Day 325: Patience My Love

Psalms 27:14
Wait for the LORD; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the LORD.
This past Sunday at church we talked about seasons, and sang a song called seasons. One of the main lyrics that stood out to me in this song was, “If you’re not done working, then God I’m not done waiting.” This struck a chord with me because it gave me a new perspective on waiting on God. When we are waiting on God we often wait as if we are waiting for our health. We wait because we sometimes think that God just wants to see how faithful we can be while we wait, and that is part of it. But sometimes we act as if God is only making us wait because He can, we act as of God is making us wait for no reason at all. But have we ever considered that the reason we are still waiting is because God is not done working? I must say that this never crossed my mind until this pat Sunday night when I heard this song. We often act as if we are only waiting on God to hand us a blessing when He is good and ready. But when God is done working that’s when it becomes ready.
I love the declaration that this song makes, “If you are not done working, then God I’m not done waiting.” That is to say, God as long as you are working on me and with me, I’ll be waiting. As long as you need to work I will be here patiently waiting for you to finish. Our problem is we want things prematurely, we want God to bless us when it’s not time or it not ready. We want God to use and send us before He’s done working on us. There is so much truth in the statement, “Good things come to those who wait.” I am taken back to the story of the prodigal son who did not want to wait for His inheritance but sought after and got it prematurely. He was not ready for such a blessing yet and we see that as he goes out and squanders all of his money. He comes back to His father with nothing but a lesson. He comes back knowing his mistakes. How many of us have tried to push God’s hand? How many times have we done something before we were ready. God is building us and molding us into the person He wants to be. He’s making us into the person He needs us to be in order to receive what He has for us. God loves us some much that even though He wants to bless us He wants to prepare us to be able to hold and sustain the blessings and riches He will hail upon our lives. It’s like He’s standing there saying, “Patience my love. I’m still working. Sometimes we're like little kids who want things that moment and we don’t want to wait but it’s like God is saying, “Patience, my child. I’m still working.” We just have to wait it out and receive what God is doing in us and for us in the meantime. We get so impatient with God sometimes because things don’t go how we think they should in the time frame we want them to be done. But I don’t know how many times I can say and stress that God’s timing is perfect! He has never been off, not even by a millisecond. He knows what He’s doing. Just trust the process.

All this to say, If God is not done working then we should not be done waiting!

Reflection
1. Have you ever been impatient with God?
2. Have you ever tried to push God’s hand?
3. Have you ever done something you weren’t ready for? If so what was the outcome?

Prayer Time
Allow your answers to the above questions guide your prayer today. Talk to God about patience and ask Him to help you with it.
I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 326!

Day 168: Crown of Thorns

John 19:2

And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe.

The most amazing thing about this scripture is that Jesus, the Messiah and King of all Kings who was once and will be, crowned in glory was crowned in thorns. The one who should have been given the greatest crown known to man was given thorns instead, It’s crazy. But Jesus is so humble the He gave up His throne in heaven and came down to earth to take a crown of thorns for our sake. But, even with the crown of thorns on His head He was glorified as the Son of God.  The craziest part is, He wore it with humility. He never complained about this crown, he took it because he knew that even with this crown on His head He was still doing the will of God.

What I want to point out in this scripture is that Jesus as glorified as He was, the holiest man to ever walk this earth. The man that people had been waiting on for centuries, when He finally came He had to endure the worst death known to man and was, in a sick way, coronated with a crown of thorns.

We might just have to wear a crown of thorns before we can ever get a crown of jewels. In order for Jesus to get back to His throne in heaven he had to endure the crown of thorns and the cross. Jesus had to take on the death of humanity in order to provide life. He had to be mocked and beat and spit on in order to return to His throne in heaven. Because that’s what He came here to do, that’s what He gave up His throne in heaven for. The beauty in it all is that even when He was nailed to that cross He was still Jesus. Even when they beat Him, he was still Jesus. Even when they pressed the thorns into His head he was still Jesus. None of this changed the fact that He was the Lord of Lords and the Kings of kings. None this could stop the fact that He was the Son of Man. I think many time we don’t like to go through the hard moments and the low points in life because we don’t want to be labeled or branded based on what we are going through. The times we try to hide the most is when we are going through hard times, we try to cover it up. Now I completely understand it, it’s hard enough going through stuff with just us, but it’s even harder going through it in front of people. But that’s what Jesus did, everything He went through, everything He endured He endured in front of an audience and He did it with so much humility and grace. We can take this example from Jesus when we are going through hard times and when we have to suffer in front of people or even alone. It’s in these moment where we will either learn true humility or build walls of pride.

We have to learn to enjoy humble beginnings because it will prepare us for what is to come.  We will have to endure some hard times in life before we get to the parts of our lives we want to share with everyone. We have to take some small steps, endure some hard times before we get to where we want to be. We might have to wear a crown of thorns before we get the crown of glory. We have to wear it humbly and not complain. I say this because there are many times in life when we will have to be brought low before we can ever know what’s it like to rise up and be on top.

Response/Prayer Time

Take the time to respond however you feel led. Examine the parts of your life where you are struggling and ask God to help you. Ask God for humility and the ability to appreciate the small steps. Be reminded of the crown of thorns Jesus wore.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening, Be sure to follow the blog, share it, and come back tomorrow for day 169!

Day 146: Misconceptions (Part 4)- Have A Laugh

Ecclesiastes 3:4

“a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;”

Proverbs 17:22

A merry heart does good like medicine.

