Monday Reading: Luke 1:18-22
Key Verse: Luke 1:22
22 And when he came out, he could not speak to them. And they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple. And he was making signs to them, and remained speechless.
Devotion:
How many times have you asked God for something and then wondered why He has allowed something else in your life that just does not seem to be right? I’m not talking about asking for riches and then seeing that you lose your job and cannot find another for a while; what I am talking about is those requests that we make that we don’t always follow up on. I know this is true for myself and I know this is also true for many of you as well; we make a request to God and then we give up on it because we think that He either will not answer it or that He has forgotten it. Well time has taught me the exact opposite and time has taught me that our God continues to answer prayers long after we may have forgotten about them.
The thing that gets me is that He always answers them at the time that is right for His glory and not ours. He always answers them in such a way as to make sure that we do know that He alone is God and that His ways are the right ways and not our own. Zacharias had probably prayed a good number of years for a child and may well have given up asking and assumed that Elizabeth was barren and that that was God’s wish. He continued on being righteous in his ways and faithfully serving God – but God had a plan from the beginning and now was the time to start that plan into motion.
What Zacharias did not count on was being rendered dumb for a season until after Elizabeth would have her child. I’m pretty sure that that was not what Zacharias had in mind, but it was the way in which God would be glorified and the way in which everyone in that family would have no doubt as to who was in control. We may not like some of the things that happen in our lives, but we sure can tell that God is in control when we are able to look back and see what He has done. Yesterday I mentioned that we are the ones that fall away from God and not Him. Today I encourage you to look deep into your relationship with Him and realise that He has never left us and He continues to answer our prayers in the best possible way – we just need to open our eyes to what He does for us each and every day of our lives.
Points to Ponder:
Are you feeling let down?
What has God done in your past to get you this far?