My Utmost For His Highest

I woke up slightly discouraged this morning for no good reason at all. I guess it just happens sometimes. Maybe it was because of lack of sleep or maybe I'm just tired of the busyness of life that comes along with Joel being in the last stages of graduate school. I guess it isn't much to complain about but I'm just so tired of the unpredictable hours and all of the focus on this part of our life. The end of August can't come fast enough!

I opened up My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers this morning to what I thought was the correct date. What I read was so fitting for me this morning. I'm often discouraged by the things in my everyday life that aren't necessarily matching up to what I feel like God has put in my heart for my life (or me!) to be like. I read the July 6th entry instead of the June 6th entry by accident. It turns out that it wasn't really an accident!


VISION AND REALITY


"And the parched ground shall become a pool." Isaiah 35:7

We always have visions, before a thing is made real. When we realize that although the vision is real, it is not real in us, then is the time that Satan comes in with his temptations, and we are apt to say it is no use to go on. Instead of the vision becoming real, there has come the valley of humiliation.

"Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And batter'd by the shocks of doom
To shape and use."

God gives us the vision, then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience. Think of the enormous leisure of God! He is never in a hurry. We are always in such a frantic hurry. In the light of the glory of the vision we go forth to do things, but the vision is not real in us yet; and God has to take us into the valley, and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the place where He can trust us with the veritable reality. Ever since we had the vision God has been at work, getting us into the shape of the ideal, and over and over again we escape from His hand and try to batter ourselves into our own shape.

The vision is not a castle in the air, but a vision of what God wants you to be. Let Him put you on His wheel and whirl you as He likes, and as sure as God is God and you are you, you will turn out exactly in accordance with the vision. Don't lose heart in the process. If you have ever had the vision of God, you may try as you like to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never let you.

~From www.myutmost.org