Thought of the Day !!

Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.'  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'  As it is, you boast and brag.  All such boasting is evil. – James 4:13-16 (NIV) 

We want to control things don't we?  I think it's in our nature.  I'd love to be able to control the weather today.  I want the sun to come out and the temperature to stay in the upper seventies to lower eighties.

It is God who is in control.  Now this doesn't mean that He moves us around like pieces on a chess board.  He gives us the ability to choose our own actions; what we will say, do, accept, etc.  But He is in control of what happens in this world.  Only He can decide if it will rain or not.  Only He can miraculously cure someone's body.  Only He can stop time.  Only He can add another star to the night sky.  Only Him.  This is because He created all these things. 

The two most important prayers in the bible to me come from our Lord Jesus.  One is when he teaches us to pray the Lord's prayer and the other is when he is at Gethsemene.  In both he prays that God's will be done.  And isn't it of comfort to know that the one who created and controls everything knows how all things should work out?  We may want this or that, but God knows so much more than our limited minds can handle.  He knows how the things that we ask for will affect us.  He knows the outcomes of all things, whereas we can only know the here and now.   

He also answers "No" to us at times because we need to go through the fire and be refined like silver.  Sometimes the impurities of our lives must be burned out to make us better.  Sometimes we have to go through hell to see heaven on earth.  And only God knows when those times are.   

So let us submit to God's will in our lives through our actions and through our prayers.  Let us all pray today that God's will be done.  And if that is the same as what we want, then great.  If not, then let's learn to accept that God knows better and He is still listening and still in control.   

In the love of Christ,

greg