Everything we seem to initiate is already a response!

Even my desire for God's love is something I didn't create. My desires are fed by a Hope someone else gave me as a gift.

Yesterday I helped load $750 + worth of groceries for the homeless (Living Hope drive this weekend) from Costco to my friend's rig and then at Living Hope. They were thanking me, but what looked like my part of my doing was not at all. I didn't call my friend, he called me and invited me along for the adventure. I didn't help pay for any of the food (still thinking about that). I've been gone on vacation so I didn't even know about the food drive. What I keep thinking I'm initiating is almost always a response to something someone else has already done.

God so loved US (everyone in the whole wide world) that He GAVE his much loved son . . . to win us back! Read John 3:15-17. Even before He made this world, He was already thinking of us and in love with us and CHOSE US!

How would my life be different if I viewed everything as something I'm responding to - not making, creating, taking credit or blame for?

Here's my Thomas Kelly quote for the day: "In this humanist age we suppose we are initiators and God is the responder. But the Living Christ within us is the initiator, and we are the responders. God the Lover, the accuser, the revealer of light and darkness presses within us. 'Behold I stand at the door and knock.' And all our apparent initiative is already a response, a testimonial to His secret presence and working with in us."

"The secret places of the heart cease to be our noisy workshop. They become a holy sanctuary of adoration . . . where we are kept in perfect peace, if our minds be stayed on Him who has found us in the inward springs of our life."