Paint vs. stain

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"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on {rely on} your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths." 

-Proverbs 3:5,6

One Bible translation says, "and He shall make your paths straight." My journey has not been straight. In fact it looks a lot more like the road in the image above. I have not always trusted and do not always lean on Him. One thing I know for sure is that my own understanding will trip me up every time. And the more I think I know, the more I realize I do not know. My challenge is to not think so much. To be silent and listen. To ask and to follow. To remember that if He is my Shepherd, then I must be a sheep.

I read this today and thought I'd share:

"It is like that here. The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to God. But it is far easier than what we are trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good." We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way—centered on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown.

"That is why the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussing and frettings; coming in out of the wind."

"We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting God work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through."

{C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book IV, Chapter 8}