June 19 - Who God Uses

I’ve been wondering this week why it’s so easy for me to think that I know the mind of God?  God!  Beyond, above, immense – I’ve sung from such a young age that I have an awesome God, a great God.  So why is it I think I can know the depths of his plans, actions and consequences?  I was reading a Christian website the other day which quoted Gandhi and my first response was to think, ‘as if a Christian can learn anything from a non-Christian, no matter who they are.’ How proud I am!  How arrogant.  As if my status as a Christian has given me a superiority.  What a fool I am! 

That very same day I read about Gandhi, I read Ezra chapter 1.  God firmly put me back in my place.  Here’s what I read –

“In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfil the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing:

“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:

“‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them.”” 

- Ezra 1 v 1 – 3

God uses who ever he chooses and that can at times be a surprising choice.  The Lord moved the heart of Cyrus, a pagan King.  This king of godless Persia is recorded forever as being a man who God used for his will.  And not in an unwilling way, as if possessed, rather as any of us respond who have had their hearts stirred by the Holy Spirit.

I need forgiveness.  Grace.  A willingness to be humble among others, no matter who they are or what their outward life might say to me – because I can not know the mind of God.  The songs from my childhood are right – he is a great and awesome God.  I pray that I will walk more humbly among his creation today.