Consistency...is there a secret?

In the recent past I have been looking at the inconsistency in my spiritual walk and talking to God about it. Wouldn't you know it, in my reading today in My Utmost For His Highest, Oswald Chambers talks about the Apostle Paul's "strong and steady underlying consistency" based on a depth of the fundamentals, the Cross of Christ, through which the energy of God is released. Then Oswald hits me with this:

...Consequently, he could let his external life change

without internal distress

because he was rooted and grounded in God.

Most of us are not consistent spiritually

because we are more concerned about being consistent externally....

I used to think that I was grounded, but when God allows certain crises that seem to be inconsistent with my 'theology' [what I have learnt of God's nature by study and by relationship thus far], something happens to that flow of energy from God, almost like someone loosened the plug and that flow diminishes, leaving me dimmed and deflated.

I want to have my 'externals' consistent, and under control, and when they aren't, the world stops making sense, God stops making sense, and suddenly my world grows dim, my heart grows faint. At times, I have struggled to make sense of it all. In fact, at times, I have felt 'hurt' by God, at times pained that yet again, I have misunderstood Him. Consequently, I develop a fear of hearing His Voice, for fear that it actually was not His Voice after all, because what I thought I heard, was not what happened.

My responses have been varied. At times, I have curled up in a ball of hurt, afraid to look at Him in the eyes again. Other times, I have become numb, not wanting to feel or 'hear' again. It is I who loosen that plug time and time again. My concern grows over my personal condition.

Then God nudges me again, I become defiant against the situation, turn to God, look to Calvary and why God came to earth. Then I can boldly quote David in the Psalms, "yet will I trust...my hope is in You..." Slowly I learn to be rooted in the Cross of Christ; His suffering; His resurrection; His redemption; His power; in the God whose thoughts do not coincide with mine because He is infinitely wise and has 20-20 vision of my entire time line.

Have you ever had this experience? Did you think you heard He would heal, He would provide, He would deliver...etc.. and He didn't? Then persist with me in trusting Him yet, tightening that plug, letting Him flow, no matter how senseless and inconsistent those externals are. Look to Him. Like Paul, God is bringing us that point where we can stand before Him boasting only in the Cross of Christ, not in our personal conditions.

Isaiah 45:18-24 (The Message)

God, Creator of the heavens—

he is, remember, God.Maker of earth—

he put it on its foundations, built it from scratch.

He didn't go to all that trouble to just leave it empty, nothing in it.

He made it to be lived in.

This God says:
"I am God, the one and only.

I don't just talk to myself or mumble under my breath.

I never told Jacob, 'Seek me in emptiness, in dark nothingness.'

I am God.

I work out in the open, saying what's right, setting things right.

So gather around, come on in, all you refugees and castoffs.

They don't seem to know much, do they—

those who carry around their no-god blocks of wood,

praying for help to a dead stick?

So tell me what you think.

Look at the evidence.

Put your heads together. Make your case.

Who told you, and a long time ago, what's going on here?

Who made sense of things for you?

Wasn't I the one? God?

It had to be me.

I'm the only God there is—

The only God who does things right and knows how to help.

So turn to me and be helped—saved!—

everyone, whoever and wherever you are.

I am God,
the only God there is, the one and only.

I promise in my own name:

Every word out of my mouth does what it says.

I never take back what I say.

Everyone is going to end up kneeling before me.

Everyone is going to end up saying of me,

'Yes! Salvation and strength are in God!'"

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