Simple or Complicated?

Jesus said "If your eye is single your whole body will be full of light" and then added "If the light in you is darkness how great is that darkness". 

When our eye is "single" - God's way are "simple" -- "un-complicated". 

We see Him as good, and His word as a treasure of wisdom given to us through His kindness. 

When our eye is "single" we see His yoke as easy and His burden as light and we experience His rest for our soul. 

When our eye is "single" we delight to do His will. 

When our eye is single - OUR HEART IS PURE and we SEE GOD. If the light in us is darkness, God appears very complicated. 

If we see Him in a "bad light", we perceive His ways as difficult. 

When the light in us is darkness, God's ways seem hard, confusing, and "complicated." 

How do we see Him? The mind of the Spirit who "EN-LIGHTENS" us is life and peace. The mind of the flesh is not single but complicatedly "hostile", it can't submit because it is IMPURE. 

Sin has "complicated" the carnal mind's perception of God. 

The pure in heart see God as pure - in fact to the pure ALL THINGS are pure - because their eye is "single" - life is not complicated - it's just a joy filled relationship with a perfect heavenly Father. They know that the trouble in the world is not His fault, He is the answer - not the problem.
(text Alan sent out)

Timing and Trust

His Hands are big. He can handle what we can not.  

Trust simply means...letting HIM.

Our Heavenly Father "withholds" information from His child 

because its better in His Hands than ours.  He "holds - 

with" care, for the right time. In due season. While we wait, we are 

tested...will we trade trust for knowledge, like Thomas? 

Unless I see and touch? We are more ready to move, than be still 

and listen.We want more control, rather than to let Him lead. To 

Have knowledge, rather than to Hold Trust.

It is a glorious thing to get to know God in a new way in the inner chamber. It is something still greater and more glorious to know God as the all-sufficient One and to wait on His Spirit to open our hearts and minds wide to receive the great things, the new things which He really longs to bestow on those who wait for Him. 

~Andrew Murray

Those who complain that they make no progress in the life of prayer because they "cannot meditate" should examine, not their capacity for meditation, but their capacity for suffering and love. For there is a hard and costly element, a deep seriousness, a crucial choice, in all genuine religion. ~Evelyn Underhill

His Refining

"Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction"

Be patient, suffering soul!

I hear thy cry

The trial fires may flow,

but I am nigh.

I see the silver,

and I will refine

Until My image 

shall upon it shine.

Fear not, for I am near,

thy help to be;

Greater than all thy pain,

My love for thee.

H.W.C.

God takes a thousand times more pains with us than the artist with his picture, by many touches of sorrow, and by many colors of circumstance, to bring man into the form which is the highest and noblest in His sight, if only we received His gifts and myrrh in the right spirit.  But when the cup is put away, and these feelings are stifled or unheeded, a greater injury is done to the soul than can ever be amended.  For no heart can conceived in what surpassing love God giveth us this myrrh; yet this which we ought to receive to our soul's good, we suffer to pass by us in our sleepy indifference, and nothing comes, of it.  Then we come and complain:  "Alas, Lord! I am so dry, and it is so dark within me!"  I tell thee, dear child, open thy heart to the pain, and it will do thee more good than if thou wert full of feeling and devoutness.  ~J. Tauler
Above taken from today's Daily Strength For Daily Needs

His Hidden Purpose

Peace was not His purpose

His instrument was pain

A regimented suffering

designed to increase strain

I tried to comprehend it

in vain to understand

the more I sought the truth to grasp

it slipped right through my hand

Loneliness and sorrow

became familiar friend

His answer to my fainting cry,

"Endure unto the end"

What was His aim I muttered

with hope and vision dim

I thought that my surrender

would make me more like Him

Then suddenly I saw it

a figure bruised and marred

beyond all recognition

His body ugly scarred

through tear filled eyes now gazing

the dawning light did see

His still voice broke the silence

"You asked to be like Me"