the Lord is in every little detail

Among the many emails and assurances of prayer that come into my email came one from a sister in the Lord in France who writes...

Can I ask you whether you have purposely called your cancer "prostRate" rather than prostate in your intro. on the blog?! If it is a typing mistake, surely the Lord is in every little detail!!!
May our days, easy and hard, help is to be prostrate before Him!!

No, it was not intentional.. on my part at any rate!

Yesterday in the our morning meeting I preached on the topic of 'an enemy has done this' from Matthew 13:28 and tried to outline the balance between the sovereign will of God and an enemy who is to be resisted even though he sometimes has the given authority to put us to trial and 'hinder' our service for God. 1Thes 2:18. Both James and Peter tell us that we are to humble ourselves under the might hand of God AND to resist the devil and he will flee from you. Getting this balance right is the key to peace of heart at such times.

From Adam's first moments man was intended to be an overcomer. He was placed in the garden in Eden to 'serve it' and to 'guard it'. The 'gatekeeper' betrayed God and his entire race and we have lived with the consequences ever since. But in the restoration that God is working the revelation of another Adam brings with it the instinct of the overcomer.

I do not 'humble myself' under this cancer, by God's grace I shall 'resist' it. I do not passively succumb to current events mindlessly but I actively submit myself to God and his current working of all things together for those who are loving him.

To use the language of my sister in France, I will not prostRate myself before this cancer or any circumstance of life. It 'cannot keep the spirit in me down' as Graham Kendrick said in one of his older songs. Even my enemies are being caused to serve me or as Wesley put it 'all the attributes divine are now at work for me'. Everything that touches my life must fall on its face, prostRate, before God. Every Dagon must yield to the God of Israel. We are the apple of his eye and his care is meticulous.

As for me, I am prostRate before him I love not from fear or because he is bigger than me but because I choose to bow to him and to no other. Thou art my God and I will praise thee.

I will not correct my spelling mistake but leave it as a reminder that God can use even the foolishness of men to serve him. ;-)