Experiencing God

What I love more than anything else in this world is to see God at work. I find, however, that I have a tendency to be either too busy to look for His work at all or I look only for huge miracles. In doing so I miss the wonderful "small" (although nothing God does is small), minute-to-minute, day-to-day miracles. Everything God does is a blessing. I don't know about you, but I definitely do not want to be missing ANY of His blessings! So I have been praying and reading and meditating so hard recently in hopes of being more receptive to all of God's acts, not just the mountain-moving kind. Wednesday He opened my eyes wider than ever before and everywhere I looked I saw him so clearly and radiantly. It was such an amazing blessing and I wanted to share just a couple of examples with you.

1. He taught me a huge lesson on pride and idolatry. I just finished reading Experiencing God. In this study, there is a lesson on prayer that urges the reader to pay very close attention to the goings on immediately following a prayer. Often we miss out on the answer to a prayer because we are not looking for God's response. I really took this to heart because I have a tendency to do the "laundry list prayer" where I pray for my list of requests and immediately forget about it. Well, my next study that I just started is Beth Moore's Breaking Free, which calls for removing strongholds in your life (i.e. pride and idols) such that you can truly experience the freedom God has in store for you. Putting these two lessons together, I spent my last few moments before leaving my house Wednesday morning asking God to reveal sources of pride and idols in my life. Not 30 minutes later I was in a wreck. Wednesday evening God finally got through to my heart and I realized that possesions (ESPECIALLY my car) have become an idol in my life as well as a source of pride. If I had not been looking for what happened after my prayer, I might have written the wreck off as an unfortunate incident, but there is no doubt in my mind that it was NOT a coincidence, which brings me to my next point.

2. He gave me a great example of how He reveals Himself and His work to believers. Experiencing God insists that a God speaks to His believers through prayer, His word, circumstances, and other believers; when most or all of these things appear to be saying the same thing, you can feel pretty good that its God speaking to you. How I learned my lesson from #1 is a great example. I prayed for God to reveal to me strongholds; I was in a car wreck; a co-worker (fellow believer) pointed out to me my skewed priorities (fix the car, THEN make sure I'm not injured); my devotional that evening was about allowing pride and false idols to come between you and your relationship with God. WOW! I don't think God could have been any clearer! The more I think about the events of Wednesday, the more I realize that I would have learned absolutely NOTHING were it not for the wreck! Sometimes God has to take drastic steps to get our attention. Does He want to? Probably not, but I sure am glad He does.

3. He showed me that He really can use me if I fully surrender to Him. My attitude is auch a great example of this. I tend to be very hot-headed (blame the red hair), so I constantly pray for God to help me with my attitude. Rarely does my attitude improve because I am usually not willing to fully surrender it to Him. Wednesday I did, and was I truly blessed to see the outcome. From the moment I left the house I continued to pray for God to help with my attitude. From the second the wreck occured, I continued to pray for God to speak through me - I knew my words would not be good, so I asked for His words to replace my own. It worked! Looking back, there were so many people with whom I would have raised my voice or gotten "ugly" had I been left to my own volition - the man who wasn't paying attention and thereby caused the wreck, the tow-truck driver who improperly towed my car and could have caused additional damage, or the insurance agent who didn't want to do her job and handle the claim. God not only answered my prayer and spoke through me, but He also showed me how much differently people respond when I keep my attitude more like Christ's and less like my own.

Wednesday was a day full of lessons, but I think the greatest lesson of all was simply to look for God everywhere and in everything. Had I not been looking, I would have missed out on so much. God never ceases to amaze me and I praise Him for that. Don't just look for God to move mountains because He's continuing to move mole hills every second of every day.