Someone, I’m not sure who, said that laughter is the best medicine and I must agree. There’s nothing quite like a good laugh. Laughter releases stress, improves your mood, boosts immunity and can even relieve pain. We laughed before we spoke. It is proven that laughter burns calories, laughing for 10-15 minutes burn 40 calories. Imagine what an hour of laughter can do for your summer body.😂🙈 Also, it has been proven that couples who laugh together stay together, so find you someone who can make you laugh, laugh with you and pray; you’re destined for eternity! 😜😜Laughter can even cause pain at times, when you laugh so hard you get a cramp in your side or you can’t breathe. I know we’ve all  been there, but those are the best laughs. There’s no laugh like the ones where we can laugh at ourselves.

This week we have been talking about more lighthearted subjects and finding the good moments in our lives and capitalizing on those moments rather than the moments of sorrow in our lives. Laughter is one of those things. Sometimes the best moments are the ones where you just sit around with family and/or friends and just laugh. There is nothing like a good gut wrenching laugh. As the scripture states above, there is a time to laugh. There is always something to smile about especially when you’re around the people you love.

For me that is my family and friends, I come from a family of unemployed comedians, what I mean by that is we are all comedians, but none of us make a living from it. We make each other laugh and we laugh at one another. We all have our own struggles and we go through rough times but when we are all together just talking and laughing, for a moment all the stress and pain goes away. All the frustrations, everything, it goes away. We can even laugh away our pain at times. So much can be healed with laughter, and it’s something that we don’t realize often. If you’re ever full of tension just find something to laugh about and see how you feel after.  

I believe that laughter is a gift from God, and a beautiful gift at that. I truly believe that God has given us laughter for this specific reason. Sometimes we have to forget about all the stress in our lives and the tension and everything going on in our lives and just laugh about it. Sometimes things aren’t even worth our energy we just have to laugh about it. We can laugh at ourselves when we mess up. Sometimes it’s all we can do, all we can do is have a laugh.

God has given us an abundance of joy and I truly believe that we can find more moments of joy in our lives than sorrow. We just have to realize that their will always be room in our hearts for laughter.  We must have people around us that build us spiritually but also know how to laugh with us and enjoy life with us. Whenever I’m having a rough day or even getting angry my friends find a way to make me laugh, they find a way to make me smile even when I’m crying. There is healing in laughter.

Response/Prayer Time

Take the time to respond to what we talked about today. Whatever you feel led to pray about today take the time to pray. Today is pretty short and straightforward so just take the time to spend with God and have a laugh.

Day 24: Living In (and Regretting) the Past

We as human beings tend to live in the past a lot, with our regrets, and wishing we could have done something different to change an outcome, or wishing we could rewind time and take a different route than the one we chose.. We look back so much that we start to stumble on what is in front of us, Whether we regret the decisions we made or are looking back at “the best times of  our lives” for some reason we can’t stay out of the past.

Often times we hear the statements “If I could rewind the hands of time” or “If i had a time machine I would…” I’m very guilty of it, at one point in my life I spent so much time regretting a decision I made when I was eighteen I was twenty two and still regretting it. Then I realized that there is nothing I can do but move on, and know that even in my stupidity God works. I was so focused on the past that I could not see what God was doing right in front of me. Sometimes our desires to change the past can blur our present.

-Dyamond

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

When we become Christians many time automatically are burdened with guilt and shame because of the life we lived before we came to Christ. We apologize a million times for our sins, to make sure God forgives us. Once we give our lives to Christ, once we submit ourselves to Him and repent we become a new creation. Everything we did is no more, we can let it go because God did the moment He forgave us. God doesn’t dwell on our past, He loves us in the now. Micah 7:19 says Once again you will have compassion on us. You will trample our sins under your feet and throw them into the depths of the ocean!

Philippians 3:13-14

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

There is something greater that lies ahead, we just have to keep moving forward. We can glance back sometimes to see the progress and where we have come from, but we can’t stay there. Sometimes we have to move forward without looking back. Where we’re going is far greater than where we’ve been. And where we’ve been has put us on the path to where we are going. So appreciate the past, don’t live in it but appreciate it and move on. Press toward Christ, to eternity, press toward His love and His final destination. We can’t keep tripping on the present because we’re too busy in the past, it won’t work.

Isaiah 43:18 (read scriptures 14-28)

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.

In this chapter Isaiah is speaking to the israelites who have been exiled in Babylon for the last five decades. God is about to deliver them out of the hands of Babylon. As He reminds the people of the Exodus He tells them to forget the former things. Forget about that because He is about to do something new, possibly better. Sometimes we look at how good things used to be and can’t imagine how they can be as good or even better. When we think like this  we make the past so much bigger than the present. Having faith in what happened long ago instead of what is happening now.  Something we have to realize about God is, He never changes, the same miracles He did a thousand years ago He can do today.   I think God wants them to leave the past in the past and focus on what He is doing now. We must take our focus off of what happened years ago and focus on what is happening now, the past can’t do anything for us right now.

Reflection

“If I knew then what I know now…”

1. Complete the above sentence, without thinking about it just write.
2. Now think about who you would be, how different your life would be if you “knew then what you knew now”
3. Realize that everything happens for a reason and everything moment is an opportunity for growth. You had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you, and know what you know. Appreciate every moment, even the not-so-smart ones, and look forward to growth.

Prayer time

Lay your heart down before God, ask Him to search your heart, and remove any regrets. If you are holding on to the past, surrender it to Christ and let it God. Be willing to let go of whatever it is you are holding on to. Speak to God, Cry out, do whatever you need to do. Go into a prayer closet or find a secluded place where you can be alone, and just open your heart to Him. Spend this time with God and be completely honest with Him.