The longer we serve the Lord, the more we learn to embrace patience and endurance and to allow them to perfect our soul – our thoughts, emotions, and choices (Galatians 5:22-23). We draw from God’s steadfast love and find solutions to our problems close at hand, which supply us with hope in the midst of our suffering (Romans 5:3-4).
We encounter trials for two reasons:
1. We are reaping the result of the carnality that we sowed
(Galatians 6:7-9).
2. God is proving His love for us by influencing the outcome of the trial for our benefit, which increases our faith and strengthens our commitment to Him.
God walks in us and with us through every trial we experience. We learn lessons and perseverance through all of them because of God’s grace. We discover how to avoid future issues because of these lessons that we learn. Our trust in the Lord increases, even if it takes years for Him to guide us out of the problems we face.
There are many examples in the Bible of how God allowed His Saints to wait on His timing and way, for the fulfillment of His promise to them. These biblically recorded and God-inspired words help us to keep an eternal perspective in our times of earthly travail.
When God is our single focus, we rise above our trial, learn to rejoice always, and to find the joy even in the middle of the worse tribulation of our life. We can always find someone else whose trial is more devastating than ours. We are spoiled Americans, but most of the rest of the world is in constant need and tribulation.
Prayer:
Father God, You are not in a hurry to change our circumstances, because You do not live in time as we do. To You, 1000 years is only one day (2 Peter 3:8), and You always work out everything for our good (Romans 8:28; James 1:12). This prolonged time of waiting on You gives us more strength and compassion for our self and others.
Waiting on You removes our preconceived ideas created by our former devotion to both our earthly pursuits and our overly busy schedule. Our one desire is to abide in Your will for our life. Thank You for teaching us how to escape the bonds of sin and suffering, by praising You for and in anything we experience this side of heaven.
Thoughts for the Day:
I love to write, so I adopted the idea of journaling the issues that I face. This helps me to see them more plainly, to clear my mind of their nagging influence, and to have a record of when God answered those prayers for me. I write these issues on slips of paper, and I keep them in a heart-shaped box. This helps me to remember that I placed my concerns in the heart of God for Him to provide for me through them all. Therefore, when thoughts of them arise, I say, “I already put that matter in the heart of God, and I know without a doubt that He has it in His control.”
