In the Still of the Night

I heard a story on the radio recently about sleep. They mentioned a paper published in 2005 that revealed much evidence that before electricity the common sleeping pattern was for us to sleep for 3 or 4 hours, awake for an hour or so and then return to sleep. The story also cited an experiment completed in the ’90s where a group of people were put into total darkness for 14 hours each day and after a period of adjustment they fell into the same pattern. The reporters speculated that quite possibly this was how we were designed.

I can totally see God creating us with a built in time set aside for being alone with Him each day. Next time you wake up in the middle of the night instead of fighting to get back to sleep, take advantage of the opportunity to be with Him.

Too Little

While the difficulties that come our way draw us closer to God and help to develop an intimate relationship with Him, He wants to be much more than the Superhero that swoops in when times are tough, solves the problem and flies off into the sunset. His true desire is to be invited into every aspect of our lives. There is nothing we encounter in any given day that is too small for God. He really wants to be involved in everything.

Allow God

The more we learn to trust God, the better we get at allowing Him to do what He does best. We develop the skill of getting out of His way. Many times when we get anxious over something our tendency is to take matters into our own hands and try to force things to be as we see them. This can put us in a position of competing with God instead of cooperating with Him. Our goal should always be to seek Him and discover how He sees the matter so we can be part of His solution and not our own.

What I need from you is…

We touched on this yesterday it’s another of the things you won’t hear from God. He has no needs and to think that He wouldn’t be able to accomplish His plans without us is silly at best. What you will hear from Him if you are willing to listen is: I want this for you. He has so much for each of us. It will include being used by Him to accomplish much but that can’t take place unless we do it together with Him. You won’t get an assignment from Him and then be sent off on your own to make it happen.

Omnibenevolent

This term means that God is all good and always good. This applies to each of His attributes, thoughts, and actions. If God is involved it will be good. When it’s not good it’s because of the choices we or others have made to leave God out. But if we’ll allow Him, He’ll make things right again. This is not to say that it will be easy, comfortable or pain free, but it will be what is best. This characteristic is the foundation of the trust we must have in the Lord if we are going to have the impact on this world that is so desperately needed.

The Original Plan

In an attempt get closer to God there are folks today going back to the book of Acts and trying to recreate the first century church. Others are going further back to discover the Hebraic way. Maybe we should take a look at how things were before we messed it up at all?