“It is all God’s work”
“Nothing is of ourselves”
Brendan Mc Crossan
“It is all God’s work”
All to often we think that we are the ones who have the power and authority to do the things we do, we think it is us, and we are the most important person around, no one else could do the job as good as ‘I’ or as quick as ‘I.’ ‘I’ stand alone in a world gone mad, a world without a God to control and regulate its advances. ‘I’ am the most import person in my life and ‘I’ can do what ‘I’ like in my little world. Sorry to inform you, without God you can do or say nothing, without God you are nothing, because everything you have, even you’re personality is from God, your very emotions are from God, there is nothing in you that is from you and you alone, the ‘I’ that you are is from God and not from you, you couldn’t even breath if it wasn’t from God because he gave you the very lungs you have, and the very air he created, ‘not you.’
In my ignorance ‘I’ believed ‘I’ was a self made man, that what ‘I’ done was because ‘I’ wanted to do it, it was me alone who was the ruler in my little universe. How wrong ‘I’ was and am, for without God ‘I’ cease to exist, everything ‘I’ think ‘I’ am dissolves in a pool of disillusionment as ‘I’ come to realize without God ‘I’ am nothing. The ‘I’ in me is nothing, for ‘I’ cannot even stop myself from getting sick, ‘I’ cannot stop myself from dying, ‘I’ cannot stop the sun from turning or the moon from shining, ‘I’ can only look at them and marvel at them. How little ‘I’ am becoming as ‘I’ realize that ‘I’ am emptiness, a space occupied by a body given to me by God, not of my own creation or from my parents. ‘I’ am because, he is!
God is the creator, I am the created, he is the potter, I am the clay; I am in existence only because he created me, and as my creator I do not have the right to say to him, ‘how dare you make me like this.’ Can the clay say to the potter don’t make me a jar for holding rubbish in; make me a jar for holding flowers in? No! And neither can I say to my creator, make me for a precious use.
Did God not say to Moses that he created Pharaoh to oppose Moses, that he created him to show forth to God’s people his amazing glory and power, through what he would do to Pharaoh and his army. Then he did and demonstrated his glory by destroying all of Pharaoh’s army, every one of the drowned in the red sea, after God took the Israelites across to the other side on dry land.
Did God not say to Job where, were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Job- 40- 2 He wasn’t even in existence when God laid the foundation of the earth, neither were you and I.
When God planned the very world and all he was going to put in it at a certain time and place, could I tell him what time and place to put me in? No silly man that I am, I realized that I was born in the very second that God decided I would be born and to the very parents I would be born to, and the very country and city and street, could I tell him I don’t like the parents you gave me or the country I was born in? No I could not and can not tell God what to do; he does as he planned long ago.
God says in the book of Jeremiah; I have plans for you and they are plans for good, to give you a future and a hope. I note that he said plans for good, to give me a future and a hope, not plans for disaster or sickness or disease. I am the one who is not following God’s plans so sickness and disease and wrong things have happened to me all my life. Do I blame God for this? No!
“Nothing is of ourselves”
There are many factors in this life, God being one of them, me being another and Satan and evil spirits being another, and all play a part in God’s plans for me.
As a Christian now I am more aware that God has plans for me and that I can get in the way of his plans, and not follow those plans because I have thought my ideas were the best ideas, and that my plan was the best plan to follow, but increasingly I am realizing God’s plans are best and are indeed for my good. In all the things I have set out to achieve on my merit I have failed or partially succeeded, but not with joy, and inward peace. I done the thing I set out to do but there was no lasting satisfaction to it; it faded away like the flowers in the garden, I did my thing not God’s thing, and all I can do is repent of it all now and ask God for forgiveness for getting in the way of his plans for me.
