Monday Question: How do you attempt to turn over your will to God's care on a daily basis?

Some answers from that session:

Allowing criticism of others to help me see my faults.
Having no expectations of people.
Not going by what I see.
Not going by how I feel.
Going by what God promised in his word.
Realizing it's not about me.
Avoiding anger at all costs.
Putting in more spiritual than carnal.
Avoiding things that I know grieve God.
Letting my pain shape me.
Letting my pain help me grow.
Preferring others.

Inventory - Tearing Out The Old

When I am able to use the word of God and my accountability group as a spiritual mirror to accurately see what needs to be torn out, I then am able to ponder rebuilding. This following was written by Dave Poletti at one of our CR groups:

To me it's like taking an old building and removing all that Christ did not put there - getting down to the Chief Cornerstone - which is Jesus Christ.  

 

Now with the old wreckage out of the way, I'm able to discover the blueprint God has placed inside me. 

 

It begins with a secure foundation anchored by faith. 

 

The under girding strength of the home is its joy. 

 

It's framed with character and the exterior is wrapped in accountability.

 

The insulation is made of temperance, which is self-control. 

 

The windows are open to wisdom, and framed in knowledge. 

 

Its painted with 490 coats of forgiveness (70 x 7). 

 

Surround sounds of praise fill the home, carpeted with kindness, furnished with patience, decorated in humility, and in the closets hang robes of righteousness. 

 

The roof is made with love, which covers everything. 

 

Held together by Grace

 

Best of all, the insurance policy is written in blood.

It's not about me

This might be the hardest thing to deal with for healing people. Once we're hurt or embittered - we tend to start to protect ourselves. I know I did. I spent most of my days on the defensive. Just looking - or even daring - someone to add to the list of people who would try and screw me. 

Then I slowly began to realize that I was not that special. The whole world was not out to get me. It had bigger fish to fry. People who were inconsiderate or hurtful to me are just more hurting people. They have their own issues.

They have blind spots.

God allows people into my life to help build my character and make me stronger. I can choose to look at the beam in my eye or lie to myself and say that the splinter in their eye is somehow an excuse for me staying sick.

It does not matter how I feel. God does not have "bad days". The Bible states in Numbers 23:19 "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?

What God has begun in our life, He will finish. It does not matter what we feel. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

It's about God.

God in the right place in my life fixes every other relationship of life (Matthew 6:33).

I wonder if this was tucked away in my mind so that unknown to me it controlled my analogy of the solar system to our many-faceted lives. If God is the blazing center of the solar system of our lives, then all the planets will be held in their proper orbit. But if not, everything goes awry.

-John Piper