I lead a small group of young adults every other Sunday night. We just completed a 2 session video study from Donald Miller called Free Market Jesus. Overall, the study is trying to compare how we in Western society tend to make our faith into a free market sales pitch sort of thing. We morph and bend our faith into something palatable, something that fits me rather than fitting our lives around what scripture says.
Through the course of the (often rabbit trail) discussion, we ended up talking a bit about waiting on God. Good for my thought process as I’ve been dwelling on this topic for several weeks. A comparison was made between Jesus ability to show up and “save the day” with His miracles and a long obedience in growing. We looked at jesus’ first miracle of turning the water into wine. Something really cool and certainly “save the day!” And then we looked at scripture that talked about being like a tree planted by streams of water (Ps. 1:3). A tree takes a long time to grow! A remark was made, “then, it sounds like all I need to do is nothing, just hang out by the stream and I’ll grow!”
Hmm. How to respond to that. We know that God calls us to more than just hanging out, but, He is also clear in many ways and places that the Christian life isn’t about “name it claim it and be done with it.” It IS a long obedience.
Today’s Ozzy finds us in the same place
“…whenever God steps in, His inspiration is to do the most natural, simple things-things we would never have imagined God was in, but as we do them we find Him there.”
We find God in the simple things in life. Not to say He never shows up in the big things, He certainly does. But, those simple day-to-day events, those places where we get to choose to live for Him or not, even in the simple and mundane, that’s how and where the growth happens. It’s not about sitting by the stream and doing nothing, It’s about doing the right thing at the right time all the time. And when we fail, we keep walking.
