Steps Ordered By The Lord

There is something about having a goal to read through the scriptures in a year and getting blocks you would not choose to read on your own. Then purposing not to skim but really read. I have spoken before about my box of booklets. I don't choose the next one. My hand goes into the box and what ever one I pull out next I read. Then I put the ones I have read into a new box.

There are several things in my life at any given day that are like that. It is healthy for me.

"The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, And He delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; For the LORD upholds him with His hand." - Psalm 37:23-24 NKJV

We make a decision to choose a path of believing and not one of continual preference. If our lives are is filled with, 'This is what I want and that is what I want.' all day and week long what happens when it is time to make a hard choice? We have already worn a deep furrow of preference oriented choosing and maybe we use scripture to rationalize another 'what we want' decision. Then if there are no preferable options we can easily live in disappointment because preference can't be found.

Grace makes us free. Free to live knowing we deserve Hell but are not getting Hell. We deserve pain but have measures of comfort instead. We should be guilty but a higher justice sets us free from guilt and shame. Prisoners rarely get what they want and people who work to earn everything have a sense of entitlement because they worked hard for the power to choose. What about free people who should not be free but have what they have because of mercy? How do they think?

"Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God." - 1 Corinthians 7:21-24 ESV

"Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." - 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 ESV

People read these verses in some duty oriented mode mindset and then deprive themselves or put themselves into a mold that becomes bondage. A deep study of the Bible must bring us to a different conclusion. Grace blows that out of the water. God freed us to be free. Really He did.

As free men and women we can choose the highest inner life. We may grab our inheritance and run away only to long for and find the house of our father was better than our preferences. All of us do that I think in big and small ways. Real liberty comes after we find the freedom of living in our father's house.

Grace brings us in union with Christ and that is unique. Jesus made things happen that His Father planned before the foundation of the world. He walked in pre-creation projects and had liberty in the midst of His purpose. He had meat and drink that the disciples would not truly know about until after Pentecost.

If we have believed and had a like-minded spiritual conversion we can say in the midst of our planning, 'What now God?' and really mean it. Then make a choice based on communion with God in the moment. That choice has an element of Spirit leading because it was a surrendered choice made in a scripturally saturated mind functioning in a 'not getting what we really deserve' mentality.It is not I must do this or I can't do that and it is also not I want to do this and don't want to do that. It is something else. It is faith navigation where we shout 'Grace Grace' to a mountain and it is removed because both rules and preference have been abandoned and a redemptive purpose requires the removal of that particular mountain.

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