Devotionals

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Lately, as I write, clean house, go to the store or drive to see a friend, I spontaneously find myself in conversation with Jesus. It may be in thankful praise or deeply imploring Him to meet a need of mine or someone else's.

Sometimes I am oblivious to that fact that I'm praying. It has become a natural state of my spirit to strive to stay connected to the One who has great plans for me. However, it hasn't always been that way. It took a deliberate choice and action upon my part to establish such a relationship. It does not come without great tribulation, and rarely does it develop without applying great discipline. Fact is, in our flesh, there is nothing natural about it.

I often think about great men and women of answered prayer and the price they have paid to obtain such a close relationship with God. It is natural to try to solve our own problems, make our own choices and seek our own answers to life's questions. Until we come to the conclusion that in ourselves it is impossible to know such answers, we will continue striving recklessly and living with our own feeble and futile accomplishments. Oh to us, they may seem to appear as great feats of grandeur. However, many times, God has so much more He wants to accomplish in and through us, but we choose to follow our own plans, and not His.

Jeremiah 29:11 says,
For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.
(NASB)


I stand in awe of the truth that God, my Creator has established great plans for my life. You may be asking me, "How am I supposed to know what that plan is?" Well if you read the following two versus in Jeremiah, God tells us exactly how we can know what His plan is for our life.

In Jeremiah 29:12 -13 God says,

Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.

You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.(NASB)

God has not kept it a secret from us. He will reveal His great plan to us, if we simply call upon Him, pray, listen, seek and search with all our hearts. Yes, we are capable of knowing His great plan for our lives, but unfortunately too many of us are not willing to pay the price to seek it. Sometimes we esteem ourselves too highly, and refuse to accept what God's greatest call is for our lives.

I remember as a young teenager, my beloved father and pastor told me a very important truth. I have held on to it all of these years. When I have abided by it, it has guided me, and kept me from being tempted to follow a pathway in which God has not planned for my life. He used to say,

"If God has called you to be a garbage man, don't stoop to be a king."

The power in those words have reminded me over and over again that the greatest achievement I could ever obtain in this life, is to do what the Father has already planned for me. I may have great aspirations in my life, but unless they are birthed first in God's almighty design for me, I want nothing to do with them. Fleshly and selfish ambitions lead us down a roadway of disappointment, pain and great suffering, regardless of how noble they might seem to be.

Are you still striving to achieve your aspired ambitions? Or perhaps you have accomplished the great feat only to be left unfulfilled. God's destiny for your life is one that will give you a future and a hope. It will not leave you feeling impotent. I want to encourage you to seek after God. He has promised to show us His great blue print for our lives. In it we will find hope, fulfillment and true purpose. Without it, well, I can say it no better than Solomon did in the book of Ecclesiastes:

Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, all is vanity!(Ecclesiastes 12:8) NASB


Copyright 2004 Jane E Morin





Beside Still Water Devotionals
P.O. Box 904
Brighton, CO 80601
Email: [email protected]
Website; http://besidestillwater.faithweb.com

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