As I previously stated; I could not breath if God had not given me healthy lungs and the very air those lungs breath, I may have thought that God would use me to do great things but underlying behind my desires were the thoughts I was doing it, I was making things happen, and I could not make even one thing happen; I cannot do anything to bring about my glory, or praise, or honour All praise and glory, and honour belong to God alone. If someone I prayed with was healed, there was a smug satisfaction buried deep down inside just lurking quietly there in the distance, that it was me being used to bring that healing about; I have to admit this because it is true. I felt that I was the one most open to the gift of healing, it was only me whom God would use to heal someone, there was no other believing Christian about who believed in healing, and this may have been so but God could have used the very dogs in the street to bring healing to someone, he used an ass to bring Balham to his senses, and he uses this ass to do his work not this asses work.
Hidden inside of me is the feeling that I am the one God would use to do mighty things through, it is not a forward thought or a constant thought but it is there lurking away in the back of my mind, and I don’t care who knows now. I can’t help the thoughts that are in my mind any more than you can stop thoughts from entering you’re mind. But I can change those wrong thoughts deliberately by acknowledging that it is only God and God alone who can heal or work a miracle, without me being anyway remotely involved.
I have an amazing testimony; a testimony of how God spared my life on at least 5 or 6 times maybe even more, and sometimes it was supernaturally done by him. I have a testimony of greatness of how God has used me to bring about amazing miracles of healing, how God done supernatural miracles in my life and it is of no value now except to say thank you to God for what he done for this human being he created. I had no part in those miracles except to be there and be used; I was just a paintbrush in the hands of the great almighty artist creating his ongoing work of art. Of myself I had no worth except to be a willing brush, but the colors and paints the creator used and the strokes he used to perform his art were all his not mine. God says; I was created to be; not to do. He created me I didn’t create him; I am at his disposal not he at mine. I can’t call those things that be not, except he calls them through me.
Ephesians-1-11-for as part of ‘God’s sovereign plan’ we were chosen from the beginning to be his, and all things happened just as he decided, long ago. God’s purpose in this was that we should praise God and give glory to him for doing theses mighty things for us who were the first to trust in Christ Jesus.
If ever I needed a lesson in humility this scripture is it; in it I can see that I couldn’t plan anything, because the plans for my life were already laid down, simply because; from the beginning, before the world began, I was thought about and God thought I will use Brendan for this and that and I will allow certain things to happen to him, which unknown to him which will shape his character. Theses things will make him eventually into the man I decided he would become; made in my image. So God allowed Brendan to be a sickly child who grew up weak and developed sickness that left him paralysed and ill, for long stretches of time, and that Brendan would know pain in his body all the days of his life until now. Now why would God allow me to suffer those things, for one thing they haven’t killed me up until now anyway, and in suffering that pain in my body, I emphasize with people who are sick and in pain, and when praying with those people I can pray with a greater depth of love and compassion. God did not give me sickness or diseases Satan did, but God allowed these things to happen to me for a reason, and God is not stupid. He knew as soon as I discovered his word, that I would find out that sickness and disease is from Satan and not God and resist it in the people I would pray with, and so he could heal his children through me with great effect, and thousands have come to the lord through me, because I knew the gospel of healing and forgiveness, and shared it with those who were sick and they believed and received Jesus. All the sickness in the world is worth the salvation of those souls who now belong to Jesus. I don’t resent God for having a body that is constantly in pain, but I rejoice in the fact that I know he didn’t do it to me Satan did. If I died now I would die happy realizing that all I suffered was worth the amount of souls that the lord saved through me. Remember the scripture that says; “there is much rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents,” and I have witnessed thousands repent and turn to Jesus. Sickness in my body is not Satan’s victory but God’s glory, God has used my sickness to get through to others who stayed away from him; through my emphasizing with them, they knew I understood them, and loved them unconditionally and so opened their heart to God. I can now understand why Jesus suffered so much before he died, it was so that he would be able to emphasize with us in our suffering and pain.
In this little book I am learning so much about myself and am really writing about myself but I know you too feel the things I wrote about and understand what I have been through and the difficulties I have had to work through to get to where I am now and it is for you I share my failings, as I share them they become victories, if they make you stop and look at your reasons for doing things ‘for God’ or for yourself.
