Perspective in a miracle free zone.

I read this quote the other day,

"Dear God, forgive me for thinking too highly of myself.  Dear God, forgive me for thinking too lowly of myself.  Dear God, forgive me for thinking of myself too much."

and goodness, this is true of me so much of the time...why, when Christ's invitation to follow requires us to 'pick up our cross' is my prayer life so obsessed with my own happiness?  The Lord had to remind me again today that this year is not about me creating a trophy of good deeds for myself and that my time and skills aren't actually mine to delegate... but that regardless of what happens I need to be SATISFIED in the knowledge that I'm where the Lord wants me right now. This is a challenge to guard my attitude and my tongue...

"I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full"

But I also think that in order for our opinion of ourselves to be too great, our opinion of God must have become too small. Today I read in a study that I've been doing for the last few weeks about how the author had been praying with his wife that their house would sell, he then went to pray with his two daughters before bed and the 4 year old prayed "I pray for all the people in the world that they have food and don't get burned by hot lava."  So he thought that was cute and made note to tell his wife, when he was suddenly convicted by the Lord that when he prayed his prayer that the house would sell, the angels were saying to each other "what a cute prayer...can God sell his house...thats precious" but when the 4-year old prayed the entire heavenly host poised themselves ready for God's word to be put into action, "Get food to the people in greatest need through the children of God!  Redirect that lava flow in Hawaii!  Get ready to move!."  He basically went on to challenge whether we are praying God-sized prayers for things that only God can do, or are we just asking God to fix the things in our life that make us uncomfortable.

'The Irresistible Revolution' talks about how in our western lives we often isolate ourselves from miracles and then complain that we aren't seeing God move.  For example if we are hungry we go to the supermarket, if we are sick we go get a prescription from the doctors, and so on.  As a result we search for alternative meanings to scripture, for example what if when we prayed "give us this day our daily bread" we really were on our knees, relying on the Lord to provide the food for that day. Its like David said at bible study last night, if we believe God made the world by speaking it into existence then the rest becomes a piece of cake.

John 3:30 "He must become greater, I must become less"