by Rob Caudillo
I ran across this story shared by Mr. Don Aycock,
A fellow who was raised in the city bought himself a farm and several cows. One day while at the local feed store, this fellow complained that his best cow had gone dry.
The store owner asked, “Aren’t you feeding her right?”
The fellow said, “I’m feeding her what you’ve been selling me.”
The store owners then asked, “Are you milking her every day?”
This city fellow answered, “Just about. If I need six or eight ounces of milk for breakfast, I’ll go and get it. If I don’t need any, I don’t go – I let her save it up.”
Mr. Aycock shared how the store owner had to explain that it doesn’t work that way. He explained, “With God’s presence, as with cow’s milk, you have to take all that is there, or you eventually have nothing. Asking for God’s power in six-ounce doses or asking sporadically only at our convenience, may mean that for you or I, the source dries up.”
Isn’t that the human condition and tendency – to seek what we believe we need of God. Aren’t we continually tempted to dictate how much of God’s presence and power is needed and when it is needed in our lives? Instead of making ourselves available to God and seeing what God's presence and power is needed for what He desires. We may tend to see God at our disposal, available to us and our ideas of when and how much of God presence is needed. At issue is how we see and believe our relationship to God to be. If you and I seek God’s presence only in small and controlled amounts (“six/eight ounce doses”) or sporadically, just like cow’s milk, we could find our lives without God and the Lord’s fullness. For our relationship and experience is never, nor could it ever be, based and sustained by our convenience, but only by God’s glory, grace and love for each of us.
Peace,
Pastor Rob