Certainly Uncertain

I use the devotional My Utmost for His Highest – have for years now – and I have come to love Oswald Chambers as if he were a close personal friend. It’s supernatural how often God uses him to speak directly to my circumstances with a wisdom that I desperately need and am not able to find elsewhere. Sometimes God speaks through him to give me a heads up. In one of his devotions Os wrote, "To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth." OK, that’s cool all by itself but when paired with the verse he used, it is magical.

1 John 3:1a, 2 reads, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

Think back, way back, if necessary, to a time in your life when you made no plans. It may seem impossible to remember, but that time existed for us all. It was probably when you were a toddler or a very young child. That was a time when all your days were orchestrated by someone bigger, stronger and wiser than you were, and you were completely at peace waking every day without knowing one thing that lay ahead. You were uncertain in all your ways because you were completely dependent on the adults in your life to tell you when to get up, when to get dressed, when to eat your meals, when to take your naps, when to play, when to go, when to stay. You never took time to reason that they were in charge and that you were safe in their care. And sadly, you were completely unaware of your own freedom in not knowing what the day may bring forth.

That’s what it is supposed to be like to be a child of God. Care free. No plans of our own apart from Him. Complete uncertainty. Trusting Him without having to decide to. Free to move when He calls. Able to rest when it’s nap-time. Eating the meal He has put in front of us without considering the next one.  How great a love is that? A lavish love! Now we are children of God. Who knows what we will be tomorrow? We are summer-time free, and all that is certain is God.