Melancholy 020214 Faithfulness

Most times all I've got to offer to Him is faithfulness
Obedience
I don't have joy,  exuberant praise, just obedience

And sometimes it's just obedience becasue obedience is expected

I don't believe that faithfulness demands any special "feelings."
I just demands the doing of it.

And our obedience needs to be simple and honest

He calls us to pray - so we pray
We don't have to pray well
We just have to pray
We bring - prayerfully - whatever we've got
But we bring it faithfully

He calls us to study His word
So we do
It may be a little hollow
We may not feel inspired
But we need to obediently feed upon it
So the Hoy Spirit can work it into our minds and hearts

He calls us to worship
Individual and corporate
So we do
However  can
We do

All I have to offer Him
Is a crippled and staggering faithfulness
Sometimes I walk
Sometimes I crawl
In seeking to faithfully follow

Some He  calles to great things (as man estimates them)
Others He calls to small simply things
But He calls all of His
To be faithful
In what he has given them

The widow gave all she had
What do we have to give
Sometimes it's just faithfulness
In the simple and quiet things

Pray to simply be faithful
And then be faithful in those simple things
We're all called to it
Wherever we are
With whatever we have
However we can

In my affliction
All I can offer Him
Is my faithfulness
And sometimes even that is hard
Most times it's all I have

MS

Psalm 94:12. 091213

Psalm 94:12 ESV
Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O LORD, and whom you teach out of your law,

Consider:

"A man by trouble comes to know his own heart, which in prosperity he is a stranger to.  He sees the weakness of his grace and the strength on his corruption; how nothing is weak but grace, nothing strong but sin; and this lays him in the dust"

Thomas Case, A Treatise on Afflictions

Do we really look deeply at His purposes in our afflictions or do we merely look at the affliction and seek its relief?  Do we allow the heat of the furnace to burn away all the fleshy concerns and fears that we might see the root, our sinfulness and its true power and place in our hearts?

Heart-breaking-ly it seems most common for us to seek relief without examination much like going to a doctor seeking some easy diagnosis and quick cure when we, in reality, suffer a terrible malady.  Would we really want to be told we have the flu when a cancer was eating away at us?  It seem, when it comes to our life in Him, we would.

God's hand can lay heavy upon the shoulders of His children.  But like a father who firmly grips his child as the come to a street crossing, He does it for our good and betterment.  It is not pleasant but when we do not allow the Master Physician the Great Father to show us the truth we merely delay the cure having to suffer the dis-ease again.

What affliction has God laid on you?  Be mindful that the affliction is secondary to what God desires to do in your life and heart.  Perhaps He desires a change of habit or behavior but I encourage you to look deeper, to your heart, and seek the root sin that gives bloom to the obvious one.

There is lies the lesson.

M