Personal Retreat: Day 2

Again today I started with Lam. 3, which lead into some significant silent time. It's really amazing how waiting silently before God can open the door to taking our thoughts captive and submitting them to his Lordship. Kit was saying just last week that this is one sign of maturing in Christ, the increased capability of capturing our thoughts under God.

Later I continued on in my reading through Mark. Midway through ch. 28 Peter comments on how the disciples had left everything to follow Christ. Jesus responds to Peter by saying that when you leave family and houses for his sake (and that of the gospel's) how you will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age. As I have journeyed now with YWAM for the past two+ years I can certainly attest to this. It is absolutely incredible the extent of my families and houses around this globe. God has blessed me so richly with these various relationships, and it is such an honour.

I also started reading a great book called "Revolution Within" by Dwight Edwards. This book was given to me by my friend John McAuley last summer, but it's taken several months to get into - and I will say the timing has been incredible. Edwards is here talking about how our chief purpose as humans is to bring glory to God. That our life under the New Covenant is about Christ working though us, not us trying to appease God - which we could never do anyways. God does not exist for us; we exist for him. Too often in our materialistic/humanistic world we become wooed by some gospel that says Christ's purpose is for the betterment of our lives. Though this may be the case in some situations, it is not the chief aim of Christ. His goal is God's glory manifested through us in this broken world. How amazing would it be to have our Christian communities actually consumed with glorifying God! What kind of impact would a community like this actually have on this world?!

God is trustworthy, but do our lives reflect our trust in him? When the bills come around, when trials arise in the family, when unexpected challenges arise... does our response resemble trust in the almighty creator of the universe that sustains all things?

Are our careers an attempt to bring glory to our lives, or are we using our God-given gifts to bring him glory?

Here's one quote from the book:
"Our mind was given to discover and ponder God's character and truth, but we've used it instead to produce and embrace poisonous philosophies and self-centered rationalizations. Our intellect has become "darkened," to use the New Testament word. We don't think as God thinks. Our thoughts have become so clouded by innate sinfulness that we're incapable of God-honoring rationality." (p.45)

Oswald Chambers once said that the root of sin is unbelief in the goodness of God (Edwards, pg. 49). And John Calvin stated "The human heart has so many recesses for vanity, so many lurking places for falsehood, is so shrouded by fraud and hypocrisy, that it often deceives itself." (Edwards, pg. 52).

So let us wait silently before the Lord and allow him full reign to bring glory to him through the gifts he has placed within each one of us.