Sulking

Here's what I read yesterday in Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest:

"The little 'I am' always sulks when God says DO.  Let the little 'I am' be shrivelled up in God's indignation--'I AM THAT I AM HATH SENT THEE.'  He must dominate.  Is it not penetrating to realize that God knows where we live, and the kennels we crawl into!  He will hunt us up like a lightning flash.  No human being knows human beings as God does."

I know I sulk when I don't get my own way.  My own self wants to do what I want to do, and not what might be necessary, or asked of me.  This morning, my husband and I had to pack up the hundreds of books which had been sitting in an office that a kind man had offered him to use for free.  We really have no place for them in our house, so we had to put them in boxes and just stack them up in our garage.  I had some notions of "getting things done" for my business, as well as preparing for company tomorrow.  But these books needed to be packed and at first I "sulked."  But as we got the job done, a sweeter spirit came over me, and of course, that had to be the Lord. I'm so glad that 'God knows where we live and hunts us up like a lightning flash', just as he did with Elijah when he left after he proved the Baal prophets had "no leg to stand on."  Or, with Jonah, who sat under a nice shady vine, while he watched what God would do with Nineveh, and when God made the vine shrivel (as our little 'I ams' need to!) he sulked because of the heat and discomfort.  He also sulked because God was merciful to Nineveh and he wanted God to punish them even though they had repented!

Oh, may my heart be alert to my sulks....as O. Chambers said for today's reading: "The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization--I am my own god."  May I be convicted quickly by His Spirit, when I want to be my own god, and not submit to the Great I AM!

One of my very favorite quotes comes from a woman named Janet Erskine Stuart, who wrote, "If we get our own way, we nurse a hideous idol called self, but if we give up our own way, we get God."  May we all say to Him, "Here I am, send me" no matter how small the task, or how menial, or how many other things we think we must do that are "more important."