January 29
Accept God’s Process
There is a way that seems right to man, but in the end it leads to death.
––Proverbs 14:12
God is not very product oriented. That’s a bummer for most men, including me. We like to look at what we’ve done. In his classic devotional Thoughts from the Diary of a Desperate Man, Walt Henrichsen puts it this way:
God is not as interested in how holy you are as in the degree that you are engaged in the process of application. If you are new in Christ with a great deal of carnal self still present in your life, but you eagerly seek to do his will, you are pleasing to God. If you have known Christ for years, but have ceased seeking to grow in Christ through the process of application, you are not pleasing to God.
When the timing and means are not what we would have them to be, or the results seem unjust and unacceptable, we tend to fight the process. While fighting an unjust process is not a bad thing, fighting God’s process of making you the man He created you to be is disastrous. Avoiding the sink hole takes guts and a belief that God is more capable at deciding what’s best for you at any given moment. Think back on decisions you’ve made without involving Him. How did those turn out?
For many years I trained myself to preempt or deny these growth opportunities in my life and I missed God’s process all together. He cornered me through circumstances until the pain exceeded my fear. Sure, once that tipping point was reached, all the tumblers fell into place like a complicated Rube Goldberg machine. But why take 50 steps—through the dominos, across the Hot Wheels track, down the PVC pipe, and into the basketball hoop—when God can do it in one?
Nothing good happens to your character unless it passes from God to you, and if it comes that way it comes with purpose—to make you like Christ.
Father, I will continue to pick up my cross and follow You. Your will, not mine.
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Thoughts from the Diary of a Desperate Man: A Daily Devotional, Walt Henrichsen, Leadership Foundation, 2014.
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