10/2/08
PATIENCE
I would like to encourage the discouraged, frustrated, and even those of you who are in a season of indifference
May God give you a word of encouragement today!
John 15--- read it!
John 15 teaches us that one of the roles of God the Father is to cultivate a lifetime of personal growth for EVERY believer! He is called a husbandman.(Tiller of soil and vine dresser) God is not one who plants a seed of faith in your life then idly sits and waits on a harvest. No, God is @ work everyday trimming, watering, shining, covering, lifting branches off the ground, and yes allowing even storms to blow upon your life, the PLANT of God.
One of the first keys to enduring God’s PROCESS is trust. You will not trust a God you do not know. Trust comes from renewing your mind through receiving truth about God in your inner man. Scripture read and meditated upon creates layers of confidence, which allows surrender. You also must walk with God and spend time learning of Him.
It is hard to stay frustrated and angry at life, circumstances, people and God; if I trust the work of the Husbandman in my life. If I remain limited in vision by only seeing the “STUFF” and not the hand of God at work, then my emotions will toss me to and fro through my entire life. God is in process, and I am His workmanship. I trust him….. Say it with me by faith; :I trust you God, my perfect Father who does not make mistakes.”
Slow! Even the mention of this word grates my flesh. God’s work is slow and steady. Eternal fruit ripens slowly! I want explosive growth! God is after permanent change. One of the perplexing challenges for me as a pastor is the continual frustration of people who experience a touch of God but not change! To taste of God’s power, presence, or glory for a moment is one thing; but to be established in Him and manifested in character, habit, and real life is another.
Do not get me wrong, I have seen God deliver and do a 180 turn around in a person’s life in a moment. However, in order for that person to experience a total life overhaul, they have to embrace and welcome God to work His process. His growth plan includes pain, joy, suffering, happiness, betrayals, lonliness, failure and success.
I have a 13 year-old son who thinks he is ready for a cell phone, a car, money, and freedom. I REFUSE to let him take a shortcut. He simply has not matured to handle real life. This is the slowest coming lesson in my Christ walk. After my first 2 years of consuming the word of God and finally being all-in with God, I thought I was ready to be USED and ready to get in the game and build His kingdom. I did engage serving as many of you have. I was willing to do anything, anywhere, anytime. I began to find my identity in DOING. I have been actively defined in this process for 17 years. It is only NOW @ the 17 year mark of full time ministry that I truly know my Lord Jesus as my Life, and I have ceased from trying to work for Him and I have begun to allow Jesus to be my all in all and THEN do HIS work through me.
I do not know if I am communicating this clearly. Let me try again in another way. For the last 3 weeks I have walked in a place of inactivity. In the past I would possibly feel backslidden or curse myself for apathy. I am still in God’s house, serving Him with my gifts, reading, studying and praying. Yet, I feel disengaged. I feel like I have not been experiencing productivity, a branch w/o fruit. I am NOW okay with idle days, days apparently useless even when prayer and service seem a burden, activity w/o results. A.W. Strong states that, “Growth is not a uniform thing in a tree or a Christian. In some single months there is more growth than in all the year. During the rest of the year, there is SOLIDIFICATION, w/o which the green timber would be useless.”
You may be in a place where the cry of your heart is, “I just want OUT GOD! If you will get me out of THIS place, then I will be healed.” My friend, there is a pain involved in the Lord digging out deeper places and enlarging your territory. Many of us joined Bruce Wilkerson in praying the prayer of Jabez, “Oh, that you would bless me and expand my territory! Please be with me in all that I do, and keep me from all trouble and pain!” Do you knw what the name Jabez means? PAIN!
I want to say definitively: God my Father is @ work in you right now where you are--- He expanding and enlarging your inner man that you taste and experience more of God resulting in MORE to pour forth into others! Be PATIENT my friend, endure hardness as a good soldier of the Lord. If you are where I am (IDLE); then receive rest and get ready to RUN! Jeremiah 12 (NKJ) 5 “ If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses?” I want to CONTEND!
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