John on John | Absolutegrace

Today’s thoughts from John

“I will praise You, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will tell of all your marvelous works.

I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your Name, O Most High.” Psalm 9:1,2

Notice in these verses, the four referances to the “will”:

I will praise

I will tell

I will be glad and rejoice

I will sing praise

When I was at a YWAM meeting in Hawaii in 1985, a guest missionary shared that,

“the only thing the Lord wants from us that we are able to give is…our will.”

This will is the heart’s/mind’s decision to choose the Lord, to seek His Kingdom. Though the Lord reaches out to us, woos us and draws us to Himself, it is our Will that must respond. And in these verses, it is with the Whole Heart!

He is to be our focus, our story, our praise and joy, and our song!

Help me, God, to will Your Will and to give you praise with my whole heart!

Thank you, Lord, for You!

“Jesus wept. And so the Jews were saying, ‘Behold how He loved him! Could not this man, which opened the eyes of him who was blind, have kept this man [Lazarus] also from dying?'” John 11:35-37

We all have said similar things in response to sorrows and problems which we have. If Jesus can open the eyes of the blind and raise the dead, then, “couldn’t He have prevented bad things from happening?”

We learn from these verses that although Jesus CAN do the miracle, He often has a larger picture in mind, one which we fail to see because of our own sorrow, grief, or misunderstanding of our life and times.

We can trust the Lord to complete the Big Picture of His will for each of us.

“Did I not say to you, if you believe, you will see the Glory of God?” [vs 40]

The Big Picture is the Glory of God.

[An initial premise of this blog was to share not only my thoughts, but the invariably deeper, more profound musings of my husband, John. This post, and several to come, will be posted in a new category, John Owen’s Journal, John on John.]