GPS- God’s Positioning System

You ever wonder how it does it? GPS I mean.  Global Positioning System.  It’s amazing, assuming you drop enough bills to get a top of the line product.  That thing can lead you perfectly anywhere, right?  Tonight at church Pastor D was referring to this, and how it would be so awesome if we had a GPS for our lives, so that we could get to where we’re going, in the most effective way, with the least amount of errors, traffic, or getting lost.  Then I got to thinking about how God provides us with this, in Him and through His word.  It’s our responsibility to ask.  As I sat there in Church, I couldn’t help but think how God doesn’t fail.  How His wisdom and guidance never leads me into a traffic heavy area, or on a crash course into the middle of nowhere when I’m trying to find the nearest restaurant on my gps.  It’s so funny how time and time again, I get the directions from God, and I choose to take my own route, the one that I think is right, because I know best.  Often, and ALL the time I do this I find my way to be a disappointment.  I find it being a road to a dead end.  I love how in James 1:5, James writes to us and tells us “if you need wisdom, ASK our generous God, and He will give it to you.  He will not rebuke you for asking.”  I love that, and I read it thinking of course, I know I know.  But my life doesn’t usually reflect that me knowing means me DOING.  I know I need God to help guide me, and not just help, but take a huge hold of the wheel that I have my hands so tightly gripped on and let Him do the driving and navigating.  

When we take our own way, using our own GPS, and not asking God for His input, we get lost, misled, and hurt.  The only way I can say this is because I have experienced it time and time again.  My compass is jacked up.  We can’t love God and let other things reign in our lives as well, because as James goes on to say that a “person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind.” 

Where are our hearts?  Who is guiding our path?  Am I loyal in everything I do to God?  Or is my heart divided?  These are questions that I have been struggling with all night after hearing the message today.  It was encouraging to me to know that even though we reject God and His directions sometimes, He is always willing to redirect us to Him.  

 

Cheers,

Brandon

 

“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”- James 1:5-6

 

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. ¹⁵And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”- 1 John 5:14-15

Your Grace IS Enough

I think accepting God’s amazing grace is one of the hardest things to do.  Not because its so unbelieveable, but because we are way too prideful as humans, and to put it bluntly, we suck.  We make like all about us.  We make life all about how much money we make, the things we own, and our social status.  I’ve really been challenged by Francis Chan lately as my bible study and I are going through his book, “crazy love”.  

 

I’m still missing the point.  It is not our “job” as christians to live perfect lives that are pleasing to God, because we can’t and we won’t.  My life has been so focused on following rules and aiming to “please God” that I have lost sight of everything He is all about, Love.  I’ve lost sight of what its like to be in a holy perfect relationship with Jesus Christ.  I want that back.

 

I love the point Francis made in his book that we can’t just love God on our own.  We can’t just decide to start loving God and expect to fall completely head over heels for Him.  We have to ask God to take over our hearts and mold them.  We have to allow God to break our hard hearts and let them be filled with Him, then we can start loving like He has created us to.  

 

Yes I sin, I mess up, I blow it, I make mistakes, and can keep going on and on about what I don’t do right, but what I finally have started to learn, is that being a Christian is about receiving a Grace that covers all of my past, and my future sins.  When I start to do that and accept that Grace, and fall in love with Jesus, there is no guilt or shame.  There is a grace that covers me.  And I finally begin to fall in love with Jesus because of the right reasons.  I start to fall in love with Him because He was willing to sacrifice His life for me.  I start to love Him because His love is unconditional.  I start to fall in love because I want to be more and more like Him, not to please Him, but because I simply just love Him.  The things I chase on earth don’t seem worth anything, and I start to see my life here as temporary and realize that Grace can now be extended from me to others, and that Jesus wants to use me to glorify Him here.

 

And the best part?  It’s 100% FREE and undeserved.  Now I have a chance to live a life like I have received it, and that my sin is dead, because of the death Christ suffered, for me, for you, for us.  

 

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”-2 Corinthians 12:9 

 

Cheers,

Brandon