Idols vs. Grace

God is in the business of His peoples' sanctification. God smashes our idols. He is jealous for our affections He vigorously cultivates our reliance on Him.

Over the last month God taught me an important lesson about my idols, His work, and His grace. About four weeks ago two of my idols collided. I was scheduled to fly back from a business trip at the same time as the US World Cup opener. At the time I even told Chandra that God had set two of my idols against each other to teach me a lesson. I went ahead and scheduled the flight that was supposed to touch down a little over an hour before the game started. If there were no delays at the airport and no traffic, I could catch half of the game. So I decided to hope that God would provide. Last week, Chandra and I also prayed that everything would go smoothly on my trip. This is the most rigorous test our software has been through, and it is taking place in a high-stress, high-visibility environment.

God would be totally justified in giving me no success on my trip and delaying my flight just enough to miss the entire soccer game. Instead, everything on my trip went more smoothly than anyone expected, and as a result I was able to catch an earlier flight back home. I spent the whole weekend with my wife, watched the game in my own living room, and did not worry about work a bit.

A few weeks ago I felt like God was cold and hard and had no regard for my happiness. Sitting in the airport an hour before my earlier flight, I realized that I don't have to be scared of God smashing my idols. I learned again that God loves to make His people (me) happy. I realized that he “is able to do immeasurably more than all we [I] ask or imagine”.

Also, I'm thinking of renaming the blog to sixbecomewalt.blogspot.com. Objections?