Soaring with Turkeys

I hope you have experienced those "high places" with God. Those "mountain top" experiences where He was so real you could feel his presense and knew without a doubt that He was there and that everything you believed about Him really was true and right and everything else comes into perspective. (If you haven't, I hope you will seek Him until you have!) But I'm sure everyone has had the other experience... you know, the ones we don't like to admit. When we doubt. When we question. When we don't believe. When we fail. When life feels void of God. When we feel abandoned by God, or at least forgotten. When we are weak. When it is a "normal" day. A day where we are confronted with our humanness and weakness and just how unworthy of God we truly are. No, I'm not feeling that way today - I'm not depressed or moping - but I am learning to walk with God in the normal days, and am done wishing every day could be a mountain top day. God loves to give us mountain top experiences - even Jesus took three disciples to give them one! But He did not save us to give us mountain tops, He saved us to give us daily life with Him!

We were saved to walk with God everyday, whether to a peak, or valley, or just in the plains of life. We are so busy telling God where we would like to go. We want excitement! We want adventure! We want to matter and make a difference! But we are not ready for an obscure day. We want today to somehow stand out above the rest of our normal days. We are not ready to just walk with Him today, as boring or as insignificant as today may appear. Readiness for God means that we are ready to do the tiniest thing or the great big thing, it makes no difference. We have no choice in what we want to do, whatever God's program may be we are there, ready.

What are your plans for today? They are the same every day: Walk with God. He can put us where He likes, in pleasant duties or in mean duties. When we walk with God we are fulfilling His purpose for us, even if we see nothing that amounts to "ministry" or "service." And it is only then that He can truly use us, for it is only then that we are truly His. Be ready for the sudden surprise visits of God. A ready person never needs to get ready.

We look for the big things - both in the good (service) and in the bad (sin) - but God looks only at the heart of His follower. You have gone through the big crisis, now be alert over the least things. Temptation is not to sin, it is to walk without God. Sin is simply the outcome of not walking with God. Were we walking with God, the sin would not occur. It is when walking alone, even in service, that we fail. Do not forecast where the temptation will come, if is the least likely thing that is the peril. It is PRECISELY where you think you can't fail that you will. The Bible characters fell on the their strong points, never on their weak ones. What we are aware of or on guard against will not be our downfall. It will be where we do not think we need to guard. You have remained true to God under great intense trials, now beware of the undercurrent. It is what we do not think we need to watch that we MUST watch. For where we neglect out of ignorant confidence the Enemy has free reign.

I want to soar like Eagles, but I am content to waddle like a Turkey, no great heights required to feel close to God, just me and God everyday, for whatever He has for today. That is why Proverbs 16:9 is so important, "In his heart a man makes his plans, but the Lord will direct his steps."

Are you soaring with eagles? I'm happy for you. But if you are stuck on the ground walking with turkeys, hey, it's ok to be a turkey if that's where God wants you. I know I'm just one big turkey, but that's ok with me because that's ok with God.

Everything in italics is a direct quote from my mentor Oswald Chambers.