God's Bowling Ball
Theme of the Week: Who's at the Controls?
Michael Phillips
Friday, July 23, 2004
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Key Bible Verse: For we are not our own masters … we live to please the Lord (Romans 14:7—8). Bonus Reading:Romans 14:4—9
When we arrived back at the farm in Germany next day, a stack of mail was waiting. Half the letters contained resolutions to situations I'd given to the Lord just 24 hours before. But in every case the answer was no! The elements of my life had been set up like bowling pins. I'd handed the ball to the Lord, and He'd thrown a perfect strike! I could feel and hear the pins crash about me.
As I stumbled out of the farmhouse toward the fields, the slate of my life was suddenly devastatingly clean, as from a furnace blast. The future I'd been praying about had vanished without a trace. All I felt was emptiness. Yet as I sat on a small stone bridge over a stream, a sense of God's presence and His love for me began to steal over me. A new, deeper peace began to fill me. I was completely in God's hands now!
Within weeks I discovered new vistas opening up—in my heart at first and then, in time, He began slowly guiding me toward that future about which I'd been so concerned. But the journey led along different paths than I could possibly have envisioned, because it was His future now.
—Michael Phillips in Make Me Like Jesus
Adapted from Make Me Like Jesus (WaterBrook, 2003) by permission.
My Response: Can I affirm that God's will for me is good even when the immediate results are unsettling?
Thought to Apply: Let God have your life; He can do more with it than you can.
—Dwight L. Moody (evangelist)
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Christ, I realize I can't both call You Lord and continue to act as manager of my life. I'm ready to submit to Your authority.
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