The simple things are most precious

:: The Vocation of the Natural Life - Oswald Chambers My Utmost for His Highest 1/17/06

The call of God is not a call to any particular service; my interpretation may be because contact with the nature of God has made me realize what I would like to do for Him.  The call of God is essentially expressive of His nature; service is the outcome of what is fitted to my nature.  The vocation of the natural life is stated by the Apostle Paul, "When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him" (i.e. preach is to sacramentally express) "among the Gentiles."

Service is the overflow of superabounding devotion; but, profoundly speaking, there is no call to that, it is my own little actual bit and is the echo of my identification with the nature of God.  Service is the natural part of my life.  God gets me into a relationship with Himself, whereby I understand His call, then I do things out of sheer love for Him on my own account.  To serve is to deliberate the love-gift of a nature that has heard the call of God.  Service is expressive of that which is fitted to my nature.  God's call is expressive of His nature; consequently when I receive His nature and hear His call, the voice of the Divine nature sounds in both and the two work together.  The Son of God reveals Himself in me, and I serve Him in the ordinary ways of life out of devotion to Him.

Galations 1:15-16

It has taken me two days to absorb this message, to understand how it is fitting to me, and then how to explain it.  This is the process I go thru when looking inward at God's point of view.  Sometimes it just goes right over my head.  I have to slowly and purposely read each and every word, thinking on them, and in this case there are those times that I must wait, for awhile, upon the Holy Spirit.  If I can explain it on paper or back to myself in a way that is understandable then I know that I've got it.  I don't remember this being the process I've always gone thru to understand concepts.  But the lupus affects my cognitive abilities and I think that on the days when I'm in a flare or fighting some attack on my health, the fog is the heaviest. 

In this case, the message is simple.  As most things have been made apparent lately.  Simplicity.  So, I understand that I'm a servant of God's, that the best way that I can praise Him, to worship Him, is to serve Him.  And the reason why this has become such a natural affection for me, such a natural occurence, is because of the nature of God that dwells within in the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Making me more and more in His image.  Not that I will ever be as Jesus or equal with.  That is not what I'm saying.  What I am saying is that within each of us who are born-again, the same metamorphesis occurs because the Comforter, the Holy Spirit is sent to us.  He causes the changes within our nature, to do the will of the Father.  It is just a natural occurence.  It's that simple.

God's call is expressive of His nature; consequently when I receive His nature and hear His call, the voice of the Divine nature sounds in both and the two work together.  The Son of God reveals Himself in me, and I serve Him in the ordinary ways of life out of devotion to Him.

So go with it my friend.  There is much joy in the journey when we let God have His way in our life.  Serve Him in the ordinary things of life.  The seemingly mundane chores and the not so mundane. For me this means, scrubbing the floors and the toilets, doing the grocery shopping, vacuuming the rugs, doing the laundry, tending the gardens or any of my regular chores of homemaking should be done as unto the Lord.  The work of your hands takes on  new meaning when we think about the fact that we are serving Our Lord in these ordinary ways of life.  We may not be a preacher, or a missionary, a Sunday School teacher or a youth leader, we may not sing in the choir or play an instrument but we still serve God in the everyday things of our lives.  Make them shine.  And when we hug our children, listen to their day, their thoughts and their dreams, minister to our husbands, we are serving God in these not so ordinary ways of life.  For these ways are special to me and precious and much to be thankful for.  To be thankful for the opportunity to serve God in these ways. And then let us hear, when we stand before Our Lord on that day, "Well done my good and faithful servant."

Living simply and for Him,

Sherri