Thursday, January 15, 2009

Have It Your Own Way...Or Not

“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him. (Job 13:15)

         These two clauses cancel out one another. As long as we insist upon maintaining our own way, you are not trusting God. I hesitate to criticize Job adding one more voice to the chorus of his fault-finders; but we must learn all we can from him, since he is given to us for an example (James 5). The fact that this good man admitted to wanting his own way should give us good reason to assume the same tendency in ourselves.


         Personally, I find myself constantly prearranging in my own mind just the way I want situations to unfold, and how I expect those around me to conduct themselves in order to bring my ideas (ideals?) to pass. And if my plans are thwarted, I assume everything is ruined; when, all along, God, from His vantage point of omnipotence, is conducting business as usual.


         Let’s contrast this verse in Job to one in Isaiah: 


“If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shall honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words…” (Isaiah 58:13)


         The next verse tells us the reward for those who are not worried about having their own way, or whose interest is not always focused on their own pleasure, and do not consider their own words to be pearls of wisdom:


“Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”


         When you reach the place in life where you’re happier with God’s way than your own, you’ll be ridin’ high and feedin’ fancy, my friend! That’s what God says.


 



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