“As I unfold My plans and the events that were promised long ago come to pass, many around you will need what you have. That is why I am taking the time to train you now. You see your present pressures as challenges to overcome. I am using them to teach you to submit. You see your needs as temporary circumstances that you can work your way through. I am teaching you faith in Me. Few of you know how to trust Me, really trust Me. I am taking care of that. Embrace your trials as the eternal work that they are. Begin to see with My eyes. Look past your needs and covet only My presence. Grow past your self-serving hopes and dedicate your entire being to My ways. It is your only place of honest service.”

John 17:15-19 AMP

15) I do not ask that You will take them out of the world, but that You will keep and protect them from the evil one.

16) They are not of the world (worldly, belonging to the world), [just] as I am not of the world.

17) Sanctify them [purify, consecrate, separate them for Yourself, make them holy] by Truth; Your Word is Truth.

18) Just as You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.

19) And so for their sake and on their behalf I sanctify (dedicate, consecrate) Myself, that they also may be sanctified (dedicated, consecrated, made holy) in the Truth.

Jam. 1:2-4 AMP

2) Consider it wholly joyful, my brethren, whenever you are enveloped in or encounter trials of any sort or fall into various temptations.

3) Be assured and understand that the trial and proving of your faith bring out endurance and steadfastness and patience.

4) But let endurance and steadfastness and patience have full play and do a thorough work, so that you may be [people] perfectly and fully developed [with no defects], lacking in nothing.

A good friend called me a while ago. In the course of our conversation, through the obedience of this vessel, the Lord exposed my fickle heart. I had taken on the responsibility to make happen what only the Lord was supposed to do. Repentance was necessary and I did so.

After a while, the Lord showed me where my heart really was and how my sin had affected my relationship with Him. I had taken over the lordship of my circumstances once again, a heart position that deeply offends Him. I had decided that my ways were better than His ways for my life - no small matter. In fact, my foolishness grieved my God the same way that the Israelites offended Him over and over again by not trusting Him after they were delivered from Egypt.

In this time when we, as God’s people, lounge under His astounding grace and mercy, and vacation in His overwhelming forbearance, we must never miss the fact that His heart never changes. This life is all about His ways. He is God, and we are not.

Forgive me, Lord,

Jim Corbett