“…..so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men” Romans 12:18
The Lord put this scripture in my heart about a year ago… I have written about it… talked about it… pondered it… and watched how the Lord has changed me… little by little… from my early understanding that God controlled all things and nothing depended on me… to specific things that actually did depend on me… right up to this past weekend where He “moved all the furniture in the basement of my soul”… (my apologies to Bob Mumford for stealing this from him)… 🙂
An opening thought…. (as I hope to continue on in my musings with several reflections about “what depends on me”)….
God IS in control of all things… yet He never imposes His will on us… Free will is the essence of our humanity. It is imperative for philip then to tell God that I give myself completely to Him… I surrender… I want His Will for my life… I “abandon myself to Him” – borrowed this one from Oswald Chambers – 🙂
No matter what philip wants to do or thinks he should do… it is always followed by: “Nevertheless… Thy will be done”
Starting with that… we can now begin to talk about all the “moved furniture”….
🙂
philip's musings 
Thank you, my friend. Truer words never were spoken. Not mine, but thy will be done.
your welcome, Joe …. 🙂 who knows… maybe the “furniture mover” will come visit you as well… 🙂 🙂
I think that the free will I have is only a free will to screw up….so I need to ask the Lord to impose his will on me (like in one of my favorite poems, where John Donne says “Batter my heart, o three personed God”) But I think that leads to me ending up in the same place of abandonment that you describe !
🙂 Have you heard about the “chaos theory”, Kenny ? 🙂
Only by name. So I looked it up. And the amazing thing is how it says we simply cannot make accurate predictions. Isn’t it like Man to say we can predict and achieve so much with scientific knowledge and logic. So along comes a secular theory that says “no you can’t!” Of course even in the Church is finding the right steps, methods and systems to guarantee church growth. Indeed I saw a claim by one leader today who has “a goal of planting 1,000 new churches by the year 2050”. I am not sure what room that leaves for God to work in surprising and unpredictable ways !
religion, science… both man made systems… they have nothing to do with the Kingdom… seek first the Kingdom and He will do whatever He wants to do in each individual life… 🙂