Sunday Devotional Blog: But I want it now!

Don’t be impatient for the Lord to act!

 Keep traveling steadily along his pathway and in due season 

he will honor you with every blessing, 

and you will see the wicked destroyed.

(Psalm 37:34 TLB)

I'm broken.

At 42 years old, I feel like I've been broken for so long that I'm beyond repair. But God promises me that there is nothing about me that He cannot change.

and provide for those who grieve in Zion-- 

to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, 

the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise

 instead of a spirit of despair. (Isaiah 61:3 NIV)

Although there are times when He heals things miraculously and instantly, most of the time, He does not. Sometimes, we have to reap what we sow. Sometimes, we have to feel the pain of the sin that caused us to get into the predicament we're in and then rely completely on His strength and His timing to help us out of it. 

I cannot rush a broken bone's healing any more than I can rush this process of healing for myself.

Impatience is too much like unbelief. If we feel ourselves loathing God's timing, we start to doubt that He really has what is best for us in His mind. We start do doubt that He cares. And if He doesn't care, than why should we? Satan feeds us this line of lies because he wants for us to GIVE UP. It's too difficult, too painful to endure. Satan wants us to choose the easy way now because he knows that things will get harder for us in the future if we do.

You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood

 in your fighting against sin (Hebrews 12:4 NAS)

Sure, the struggle is hard. The fight is real. When we're battling against our demons, we feel the pain and suffering that comes with it, but we do not bleed. We do not die physically. The battle we are engaging in is not against flesh and blood. 

"Truly, truly, I say to you, 

unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, 

it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12:24 ESV)

And we are called to die to the flesh in order to live. Those people who have overcome their sins and been healed are much more alive than this broken version of me. There are so many things that my sin has robbed from me. If we take an honest look at whether our sins and addictions are worth the cost, I think we can wholeheartedly say that it is worth the little bit of suffering now for the joy we receive later.

Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30:5b NIV)

The night can seem like such a long time that we begin to wonder if the morning will ever come. But we need to remember that we're not alone in the night - we have a guide. He has better night vision than we do, and is guiding us along this tough trial. He won't let us stumble and hurt ourselves worse. We only need to hold His hand. Also we need to keep believing, keep the faith, and keep watching while we wait for the signs that the morning is coming. Listen for the birds that start singing before dawn. Watch for the first vestiges of light that prove the morning is on the way. We'll see God even more clearly in the morning than we do in the night right now. He's promised that the morning will come, we just need to trust Him and believe it.