But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at how handsome or how tall Eliab is. I have not chosen him. The Lord does not look at people in the way that people do. People look at the face and body of a person. But the Lord sees what they are like inside.’ (I Samuel 16:7 EASY) If you have tried to be a people-pleaser at any point in your life, you know just how difficult it is to always be who they say you should be, do what they say you should do, and find direction is whatever it is they say they find direction in. People look at us and 'see' an image of what they believe us to be, but they also project upon us what they expect us to be based on some 'image' they have of what we should be. Their standard isn't always that easy to measure up to, is it? They project an image that won't make us comfortable if we conform to it. It isn't what God made us to be - the way he sees us matters and we must never lose sight of the 'image' he created when he cre...
He said, ‘I am the Lord who made the earth. I gave a shape to it and I put it in its place. The Lord is my name. I say this to you: “Call out to me and I will answer you. I will tell you about great things. They are secret things that you do not yet know.”' (Jeremiah 33:2-3 EASY) Great things - secret things - that you do not know YET. Did you catch that? When we call out to God, he is never too busy to reveal the hidden to those who seek him with all their hearts. Most of the time, the hidden things remain hidden because we don't ask for him to reveal them. We know bits and pieces, things we have ferreted out on our own, but we don't see what he does in order for all those bits and pieces to come together. Those things may take a while for us to understand, but when we call out, he begins to reveal to us what otherwise may have remained hidden. God gives 'shape' to our lives - making a 'place' for everything we experience. The good and the bad can be used ...