Week
7 Hope and Anticipate
Day 48
Alright Now and One
Day All Right
The ground of faith is not the sufficiency of the
visible means for the performance of the promise, but the all-sufficiency of
the invisible God, who will most surely do as he hath said.
Charles Spurgeon[i]
~~~
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uring this freedom journey we have learned it is our
tendency to resist the path that will bring the greatest blessings; it is hard
for us to release our wills into God’s hands.
We begin to understand the cost of
saying, "Have thine own way, Lord." Of course the
blessings of submission far outweigh the cost; we serve a God who has offered
us eternal life! But that does not mean the sacrifice of laying down our
lives for His sake is easy in any given earth-bound moment. Placing our hopes
and dreams on the altar is heart-rending. Exchanging our view of what is
good for the Lord's perspective entails saying, "Not my will but thine be
done." We may be comforted by the knowledge that the God who became
flesh understands Gethsemane tears.
But although He understands, He
must also be frustrated with us. How incredibly upsetting it must be for
our Lord when we turn away from that which would bring us peace and
healing. It reminds me of Jesus' words about Jerusalem: "How
often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood
under her wings, and you were not willing!" (Matthew 23:37, Luke
13:34).
And in Isaiah: "This is what
the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel says: For thus said the Lord
God, the Holy One of Israel, ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in
quietness and in trust shall be your strength.’ But you were unwilling” (Isaiah
30:15).
As we struggle with sorrow over the
release of our physical bodies and earthly treasures into God’s hands, our
minds formulate the proper prayers, but sometimes our hearts rebel. This world
holds us so powerfully that the despair of hopelessness sometimes threatens;
will we ever truly succeed in submitting to God’s will?
We can be comforted because
although the struggle is inevitable, once we have given our lives to Him the
outcome depends upon the Lord and not us. Because we belong to Him, our final
destinies are now completely in God’s hands and not our own. This is not a tie
that can be undone so long as we want Him even a little (remember the mustard
seed);[ii]
we may struggle under His hand but we will not escape. He is the Lord, and we
are His; He knows who belongs to Him and who does not, and He will not lose
even one of those entrusted to Him.[iii]
If you have ever thrilled to His voice, believed on His Name, and known His
presence in your life, you can be assured that nothing has changed on His end.
You belong to Him.
We may not be sure of ourselves,
but we can be certain of our God. We can trust Him to do right by us even
if it causes us (and therefore Him) pain. We can rest assured that He will
ignore our protests as necessary in order to see our salvation through to
completion. When we rebel, He doesn’t leave us, but instead stands ready
to receive us back into His arms the instant we call on His name. And so
because He does not forsake us we are alright in the here and now, and we can
trust Him to continue to bring us along His perfection path until one day, when
we are glorified with Him, we will truly be all
right!
Pray: Lord, I am so relieved that,
because I’ve accepted You as my Lord and Savior, my eternal destiny now depends
on You and not me. I praise the Holy Name of my Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ. I praise Father God with deep gratitude for the Holy Spirit's presence
within me. Because of Him, I'm safe in You now and someday will be
perfected in You, all because of Your righteousness and not my own. Blessed
be Your Holy Name!
~~~
If
we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny
himself.
2 Timothy 2:11-13
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