2nd guessing God...

 ^{The Passage below is from Romans - Chapter 9.  This blog today is really my husband as the inspired author ....}

^{He awoke to day and wanted me to read with him in Romans 8 and 9 - in the MSG. Bible.}  

^{There were several stops and starts and then prayer....but we felt this part needed to be shared.} 

^{I caught myself second guessing God this past weekend.....}  

^{I caught myself thinking?  ....Well, Lord...this MUST not be your will?? -- and yet I know that I know - HIS will is for families to be restored...HIS will is for the captives to be set free...and HIS will is that NOT one should perish....}

^{Read to the very end.  Please.}  

^20-33 Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn’t talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, “Why did you shape me like this?” Isn’t it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans? If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn’t that all right? Either or both happens to Jews, but it also happens to the other people. Hosea put it well:

I’ll call nobodies and make them somebodies;
    I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved.
In the place where they yelled out, “You’re nobody!”
    they’re calling you “God’s living children.”

Isaiah maintained this same emphasis:

If each grain of sand on the seashore were numbered
    and the sum labeled “chosen of God,”
They’d be numbers still, not names;
    salvation comes by personal selection.
God doesn’t count us; he calls us by name.
    Arithmetic is not his focus.

Isaiah had looked ahead and spoken the truth:

If our powerful God
    had not provided us a legacy of living children,
We would have ended up like ghost towns,
    like Sodom and Gomorrah.

How can we sum this up? All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives. And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it. How could they miss it? Because instead of trusting God, they took over. They were absorbed in what they themselves were doing. They were so absorbed in their “God projects” that they didn’t notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road. And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling. Isaiah (again!) gives us the metaphor for pulling this together:

Careful! I’ve put a huge stone on the road to Mount Zion,
    a stone you can’t get around.
But the stone is me! If you’re looking for me,
    you’ll find me on the way, not in the way.

^{I caught myself second guessing God this past weekend.....}  

   LOrd, I pray for those that are maybe too consumed with their 'god projects'...and I am watchful to make sure that I AM not one of them.  

Lord, I pray that as I ask you to MOVE mountains...I will be watchful that perhaps that mountain is THERE for me to move around it......!!  

Lord, I pray that I am always trusting You -- and not seeking approval.  Lord, I do not want to miss any of YOUR movements!  I am not focused on numbers either...help me to focus on the people....called by YOU -- Use me Lord!  I want to be a nobody -- that has become somebody -- IN YOUR sight....by YOUR affirmation and by YOUR will.  amen.  

^{If this piece of scripture spoke to you today - pray to God right now...and say your own prayer to HIM or repeat mine....God wants to use YOU.  God is not in the way -- HE is the way!     - Humbled....}