Today, we are surrounded with different voices: radio voices, T.V. voices, good news voices, bad news voices, voices of our neighbor, voices of our family, voices of our problems, voices of hi's and ho's, voices of our friends, voices of officemates, voices of sin, voices of temptation, voices of praise, voices of self and so on. And with these voices it's sometimes hard to meditate. It's hard to hear the voice that we should hear every single time - the voice of God.
I am not trying to be religious, I believe that mentioning or talking about God is not religion. I believe that God is basic to human existence. I believe God is not an extra day of our seven-day week. I believe that God is important to our daily existence. A well known scripture said, "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?" I believe a good question about this Scripture is, how can you lose your own soul? Jesus said, " For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." So we lose our soul if we try to save it. When we think only of ourselves - that's where we lose our soul. When we keep thinking of ME, ME, and ME... we lose our soul. To find our soul we need to lose it for the sake of the Lord. A good question to this is "HOW can I lose it for the LORD?" I am not an expert in the Bible but something tells me it involves SURRENDER. Because when we save our lives, we want to control our lives. And when we lose our lives, we lose control. So if we follow this reasoning, we can deduce that we need to surrender our lives to the Lord so that we will not lose it. Everyday we need to surrender our lives - our time, our resources, our will, our family, our love ones, our pride, our ego, our ears, our body, our desire.... to the Lord.
Part of surrendering is listening to what God wants us to do in our lives on a daily basis. It's a daily decision to surrender. It's a daily decision to ask God, "Lord, what do you want me to do today?". It's a daily decision to tell the Lord, "Lord, I give you my heart. I give you my everything."
So the challenge today is for us to surrender.