Robert Moffat, a Scottish missionary to Africa, came back to London to recruit young men for the African missionary field. Upon his arrival, he was greeted by the fury of a cold British winter. Arriving at the church where he was to speak he found that only a small group of woman had braved the elements to hear his appeal. What disturbed him even more was that he had prepared his sermon on Proverbs 8:4, "Unto you, O men, I call,” and only ladies had shown up.
I’m sure that Dr. Moffat felt like his preparation was senseless in light of the fact that few women could be expected to undergo the rigorous experiences of the African Mission field. But God had a different agenda. A boy in the organ loft that was pumping the organ out of sight was thrilled and challenged by the message. Deciding to follow in the footsteps of the veteran missionary, he went to school, became a doctor, and spent the rest of his life ministering to the unreached tribes of Africa. His name: David Livingstone!
How often we assume to know exactly what God is doing in our lives and we selfishly assume we have control of things.
“I want God to help me out when I need Him to help me. God must sort this issue out before the end of the week or I just don’t know what I am going to do. I prayed and prayed and He just ignored what I wanted. How much longer must I wait to see God’s blessings?” - Sound familiar…?
In a world such as the one we live in, it is very easy to begin to blame God for not keeping to our schedules. With so many things going wrong, we constantly see Godlessness instead of Godliness. And with all the pressures of live in our face daily how exactly can we be expected to find God at every bend and rely on his schedule? A busy life is in fact not an excuse but a reason to allow God to manage it all for us. He has a birds eye view.
It’s easy for me to stand up here and say that “You should not worry my brother God will provide, all in His time….” I mean how many times do we hear those words. When it comes to timing, I personally on occasion wished that God would help out a little earlier than later. Why doesn’t he step in at the beginning of the problem? But one thing I have learned in my relatively short walk with the Lord is that even though you think he should have helped out already, he is never ever late. He never allows the righteous to falter.
God has shown a history of knowing exactly when to step in and ensure that his will prevails. Let’s look at that scripture we just read in 2 Kings again. Did you notice that it was that widows last resort? The sons were about to be taken into slavery. The creditors were on their way. God did not solve the woman’s problems when her husband died, no he waited and when the time was right he stepped in and ensured that she would be looked after.
You see, we are all like eve. We are all looking for the quick fix. Pray brother and you will be healed. Pray about your sons unemployment and he will get a job, This quick fix thing is probably the main reason so many Christians loose hope.
We know what we should be doing. The Christian way of life is a difficult one, but however difficult, the rules are easy to understand. Its often while we are on the walk with Christ that we loose site of his timetable, and its often when we are busy in the church and working hard at the Lords work that this issue of loosing site of Gods will comes into play. This happens simply because when we are doing what we think the Lord wants, we often expect a bed of roses. When the thorns prick though we turn and say but Lord am I not doing what you want me to do…
Matt 9:29 – According to your faith it shall be done to you. According to your faith…not prayer, not the right words, not working in the church. These are righteous things, don’t get me wrong, But pray in faith, work in faith. And trust me when I say this, faith is hard work.
I am not going to try and give you a quick fix, because we know quick fixes don’t really work, but what I would like to do, is discuss for a moment as to how we can begin to find God in our daily lives and therefore begin to understand his agenda for us.
It is actually quite simple. We don’t see God working in our agenda’s because we don’t see God working in our Agenda’s. I look back now in my life and see that God was readying me for full time ministry by allowing me to be trained in certain things by Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s when God only exists on the Sunday page in our diaries that we will have grave difficulties seeing him in our Monday morning appointments. We know God is at church you see but at the dentist appointment, or the rubbish cart arriving early on a Monday morning now where is God in that?
We cant allow God to run our lives if we don’t see him in our lives daily. And when we try and segregate our picture of God to the place you are sitting in now, or only the problems and heartache issues in our lives, that is when we truly begin our struggle that ends in disappointment and Godly hoplessness. Its when we begin the downward spiral to fighting against believing in God. BOX GOD AND YOU WILL BEGIN TO BOX WITH GOD.
And this comes down to prayer too. If we have been asking for something and God just isn’t delivering, then maybe its time to stop and think a little out the box. If you have been praying for your child to get a job and he is still unemployed, start praying that he starts coming to church because its here that Gods employment network is. Don’t think that the box of miracles your are praying for are the only ones that can make things right.
The only way to get to know what God wants and what his agenda is for you is for you and Him to have it out. Let him know what you are thinking, he knows but he wants to hear from you. Build a relationship with God and very quickly his agenda will become your diary. The only way this relationship can be built is to chat to him about your activities daily. Lord I am a little confused, why did that happen and why did this happen? Lord I really need some help with this or that. What do you think is best? Once you start talking and listening to Him as regards those daily agenda’s you open yourself up to beginning to understand what it is he is doing. You begin to think like he does. You begin to know why the malediction and when the blessing.
To those of you who may be saying, but I am going through troubles that God could never be involved with. He is not monitoring my struggles and problems. Well if you think that God is not watching his children to make sure they are given everything they need to prevent them from falling, you are calling God a liar. Why do I say that? Read with me 1 Cor 10:13…
You see - he must be involved. Not only will God monitor each situation to ensure that things will never get beyond what you can bear, but He is also promising that He will provide a way out. He will provide a way out. He will provide the agenda and the calendar.
It is at those times, when it just about gets to being beyond what you bear, if you were faithful and relying on his agenda, stand ready to be blessed out of your socks. God is now able to see your faithfulness in trusting in Him and he will never let that go unrewarded. There is a bottom of the pit with God for it says he will not test you beyond what you can bear. Its when we get to the bottom that we can really know that it truly cant get any worse. Not because we can’t think of anything worse, but because our God says he won’t let it get any worse. And that is when you know he is about to rain down those blessings. It took a prison cell for me to find the bottom of my pit, but now I know he let me go to the edge, but he was there to pull be back. And now if you ask me how do I know he is there and he has an agenda. Well I just have to turn a few pages back in my diary to know that he has done it before and there is no reason why he wont continue doing it. He will bless us the old adage:
“Many times we grumble and complain instead of obey and gain.”
We so quickly turn to the Lord for an Agenda when the big problems come our way, why can’t we just do it for the day to day things too. It’s because we think we can handle the small things. We can do it on our own steam; we can run our own diary. When the big problems come along, well that’s another matter because you see we have no clue how to deal with the biggies so we give them over to God. And every time a big problem comes along, God is faithful, God is true, and in being faithful and true he is telling us again and again, trust me in everything, trust me daily. But what do we do? We do the human thing. Ok thanks God for pulling me through that I am ok again I’ll take it from here. I’ll take it from here.
When will we learn that He can take it from here so much more stylishly than we ever will. And then the trump card. We know that if we are faithful in what is least, we will be faithful in what is great. Isn’t God just so logical. He says to us that our great problems will be easier to deal with if we rely on him in the least important things in our life. Trust in him daily…its like exercise the more we do it the fitter we become, the fitter we become, the easier the marathon will be. What do we do, well we try and get him to run our diaries only on the big things. We are so out of practice by the time the big problems comes along that we probably would not even know He was talking to us if we were seated on a talking donkey.
The appointments that we make that that are not connected to God = dis appointments.
God has an appointed time for everything. Let him continue to work daily in your life. If you already trust him to run your Diary, then continue growing in your faith in him as your great diary keeper. If you only trust in him when times are tough, start today and know that God is the answer to any problem and the blessing in every solution. But most importantly, begin right now to build up the kind of relationship with God that allows you to know that every moment of the day is God’s moment. You are his and so is your diary.
