Do You See Jesus in Your Clouds?

DO YOU SEE JESUS IN YOUR CLOUDS?

"The clouds are the dust of His feet ..." Nahum 1:3

This devotional writing from the pen of Oswald Chambers, was just too good to not share with you this morning. I needed to hear this message and hope it will encourage you ...

"In the Bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which seem actually to contradict the sovereignty of God.

Yet it is THROUGH these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us HOW to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. They are a sign to that GOD IS THERE. What a revelation to know that sorrow, bereavement, and suffering are actually the clouds that come along with God! God cannot come near us without clouds -- He does not come in clear-shining brightness.

It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something IN our trials. Through every cloud He wants to UNLEARN something. His purpose in using the cloud is to simplify our beliefs until our relationship with Him is exactly like that of a child -- a relationship simply between God and our own souls, and where other people are but shadows. Until other people become shadows to us, clouds and darkness will be ours every once in a while. Is our relationship with God becoming more simple than it has ever been?

There is a connection between the strange providential circumstances allowed by God and we know of Him, and we have to learn to interpret the mysteries of life in light of our knowledge of God. Until we come face to face with the deepest, darkest fact of life without damaging our view of God's character, we do not yet know Him!

"... they were fearful as they entered the cloud" (Luke 9:34). Is there anyone except Jesus in your cloud? If so, it will only get darker until you get to the place where there is "no one anymore, but only Jesus ..." (Mark 9:8; also see verses 2-7). (from My Utmost for His Highest) -- Bill Welte is President and CEO of America's KESWICK

God's WORD for YOU: Psalm 51-53; Romans 2

Great Quote: A man may be haunted with doubts, and only grow thereby in faith. Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood...Doubt must precede every deeper assurance; for uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed.--George Macdonald