Good morning and welcome to Starting Right . I am Danny Mac and I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great start to your day . So grab your cup of coffee , sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right . A while back , I heard a story about a pastor who was visiting a rural church .
He was asked to attend the men's breakfast and the group had asked one of the older farmers , decked out in his bib overalls , to say the grace before they ate . The farmer began Lord , I hate buttermilk . The visiting pastor opened one eye to glance at the farmer and wonder where this was going . The farmer then loudly proclaimed Lord , I hate lard .
Now the pastor was getting concerned Without missing a beat . The farmer continued and , lord , you know I don't care much for raw white flour . The pastor once again opened an eye to glance around the room and he saw that he wasn't the only one beginning to feel a little bit uncomfortable .
The farmer then added but , lord , when you mix them all together and bake them , I do love warm , fresh biscuits . So , lord , when things come up that we don't like , when life gets hard , when we don't understand what you're saying to us . Help us to just relax and wait until you're done mixing . It will probably be even better than biscuits .
Amen , that's a great prayer and it's filled with some really good wisdom . Have you noticed how everything seems to be getting more and more complicated , no matter what it is we're trying to do ? Nothing is simple anymore , and yet simple truths can help us in very complicated situations .
We may not like all the pieces that we see happening , but we need to remember that God is constantly working and mixing things together to produce the good results that he wants . God is not always going to fill us in on what he's doing . In fact , we probably couldn't even understand all the things that he's doing , even if he tried to tell us about it .
In the book of Isaiah , chapter 55 , verses 8 and 9 , god tells us that "'My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts' , says the Lord , "'and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine , "'for just as the heavens are higher than the earth , "'so my ways are higher than your ways , "'and my thoughts higher than I've come across people that get upset when God
is not doing something in a way that they understand . They think that God should explain himself to them , let them know exactly what he's doing and how he's going to do it , and that just doesn't work . You see , faith doesn't require that we understand everything , but it does require that we trust in everything , does require that we trust in everything .
One of the things I've noticed in my many , many years is that God almost always uses the unusual or the unexpected to produce the results that he wants . In fact , all you have to do is look back in Scripture , look at the people God chose to use . He chose Moses , who was a murderer , to lead His people out of Egypt .
God chose a 15-year-old boy named David to slay Goliath and to give Israel a victory . God chose a young woman named Mary , from a very humble background , to become the mother of Jesus Christ .
God chose Paul , whose mission in life was to destroy Christianity and to kill Christians , to be transformed to become one of the most influential people in history for the cause of Christ and the expansion of Christianity .
God just doesn't do things the way that we would imagine , and sometimes he uses strange ingredients , ingredients that we don't even know go together very well . I keep thinking about that prayer of that old farmer . First of all he talked about , all the things he didn't like . In and of themselves , they were things that he would not put on his plate .
He would not take a great big spoonful of white flour and stick it in his mouth I don't think we would either . That would be a horrible thing . Or a big spoonful of lard , ah no , thank you . But he recognized that things that we don't like , when mixed together properly , can produce something that we will really really like .
And God is doing that around us right now . There's a lot of things that we don't like , but God is mixing them , he's stirring , and the end result , I have no doubt , will be something that will be the best for us and for his kingdom and for his people . We can trust him in that . That's really what it's all about .
When we see God doing a mixing like we're seeing right now , the end result it will be good . Don't give up on your faith because you don't like the ingredients . Don't give up on your faith because you don't understand what is happening or how it's going to come together . Just keep trusting and believing . God's plan is good .
He loves you , he's working for you and in you we will like the end results and we can trust God for that . Have a great day , my friends . We will talk again tomorrow . Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday , right here on Starting Right with Danny Mac .