Learn the Lesson of Not

Can you see it? The lazy days of summer are coming to an end. We are starting school next week. I just found out we need to leave our house at 7AM Tuesday mornings because Zach has a class that starts at 8. Wasn’t expecting that. Evan doesn’t get out of his classes til 3. You do the math. One long day. I’m sure this isn’t the end of surprises as we face a new school year. Homeschooling’s like a box of chocolates, don’t you know?

I wanted to share with you something I read from Sit Walk Stand (originally published in 1957). I don’t know why I want to share these things. I just do. I also know that people who don’t comment, are reading my blog. So, comments or no comments. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes we give gifts with wrapping paper and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we write thank you notes and sometimes we don’t. It’s not the receiving that counts.... It’s the giving....

Watchman Nee writes the following in the chapter entitled: Stand

John 5:19, “ The Son can do nothing of himself.” How often in the books of Acts we find the Holy Spirit prohibitions! (... he mentions Acts 16) Yet this book is the book of the acts of the Holy Spirit, not of His inactivities. Too often we think that the actual doing is what matters. We have to learn the lesson of not doing - of keeping quiet for him. We have to learn that if God does not move, we dare not move......

.......The abiding principle of all true christian work is, “In the beginning God.” (Gen 1)

...all work, to be effective, must depend for its continuance upon the power of God alone. What is power? We often use the word loosely. We say of a man, “He is a very powerful speaker.” But we have to ask ourselves the question: What power is he using? Is it spiritual power, or is it natural power? There is today all too much place given to the power of nature in the service of God. We have got to learn that even where God has initiated a work, if we are trying to accomplish it in our power, God will never commit himself to it.

You ask me what I mean by natural power. Put very simply, it is what we can do without the help of God. We give a man a task of organizing something because he is naturally a good organizer. But if that is so, how hard will he pray? If he is accustomed to depend on his natural gifts, he may feel no need to cry to God. The trouble with us all is that there is so many things we can do without relying upon God. (Exod. 4:10)

.....Somehow, in our history with God, we must experience that initial crippling touch of His hand to weaken our natural strength, so that we can stand forth on the ground of the resurrection life in Christ alone .....

..... When God commits Himself to a thing, then He comes out in power to prove that He is in it and is Himself its Author.

What a way to start my school year!

I’m an expert at trying hard. Aren’t we all? I even try to appropriate God’s power for myself. It goes like this: This is a good thing I feel I must do, therefore I will ask God to give me the strength to do this good thing I feel I must do. Ouch. Argh. Groan. Guess it’s time for me to re-learn an old lesson from a study I once did by Henry Blackaby. “Look for where God is already at work... then join Him.”

I’m not saying God can not originate a thing through me, He certainly can. I’m just sayin’ that no matter what I do, I want God the Author of it and the Power behind my activity in it. Anyone say, Amen?!

Our homeschool motto is Psalm 127, "Unless the Lord builds the house they labor in vain...." It could just as easily be a family motto or a life motto. A motto is an Italian word for pledge.

What do you pledge as your summer comes to an end and another school year begins?