I know now it is not I who live but Christ Jesus who lives in me who does the things for God through and in and with me, I am just a tool to be used, a willing tool I might add but a tool nevertheless, and in the hands of my master. God allowed all things to happen to me and I am learning through obedience which things God allows and which things Satan is trying to get me into, I am learning the difference between the two.
Ephesians-1-11-for as part of ‘God’s sovereign plan’ we were chosen from the beginning to be his, and all things happened just as he decided, long ago.
As you read this scripture again, you will see that as “part of God’s sovereign plan,” we, {you and I,} were chosen from the beginning; we didn’t do the choosing he did, to be his. Lets stop there for a moment; isn’t it awesome that from the beginning God had decided that you and I would be in existence from a certain moment in time and that all through our lives he
would guide and direct us into his plans for good and to give us a future and a hope, and that he allowed in his plans for the mistakes we would defiantly make by not listening to him, and allowed us to go our own way for so long then he would reign us in and make us into what he decided long ago from the beginning to be. Things have happened to you in your life, bad things, and God allowed those things to happen for a reason, because he can turn everything that happens to us for our good later on. He can use those bad things for his glory turning Satan’s evil plans for you into glorious things for you and I and for his glory.
‘All things happened just as he decided long ago,’ not some things happened, the scripture says, but all things happened just as he decided.
God does not want bad things to happen to us, but there is a devil in this world that is determined to destroy God’s plans if he could, and he connives and plots evil schemes of how to destroy God’s plans for you and me, and at times he succeeds, but God has allowed for those times to happen, because he has a use for those bad things later on, and Satan thinking he is greater than God doesn’t yet realize that God knows every though that Satan has in his head. Nothing is hidden from God, not even Satan’s thoughts just in case you thought that God didn’t know what Satan is up to. If God didn’t know Satan’s plans just as Satan thought of them, then why do we get these urges not to do certain things, like getting on a train that crashes later, or on a plane that falls out of the sky, or an accident just waiting to happen, why do we get a prompting in our spirit to avoid certain places and things, and something bad happens there and would have happened to us is we went there.
In the 9-11- attacks in America when the terrorists attacked the twin towers, many people reported that they were made late, or done something that made them late for work in those twin towers, or cancel their work through feeling sick, or some strange feeling stopped them going to work, and so their lives were saved that fateful day, because they followed what was happening to them and didn’t go to work or not get to work in time, It was God’s spirit prompting them not to go, he knew Satan had prompted the people who attacked America to do it at the times it happened. God read Satan’s mind and heard him give directions to his evil spirits to do their work. Nothing is hidden from God he knows everything about everything, as scripture says he knows what you are going to say before you even say it; he knows your every need before you even ask, because it was all in his plans anyway.
It is all of God plans from before time began; lets try from here on in to follow the prompting of God’s Holy Spirit so that following God’s plans can become easier, and we don’t have to go through so much pain before we decide to listen to our inner man.
Realize that you are in God’s heart and he knows the plans he has for you. Sickness, disease, and disaster are not the plans of God for you, healing and wholeness is, as demonstrated by Jesus during his lifetime. Prosperity and good living with good children are God’s plans. A future and a hope are his plans for you and all you and I have to do is follow those plans by listening carefully to what God’s Holy Spirit is telling us from within and learning to obey those promptings, it will make life much easier when we follow God not our plans and desires. God is a good and loving God and he loves us with a love that is beyond our understanding, from the beginning God decided to make you and me to give us a future and a hope a life filled with happiness, and in helping others to achieve their goals also. What a time to be alive in when God is revealing more of himself to his children, and to realize it is all from God, nothing of ourselves, of myself I am nothing but in Christ Jesus I am everything.
I could not see if he hadn’t given me sight; I could not breathe if he hadn’t given me lungs; I could not walk if he hadn’t given me legs; I could not hug if he hadn’t given me arms; I could not hear if he hadn’t given me ears. I could not give those things to myself, I am totally God dependant, and I am so glad to be dependant on him and not on me anymore.
Amen