Manipulating… To manage or utilize skillfully. To control by artful means to one’s own advantage. To change by artful means to serve one’s purpose…
Manage. Control. Change.
When trusting God is a situational condition and not a complete way of life, I wonder that we are not guilty of trying to manipulate the Creator of the universe.
Faith in Him should not be a way out of a difficulty, but rather an in-place covenant relationship that provides comfort, strength, and resolve even as the moment of crisis unfolds.
We want God to meet whatever need we have at the moment. Especially when we haven’t been able to fill or meet that need for ourselves.
When we try to manipulate our environment and circumstances in order to meet our own needs, with no regard to He Who is Master and Creator, I fear we are guilty of idolatry. We so often put trust in people/things/self, placing them on the throne, with God waiting on the back burner…just in case we can’t pull it off.
When all else fails, how often do we then begin to bargain with Him?
How often do we exhaust every other avenue before throwing ourselves at His Feet?
Why is it that we seek after Him when we are faced with situations beyond our ability to manipulate, and don’t tip our hat to Him the rest of the time?
Or, maybe I’m the only one guilty. Maybe I’m the only one who forgets that the air I suck into my lungs is there only because of Him. Not to mention the health of the lungs that breathe in that life-sustaining oxygen.
Every time I successfully manipulate circumstances in my life to my advantage, I experience only a by-product of His blessed provisions.
HE pours HIS life into mine. I create nothing.
I dare not take the glory for what goes right and blame God when things go wrong.
Even the closer relationship I enjoy with Him is because He has revealed Himself to me. Yes, I must choose. Yes, I must obey. Yes, I must commit.
But try as I might, I would never know God were He not to reveal Himself TO me.
I have not learned how to successfully manipulate God. I am learning how to stop.
