I Alone?

"Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or  what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?  So  why do you worry about clothing?  Consider the lillies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  Now if God clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Matthew 6: 25-30 NKJV

I hear the drumbeat every so often when one christian or another bemoans the fact that their spirit life is stagnant.  "I need to get closer to God, I  need to  pray more, I need to spend more time with God, I need Gods blessing."  Does anyone see a pattern here?  In each and every one of these statments, we begin to remove God from the equation.  For  instead of allowing our Lord to work in and speak directly to us, we fall back upon a decades long playbook.   I cannot blame those who have fallen into this trap, because it's what we've been taught over the years from one pulpit pounder to another.   Is your life at a difficult crossroads?  You just need to pray more.  Are you experiencing the loss of a loved one, then you need to seek Him.  The one common culprit in this thinking is...I, I, I!  Think about it, are not most of our prayers we direct to our Lord based on the singular?  Lord I  want, Lord I need, God I desire.  In Matthew 6, Jesus addresses this in His sermon on the mount.  Indeed, from the clothing that we wear to the food that we eat, Jesus illustrates that it is ALL lovingly provided for by our heavenly Father.  In fact, I would suggest that there is absolutely nothing that we may ask our Lord for that He does not already know about.   Is there anything that God cannot see?  Are His hands so short that He cannot provide for His children?  Is His hearing so dull that He cannot hear our cries?  For He heard the cries of the Isrealites enslaved in Egypt.  Granted, His hand of deliverance came in His fullness of time, but He listened and He heard.

"I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;  that they may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.  And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.  Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold my glory which You have given Me; for You loved me before the foundation of the world."
Luke 17: 20-24 NKJV

I think that we make a huge error when we mistakingly believe that it is we ourselves who provide for our own, who hold our own livelihood in our hands.  Yes, this is a popular belief that fits into our narrative, but it is based on a flawed idea.  For if we are indeed responsible for our own well being, as is the popular human belief, why is it that Jesus cautioned us against worrying about those things we desire?  Will not God provide for His children?  Again, this trust that we have in ourselves and in our own abilities may just run against who God truly is.  Has not God provided everything which we have, including our own abilities?  How is it that we can thank our Lord for His creation and in the same breath exalt ourselves for our own talents and abilities?  This thinking that we are independent in some way from our creator is a mistake.  If  this were true, why would Jesus go through the trouble to tell us that our Lord will provide for us?  If there is one who is truly independent, then it is our heavenly Father, who has been there from the very begining.  For He not only created all it is that we see, but that person that we are as well.  The one who is truly independent is He who created all.

~Scott~