#3. Is it Time Yet? When I opened this blog, I spoke on how we often times expect God to give us our answers immediately and don't take into account that it is not always the right time for whatever it is that we ask of God. We are afraid that he does not hear us, or that he is not going to do what he said he would do but God doesn't break promises so we should never have to worry about that. All we can do is wait for Hm to fulfill his promise. Psalm 37:7 says, "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him;" That isn't telling us "don't do anything" because we know James tells us "In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead," (2:17, NIV) but it is saying not to take it into our own hands.
Let's use Abraham and Sarai as a popular example to prove this point. God promised Abraham that he would be a father to many nations, however, Sarai and he believed that she was too old to bare children and decided to take matters into their own hands. Sarai gave Abraham her servant, Hagar, to sleep with and she bore him a son, Ishmael. Unfortunately, this was not God's plan for Abraham as God still was not ready to fulfill his promise. As a result, there grew conflict between Sarai and Hagar, Ishmael and his decedents were destined to be in constant conflict with the world and later on down the road, Hagar and Ishmael were forced to leave. In the end, God fulfilled his promise to Abraham and Sarai gave birth to Isaac when Abraham was 100 years old. There were 14 long years between the time that Abraham and Sarai tried to take matters into their own hands and when God fulfilled his promise. What makes us think that we will never have to wait for anything?
On the same note, I think sometimes we believe that when we don't hear an answer from God that it simply means He isn't listening. Have you ever thought that his silence could be an answer? In situations where we are looking for God's guidance, we often times look for some sign to show us where to move next and when we don't get one we panic. However, as the old saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I believe if we are truly pursuing God first and living righteous, then the reason He is not giving us an answer is because we are right where we need to be for the time being. The only thing one can do is continue to walk in righteousness with God and wait patiently for him to tell us the next move to make. Until then, we should work on where we are now and be "faithful over a few things" so that we can be "ruler over many." (Matthew 25:21, KJV)
Be patient with God, He promises you it'll be worth your wait.
The way that you started off this segment of your devotional reminds me of children asking their parents "Are we there yet?" "Are we there yet?"
ReplyDeleteLike you said, in the same manner that one's natural parent is going to eventually get the child(ren) to the ultimate destination (as long as nothing goes wrong), God will get us to the ultimate destination that he has promised us, even if we have to take a detour.
Branching off of this a little and taking it in another direction, in my Women Of Unity group last week, our First Lady talked about God redirecting us. It was revelational for me because a lot of times we believe God speaks to us and tells us what we are to do; and just as you said, when it doesn't manifest fast enough, we begin to wonder if we heard God right in the beginning. Yet, we must not forget about Abraham. God clearly told him to sacrifice Isaac, and he was going to; but God redirected the original plan.
So I said all of that to say this: Sometimes if we don't see our plans manifesting, we should go back to God to see if his direction for our lives has changed.
Remeber His answers are always "yes," "no," and "wait."
Love ya much.