Monday Reading: Philippians 4:5-7
Key Verse: Philippians 4:5
5 Let your moderation be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.
Devotion:
One of the biggest problems we normally have as Christians is the lack of patience. Patience is something that we have to grow used to because God is not bound by time as we know it and hence will not be kept to any time either. If we are imposing time constraints on God then we are trying to force His hand at things rather than making our requests known to Him and waiting with patience. The Lord wants us to know patience because He knows that things will not always work to our wants and desires – how could He make sure that everyone’s requests are stuck to in time when we are all asking for things at different times?
God is all powerful and He is able to do everything, but hurting us intentionally is not on the agenda. At this stage you may be raising your eyebrows and saying “but I know that He hurts me”... Well, start digging into what is actually hurting you and you will find that it is NOT God but rather other people or circumstances that are hurting you. If it is not other people then it may well be natural disasters that hurt you. God did not say that He would prevent all natural disasters from happening to Christians – He told Adam and Eve that they had to be prepared for a rough life when they left the Garden of Eden because they would be facing the real earth by themselves and all that it entails.
God would rather that we had kept our ways righteous in the beginning but we did not. We are now the ones that have to wait patiently for Him to fulfil His promises. That is the thing. God’s promises are exactly that. Promises. He is just and will make sure that all His promises come to fruition. He has not set time limits on all of those promises otherwise we would run off and sin until the time was right and then return to Him and pretend that we are sorry! It does not work like that! God wants us to come to Him now and admit that we are doing things wrong. He then wants us to try and live our lives for Him and that other people should see that we are living our lives for Him in patience – what better example could we be than a generation waiting on God... How I wish we could be so!
Points to Ponder:
Are you patient when someone has set you a promise?
Do you wait for God or try to hurry Him up each day?
Key Verse: Philippians 4:5
5 Let your moderation be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.
Devotion:
One of the biggest problems we normally have as Christians is the lack of patience. Patience is something that we have to grow used to because God is not bound by time as we know it and hence will not be kept to any time either. If we are imposing time constraints on God then we are trying to force His hand at things rather than making our requests known to Him and waiting with patience. The Lord wants us to know patience because He knows that things will not always work to our wants and desires – how could He make sure that everyone’s requests are stuck to in time when we are all asking for things at different times?
God is all powerful and He is able to do everything, but hurting us intentionally is not on the agenda. At this stage you may be raising your eyebrows and saying “but I know that He hurts me”... Well, start digging into what is actually hurting you and you will find that it is NOT God but rather other people or circumstances that are hurting you. If it is not other people then it may well be natural disasters that hurt you. God did not say that He would prevent all natural disasters from happening to Christians – He told Adam and Eve that they had to be prepared for a rough life when they left the Garden of Eden because they would be facing the real earth by themselves and all that it entails.
God would rather that we had kept our ways righteous in the beginning but we did not. We are now the ones that have to wait patiently for Him to fulfil His promises. That is the thing. God’s promises are exactly that. Promises. He is just and will make sure that all His promises come to fruition. He has not set time limits on all of those promises otherwise we would run off and sin until the time was right and then return to Him and pretend that we are sorry! It does not work like that! God wants us to come to Him now and admit that we are doing things wrong. He then wants us to try and live our lives for Him and that other people should see that we are living our lives for Him in patience – what better example could we be than a generation waiting on God... How I wish we could be so!
Points to Ponder:
Are you patient when someone has set you a promise?
Do you wait for God or try to hurry Him up each day?