Solomon's Porch: The "Soup" We Are In Just Now

There is a difference... 

• between God’s order and God’s permissive will. 
• We say that God will see us through if we trust Him—“I prayed for my boy, and he was spared in answer to my prayer.” 
• Does that mean that the man who was killed was not prayed for, or that prayers for him were not answered? 
• It is wrong to say that in the one case the man was delivered by prayer but not in the other. 
• It is a misunderstanding of what Jesus Christ reveals.

Prayer alters a man on the inside,...

• alters his mind and his attitude to things. 
• The point of praying is not that we get things from God, 
• but that we learn by prayer to detect the difference 
• between God’s order and God’s permissive will. 

God’s order is—

• no pain, no sickness, 
• no devil, no war, no sin: 

His permissive will is... 

• all these things, 
• the “soup” we are in just now. 

What a man needs to do... 

• is to get hold of God’s order in the kingdom on the inside, 
• and then he will begin to see 
• how to handle the riddle of the universe on the outside.

The problem of the man who deals with practical things... 

• is not the problem of the universe, 
• but the problem within his own breast. 
• When I can see where the beast in me will end 
• and where the wise man in me will end; 

When I have discovered... 

• that the only thing that will last 
• is a personal relationship to God; 
• then it will be time for me to solve the problems round about me. 

When once a man begins to know... 

• “the plague of his own heart,” 
• it knocks the metaphysics out of him. 
• It is in the actual circumstances of my life 
• that I have to find out whether the wisdom of worshipping God 
• can steer me.
• Solomon says nothing else can.

Excerpt From

Shade of His Hand

Oswald Chambers