God Meets Our Needs

 

Life's challenges often isolate us and cause us to understand loneliness like we never experienced it before now. We feel abandoned, neglected and even ignored.

Our friends surround us during the funeral of our loved one; but then they forget to call, come over to visit, invite us to their home or on an outing in the ensuing weeks.

This loneliness causes us to look inward and we find a void there as well. God seems distant and we either panic or get angry with Him for forsaking us.

There is no Biblical evidence that God ever leaves His children. We leave Him, but He never leaves or forsakes us, and He always stays closer to us than a brother (Hebrews 13:5; Proverbs 18:24).

We often develop expectations and requirements, which we imagine God fulfilling. We have our own timetable and we are devastated when God does not meet our demands.

We seek blessings, which He knows are not for our good at this time in our life. He has other plans for us (Jeremiah 29:11), but we often have no patience to wait on God's timing to meet our needs.

God knows everything about our life from beginning to end (Proverbs 5:21). He promises to meet all of our needs through His glorious riches (Philippians 4:19).

Rather than stewing in the juices of our loneliness, we can take up a hobby, join a civic organization or exercise at the local health club. Getting more involved with our church family is the best use of our unscheduled time.

Prayer:

Father God, teach us that rather than focusing on our desires, we can view the needs of others around us and pray about You using us to meet their needs. Allow Your Spirit to guide us to the exact person You want us to help. Otherwise, we may not be in Your will and we may thwart the plans You have for that person.

Open our eyes and allow us to meet new people, which we can invite to join us at our church or our local Bible study. Remind us to look for people sitting alone, so we can greet them and allow them to see Your peace and joy in us to bring them a smile to encourage their day.

Thought for the Day:

Sometimes we accuse God of not caring; however, hindsight always reveals the effort of God's Spirit behind the scenes, working out all things for our eventual good.

- Romans 8:28; 1 Peter 5:7

 

End to the Beginning

Whenever I read a book, I always read the last chapter first. That way I eliminate the mystery, suspense and unpredictability of the story line. Then, I can read from the beginning, without the stress of not knowing how it will turn out.

Some of you may enjoy horror movies and suspenseful mysteries, but they cause my psyche too much anxiety. I love to watch Hallmark movies, because as my husband derisively points out, the endings are predictable. There is very little stress and suspense in these wondrously sappy romances.

I did this with the Bible too. I read Revelation first. This colorful depiction of symbolic drama gives us a bird's eye view of the culmination of time as we know it.

Revelation confirms the prophetic books of the Bible, such as Daniel, Ezekiel and Isaiah - as well as the New Testament letters such as the gospels and Thessalonians. They report to us God's intention for creation, redemption and restoration.

When we know how the end plays out, these facts remove the guesswork from life and give us a fool proof game plan to follow in our walk of faith through the Son of God.

God made His will plain and stress-free for us through the Biblical account of His clear timetable of events leading up to His final return to earth and His eternal plans for humanity.

God does not dwell in time. The 6,000 years since creation are all in the present to Him. He is not restrained, directed or controlled by the hands on the clock like we are (Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8).

Our Creator and King dwells in eternity. He invites us to join Him in this place of unhindered existence through salvation in His Son. Jesus won this privilege for us by taking on the form of a man and dying in our place (Philippians 2:6-8).

God also provided us with His Word in order to afford us hope for a joyful future and instructions for living in a peaceful existence through every moment of each new day regardless of our circumstances (Jeremiah 29:11).

Prayer:

Father God, thank You for Your Word, which takes the guesswork right out of life. Remind us to check with You before we do anything, so that You can direct our plans (Proverbs 3:5-6). When Satan attempts to hinder us, teach us to use spiritual warfare through the power of Christ in us to withstand his onslaughts.

Thank You for always answering our prayers, and for not always giving us what we want, but what is in our best interest. We squirm under the pressures of life and often feel like we know how to alleviate these trials; but we often jump out of the frying pan into the fire. Keep us in the center of Your will and walking in the fruit of Your righteousness.

Thought for the Day:

Our Father is God and there is no one like Him; He declared the end to the beginning. - Isaiah 4:9-11

The End of All Things

 

God saw the end of this life as we know it before He ever created this world. We are all on His timetable and He has a perfect will for our life (Ephesians 2:10).

We can make our own plans and have our own dreams and goals; but if they are not according to God's will, we will be frustrated in trying to make them happen (Psalm 2:4).

America plays no part in the overall scheme of the prophecy in the Bible about the end times. America falls from the status of a super power.

The Bible makes no statement about how this will happen: financial collapse, foreign take over from a country like China who owns our multi-trillion dollar debt to them, etc. There is much speculation, but the Bible is not specific.

Therefore, it is best to follow the sage advice of Proverbs 3:5. We trust in the Lord with all of our heart and we do not rely in any way on our human reasoning and understanding.

We make no plans of our own, but we acknowledge God in every moment of our day, and He directs our every step. We realize that we are not wise in our own thinking; so we honor the Lord and turn away from all evil (Proverbs 3:6-7).

As we do this every day, we can be assured that God will care for us regardless of what happens to us. We may lose every penny we save as they did in the depression; we may be put in jail for our faith in Christ; we may die from a terrorist's attack.

We do not know what the next moment of time holds for us; but we do know that God is in the midst of it with us and He will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).

Prayer:

Father God, even though You formed us in our mother's womb, and recorded every day of our life before we were ever born, in Your estimation, the day of our death is better than the day of our birth, because it is precious in Your sight (Psalm 139:13-16; Ecclesiastes 7:1; Psalm 116:15).

Thank you for sending Your angels to carry us to Your heavenly presence, and for guiding us and providing us with Your refuge even in death (Luke 16:22; Psalm 48:14; Proverbs 14:32). There we will never die again, and we will live as your children forever (Luke 20:36). Therefore, we do not have to fear what anyone will do to our body; because You are with us even in death (Psalm 16:9-11).

Thought for the Day:

God lives within us and experiences with us everything that transpires in our life; He will sustain us from the inside out.