Orange Moon Monday, October 25, 2021 “Challenge? Opportunity!”

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

(a repeat from 2017)

"Challenge?  Opportunity!"

      

    Spiritual mindedness involves seeing challenges as opportunities.  

    "But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: He is their strength in the time of trouble" (Psalm 37:39).

    To know "the power that worketh in us," namely, the power of God, we must experience circumstances, situations, and conditions that motivate us to consciously seek our Lord's enabling (Ephesians 3:20).  The challenges of life in our present earthly existence help us to see our great need for God's presence, involvement, and working on our behalf.  The world, the devil, and the flesh tempt us to believe we can make our way by our own devices.  The Word of God, however, declares that "the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps" (Jeremiah 10:23).  Without challenge, we would all ignore or forget the plainly-stated Scriptural declaration of how dependent we are on the Lord Jesus Christ.  "Without Me, ye can do nothing" (John 15:5).  Apart from Christ and our realized requirement for His enabling, we rely on illusions of our own abilities, even as the devil tempted Eve, "Ye shall be as gods" (Genesis 3:5).  We can blindly live as if we are self sufficient creators rather than utterly dependent creatures so needy of Divine grace that "in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

    Great opportunity lies in troubles both great and small.  In these challenges, our Lord beckons us to know His presence, provision, and power.  Without challenge, we wouldn't avail ourselves of such grace, even as the Psalmist confessed: "Before I was afflicted, I went astray" (Psalm 119:67).  Thankfully, our brother of old proceeded to also confess, "But now have I kept Thy Word."   Challenge, understood and perceived as opportunity to trust and submit to God, provides an altar whereupon we sacrifice the darkness of self sufficiency with the bright light of God's faithful promises.  How little we would know of Him apart from pain, difficulty, and the perplexity that directs our gaze away from ourselves and unto the Life of our lives and the Hope of our hearts…

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth."

(Psalm 121:1-2)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "The way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps."

 (Jeremiah 10:23)

  

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