It is amazing what you can find when you get low enough…

It was a crisis. Not for me but for one of my children. The child had spent the weekend doing what was right, at a Christian Conference, hearing godly people teach about living for God.

Did we leave it in the hotel? I seemed to have remembered removing it from my car and bringing it into the house. Had I lost it? Prior to bed Monday night we diligently looked for it and we got up the next morning doing the same.

The child had met God in a real and powerful way at the conference and now one of his “important” things was gone, missing and we could not find it. How would this child react? When I realized that this thing was likely gone and lost, I remembered thinking that this might be a test or a teachable moment for my child. But as soon as that thought occurred the thought also came, “This may be as much for me as it is for the child”.

I arrived at Church intent on seeing if we had left it on the bus. I searched the bus, looked in the Church building, searched my office but could not find the lost item. The thought kept coming to me “Go back and look on the bus again”.

I went to Penny and asked her for the bus keys again. I told her that I was going to search the bus one more time and this time I was going to get down on my knees. Guess what? What was once lost is now found! It is amazing what you can find when you get low enough.

I asked, “Lord what lessons are there for me in this?”

1. Some things you will not find until you get down on your knees. I will never see and experience the will of God apart from humbling myself in dependence on God. This highlights the importance of getting down on my knees before God in prayer.

2. Some things you will not find until you are willing to loose some thing. I had to be willing to “ruin” my pants by getting them dirty. I had to be willing to get uncomfortable in bending down. Had I not done that I would have not found the lost item. Likewise, I’ve got to be willing to loose some things in my life, time, leisure, money and comfort to see and experience the will of God.

3. Some things you will not find until you get low enough. I soon realized that getting down on my knees was not enough in order to see things as I needed to. It was when I lowered myself nearly flat on my face that I discovered what I was looking for. Likewise, many times when we are finally at our lowest, it is then that we can see and experience the will of God.

Many of us can testify that the best things in life came to us only when we finally got low enough. That is exactly how many of us came to know the Lord; we were flat on our backs and we finally looked up and saw the Lord. The Bible says:

(James 4:10 NIV) Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

(1 Pet 5:5-6 NIV) "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." {6} Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.

Humility is the means to God’s greatest blessing - a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is only when we humble ourselves and admit that we are a sinner in need of salvation will be able to receive the grace of salvation. Only the humble receive God’s supernatural grace. Humility is therefore a good thing for all of us and a necessary thing to experience God’s very best.

For His glory and our eternal joy in Christ,
Brother John