The REAL REASON

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9

I usually remind myself of this promise whenever I go through a period of confusion or disappointment. When there's nothing worthwhile on the surface and when I am experiencing a season of fruitless labor, it is encouraging to dwell on the thought that God is working on the background preparing something that I could even never dare to ask.

I say this , I sing this , I pray this , I believe this and I feel a lot better.

Recently, I was very happy about the way things were taking shape in my life and felt pampered by God. Eventually, God brought this verse back to my memory.And I learnt a very valuable lesson.

When God gives us something , it is natural to believe that what we have received is an answer to our prayer to fulfill the longing of our heart.

But there is lot more to it.

God's thoughts are higher not only when you are waiting.Maybe your prayer is answered, but God's not finished yet. The apparent purposes of God are not His implied purposes. Certainly, your desires are important to God ; but only if they are in line with His.God's Word accomplishes only that which He pleases and purposes and it shall prosper in the thing for which He has sent it.

God had a beautiful vision in His mind for mankind, when He created Adam and Eve .He blessed them with all the good things that He created and gave them complete power and dominion. If they would have lived for God's desires, the world would have never seen decay.

But because they became victims to fulfill their own desires, they disobeyed God and subject the entire human race under curse and destruction.

In the same way we try to draw selfish plans, centered around our own lives out of the resources that He has graciously given out of His love for us.

Maybe God has given us a gift in the form of a job, a fulfilled desire, a relationship or a breakthrough.Praising God and testifying about His goodness is not enough.

Are we waiting in His presence, asking Him what He wants us to do with the gifts He's given us ? Are we ready to surrender our short term immature desires for the long lasting powerful desires of our Creator God ?

Our responsibility as God's children is not only to desire, believe and receive; But also to pray , understand and be willing to surrender our lives to what our Father wants to do through the many good things that HE has given us.

When I was praying for answers, my intentions were way too lower than the purposes in Your mind. Lord,now you have answered in a way good enough to excite me. But Lord,I want to know what's Your plan for things that You've given me. Teach me to use them in accordance to Your thoughts.Because Your ways are Higher and Your thoughts are Greater.Master, help me find the REAL REASON.

faithful servant

Not another option

Lord I don't want many open doors

My life is Your breath in action

And it is Your will that I adore

When I look inside to feel

The deep desires in me

Roaring emotions slowly fade

And only the gentle sound of Your heartbeat remains.

Trying to focus,

And struggling to find.

The reason for my life.

Lord, what were your thoughts for me ?

When I was nowhere else but in Your mind.

Your perfect Life

Teaches me how to live and walk

Your selfless Death

Makes me wonder

Why did you care about me so much at all?

Your resurrection my King

Proves your power and dominion

Above all that I behold in awe.

Life goes on here for few years alone.

The rest I spend in an eternity

Irresistible though unknown

With arms open wide

Master you are waiting for me.

To show me my mansion

And Your Glory to reveal

When you behold me in your arms

I want you to say

“Well done faithful servant

You've always known my heart

And obeyed my voice

Even through troubled paths”

In this life Father

My strength will always fail.

Oh Lord, My Master

Let your Grace alone prevail.

Are you losing it right ?

One king never stood for God, the other king was blameless in his ways and followed God's ways that he even dedicated all the gold and silver vessels to the temple of God. Yet both had to face losses.

One king was looted and the other king suffered loss because he had to pay a huge bribe.

King Rehoboam had an idolatrous life and kingdom.In the fifth year of his reign all the huge treasures in his box was looted away by the Egyptian king Shishak.Rehoboam lost all the wealth of his treasury and assigned bronze shields to replace the stolen gold shields. He never really accomplished anything.His was a fruitless, empty reign.

1 Kings 14:26-27

²⁶ He carried off the treasures of the temple of the LORD and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made. ²⁷ So King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace

King Asa' s life was very different.He put away the male cult prostitutes, removed the idols made by his predecessors Solomon, Rehoboam and Abijam.He even removed Maacah(his mother) from being the queen mother because she had an image made for the goddess Asherah.Asa's heart was blameless and followed the ways of the Lord.

But he too had to part away with all the wealth of his treasuries.He was put in a position where he had to give away all his gold and silver as a bribe to the king of Syria to lure him to severe ties with Asa's persistent troublemaker - king Baasha who captured the city of Ramah in Judah and deployed his troops there.Having received these expensive gifts,the king of Syria makes a treaty with Asa.Baasha seeing the threat posed by the armies of Syria, withdrew his forces from Ramah.

1 Kings 15:18,21-22

¹⁸ Asa then took all the silver and gold that was left in the treasuries of the LORD's temple and of his own palace. He entrusted it to his officials and sent them to Ben-Hadad son of Tabrimmon, the son of Hezion, the king of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus.

²¹ When Baasha heard this, he stopped building Ramah and withdrew to Tirzah. ²² Then King Asa issued an order to all Judah—no one was exempt—and they carried away from Ramah the stones and timber Baasha had been using there. With them King Asa built up Geba in Benjamin, and also Mizpah.

King Asa reigned securely for 41 years and built the towns of Geba and Mizpah.

Children of God are sometimes led through losses. Financial losses, loss of relationships, loss of honor,loss of health,loss of dreams and sometimes you could even lose very dear and precious things to your heart that you once dedicated to God.

There are times that strike like it did for king Asa where we have to lose and let go of our prized possessions.

But if we are like Asa, passionate about God's commandments, following His ways never compromising with the world,and holding firm to God's Word then even things which seem like a huge loss would result as a blessing in disguise.God uses our losses to weaken our enemy and strengthen our hands to build higher grounds and scale higher peaks.

But there is a question that we need to ask ourselves and an evaluation that we need to make.

Have we placed God as our priority and given Him the rightful place in our lives that we can be 100% sure that He will compensate our loses ?

or like Rehoboam, we in our own compromising lives,have made many 'functional gods' for ourselves and allowed the devil to steal, kill and destroy and eat up our potential ?

And are we now living in a false sense of honor by making bronze shields for ourselves and living out of the nourishment of our own egos and arrogance?

Being a child of God does not guarantee you a no loss life.Sometimes you may see the same losses as everybody else,and sometimes even more.

I don't understand how God works but I do know that He works for good. Just remember if you are hidden in Christ, He has already covered up for you. He is a God of compensation.

But before we claim His promise we need to ask the Holy Spirit to confirm our condition. We need to make sure that we only have God in our altar and nobody or nothing else. We should allow the High Priest to evaluate our status and surrender to His voice when He convicts us.

We can then be sure that the Christ our Lord would lead us not just to build Geba and Mizpah but the Kingdom of God itself.

Are you losing it right ?