Going Out on Faith?

I don’t plan to blog through every single entry in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest, but I’ll blog about entries whenever I feel like doing so.

In the January 2 entry, Oswald Chambers says the following:

“Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do— He reveals to you who He is. Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you ‘go out’ in complete surrender to Him until you are not surprised one iota by anything He does?…Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to ‘go out’ in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus.”

I like this entry better than the one yesterday (see here) because it emphasizes getting to know God for who he is, rather than trying to discern what God is supposedly doing. My problem, though, is that even this entry assumes that we can be dogmatic about what God is doing. If the idea is that I should trust God to provide for my needs, then I’m cool with that (though, of course, I would ask why there are so many people in the world whose needs do not appear to be provided for). But if the point is, say, that God may want me to be a missionary, and so I should go out on faith, then I’d have issues with that, for I’d wonder how I can even be sure that God would want me to be a missionary (and I’m just using an example here).

I’m not overly dogmatic about what God is or is not doing in my life or in the world, for I do not know. But I do try to trust that God is full of love and grace, whatever happens, and hopefully that can influence me to make good decisions that help myself and other people. That will not stop me from praying for things, but I don’t really believe that God has some grand plan for my life with which I need to be in tune. But, as I said, I hold on to God’s love and grace.

On a somewhat related note, see Bob Greaves’ post here.