January 15th 2021
Our church is built close to the Columbia River and has an endless supply of very soft sand.
Every year we haul truckloads of gravel in and build up our parking lot and every year the gravel sinks down into the sand and disappears.
This fall we had a lot of very wet snow and a lake appeared in our parking lot. Usually this happens in the spring but it is a wet year.
This irritated me because we put the majority of the gravel right in that spot and it never holds.
One Sunday I noticed my dad working on the lake with a shovel.
I had to check out his plan. He was chipping away at the frozen ground to make a ditch to drain the water.
The ditch slowly began to drain the lake ~ but dad was not done.
He kept chipping away and routed the water about 25 yards to a steep bank for drainage.
The more he chipped away ~ the faster the water drained.
Dad was moving the water away from a problem area and draining it along a course of his choosing.
This process looked familiar so I grabbed my Bible and found Proverbs 21:1:
“The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord;
he guides it wherever he pleases.”
This is a faith & hope building verse.
Never forget, God holds & guides the human heart.
“The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the LORD”
So how does God do this?
I was thinking about a mountain stream and how it chooses its course.
To shift the stream’s course ~ you don’t pick up the droplets of water and move them ~ instead you shape the banks and provide fallen trees or bounders ~ to guide the flow of the water.
God does not need to move a heart’s desire against its will ~ instead ~ he will provide circumstances, events, and people to nudge the flow in the direction He desires.
Notice each of these things serve to nudge us out of our comfort zone and move us in a new path that God has chosen.
“He guides it wherever He pleases”
Here things get dicey.
This calls into question WHO decides where the stream flows.
We love it when God works in mighty ways ~ in exactly the perfect manner and time that we desire.
But what about when God has a plan that directly opposes our plan and our time table.
How do we respond?
What if we are faithfully praying for God to work in a particular way ~ and HE chooses not to ~ in fact ~ what HE does seems wrong to us.
This is a test to see how big your faith is.
And this also reveals what you truly believe about God.
Are you able to pray about something you feel passionately about and in confidence and peace say, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”?
When you find the affairs of this world sapping your joy and peace ~ it is time to step closer to God and draw faith from HIS presence.
Then and only then will you let go of trying to control the direction of the stream and in confidence ~ watch as God works to accomplish what is best.
I’m praying for you
Pastor Shane
I needed this. Thank you.