There is a difference between a Good idea and a God Idea. A Good Idea May Come to Pass. A God idea Must Come to Pass. Anything you do outside of the timing of God, you will pay a steep penny for! And not only that, but so will all those you draft into the madness! Think about it, when was the last time you heard of a pilot crashing a plane full of people and he was the ONLY ONE to die? People attached to you suffer from your choices and consequences! Jesus is always an ever-present help in times of trouble. Sometimes God will keep you from the fire. Other times, God will make you fireproof and take you through the fire. God’s love for you is heavier than the load of cares and concerns you keep carrying! So, here is your word for today: RELEASE IT!
We May Have Talked to The Lord About Our Burden, But We Have Failed to Trust Him with Our Burden.
Did You Wake Up Carrying That Load Again Today? How About You Also Let It Go Today? Let Jesus Do with It What Only He Can Do. God’s Hands Can Handle What Your Hands Cannot! How Many Times Have You Thought or Said ’If Only I Had Just Waited on God? You May Have Talked to The Lord About Your Burden, But You Have Failed to Trust Him with Your Burden. Impatience Produced Ishmael; Promise Produced Isaac...Therefore, WAIT! God’s Plan Will Prevail and Produce What He Promised! Do Not Mess Up God’s Promise Over Your Life by Attempting to Produce a Harvest from a Seed God Never Told You to Plant! There Are Seasons in Your Life! You Cannot Rush It, But You Can Surely Ruin It! Stop Trying to Help God Out. Therefore, Always Wait for God’s Due Season! Trials are for training you to win victoriously! Which is why the life of the believer is not without trials! Ephesians 6:16.
Like it or not: God allows circumstances to develop around our lives to give our faith opportunity to be proven! “Also, through Him, we have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces PROVEN character, and PROVEN character produces hope.” (Romans 5:2-4 HCSB) Did you catch all of that? “…We Also Rejoice In Our Afflictions…” Why? Because Our Afflictions, “Produce Endurance, Proven Character and Hope…” In Other Words: Your Affliction Works to Your Advantage! How Your afflictions are proving that you have what it takes to endure the battle and win the victory. But it’s also working on your character. That’s what God does when He sends afflictions into your life to improve your character. He wants you to grow and develop His characteristics in your life in such a way that people can see His stamp of approval on your life. Your character is your brand. It tells people what you stand for and what you will not tolerate. Your afflictions are teaching and training you to maintain good character, integrity and a reputation that is above reproach and one that resembles God’s! In addition, afflictions groom your hope! ‘Hope’, is ‘a feeling of expectation and desire for something to happen.’ It’s directly attached to your faith, and both grow when you learn how to expect God to deliver you, even when you see no evidence that He will (Daniel 3:16-18, " Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego answered the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to answer you on this point. If it be so, our God whom we serve can rescue us from the furnace of blazing fire, and He will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up!” AMP). Your afflictions train your hope and faith to believe God no matter how fierce the battle becomes; no matter what the enemy is saying, no matter what the enemy is doing; no matter how badly you’ve become bruised in battle; your hope and faith are teaching and training you to let nothing, and no one distract you from victory! Your afflictions are working for your good because they are training you to endure the battle and win the victorious war!
Truth Is: It’s Only When We’re Tested In Battle That We Become Skilled Warriors!
Therefore, you might as well get ready because you can be confident God will allow trials to come your way through afflictions such as: a strained marriage, straying children, critical bosses, false assaults on your character, or a difficult friendship that requires unconditional love. However, regardless to how many afflictions come our way, God has promised us, “many are the afflictions of the righteous: But the Lord delivered him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19). So what are you crying and complaining about? there is no affliction that is permanent! they are all temporary! when you pass your training tests of trials, “…the Lord will deliver you out of them all…”
Don’t be discouraged in battles, God is using them to develop you into a great warrior, skilled in spiritual warfare! No longer a generation who has no experience in battle! But now a generation that makes the devil cringe every morning when your feet hit the floor to remind Him, you’re dressed in the whole/full armor of God, and you’re ready for another fight! “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but MIGHTY through God to the pulling down of strong holds;” (2 Corinthians 10:4). Cheer up and gear up because your afflictions are training you to pull down strong holds!
Here is your Faith Decree: I decree today that I will no longer stumble over my struggles, cry over my crisis, agonize over my afflictions, retreat from my refining process, or have a tantrum over my trials. There is no test given to me, that my God hasn’t already provided the answers to pass. This time, when my Faith comes out of the Furnace it will be on Fire instead of in Ashes! In Jesus Name I Decree it to be so. Amen. So It Is and So Shall It Be!
God Cannot Abandon You. God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
Some people felt that when they needed God the most, He could not be found. This is what started their personal faith, battling with the feeling that God had abandoned them. I often say if God seems at a distance guess who moved. He has not gone anywhere, where is your dwelling place, where have you take up residence lately.
Painstakingly, we began to learn and study for ourselves about who Jesus was and what He really said. That is when you will find Him. The real Jesus, the God Who was always there giving you the freedom and grace you needed to explore your faith.
He had not abandoned you; you were just looking for the wrong person. The man-made persona of Jesus some people had been taught about during their formative years; He was not the true Jesus.
When we look back on a situation or season of life, you will see how God was showing up in some great ways, they were simply hard to see at the time:
1. Provision. It does not always come in the means you asked for, but God’s provision is being extended to you. Have faith. See the little things, they are there as part of the bigger picture.
2. Protection. Even when the world seems to be falling apart around you, God has got you. Bad things happen to us or those we love, and it seems there is no possible way God is protecting anyone. But He is there. Only Jesus can redeem what was meant for evil.
3. Preparation. At the end of the experience or sorrow, we begin to see how we were being prepared for what comes next. We can help others who are suffering. We can stand assuredly knowing that God had our best interest at heart all along.
God has promised to always be with you and the real God cannot break that promise. Here is the evidence of God’s true character: Compassion, Second chances, Forgiveness and Unconditional love. According to Miriam-Webster, the definition for Christian is, “One who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ.” Notice it says, “professes belief.”
There are many well-intentioned people who are preaching a brand, or form, of Christianity that are not in line with the heart and track-record of God. If your red flag is raised because of how a church or individual is speaking on God’s behalf, listen to that inner voice. It just might be the Holy Spirit directing you.
There is a difference between a good idea and a God Idea. A Good Idea May Come to Pass. A God idea Must Come to Pass. You see Sarai had an idea; it came to pass but it was the problem verses the promise. There is a biblical case of “get-there-itis” in Genesis 15:4. God made this awesome promise to Abram, “Then behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This man will not be your heir but he who shall come from your own body shall be your heir.” (AMP) Well a lot of years passed; Abram had a lot of birthdays, and so did Sarai. But…the promised baby had none because it did not come. And what happens to many of us when God makes us a promise, but too much time has elapsed (at least in our own opinion), and it is still not fulfilled? You guessed it, there’s panic and planning! And it was no different for Sarai.
Genesis 16:1-2, “Sarai, Abram’s wife, hadn’t yet produced a child. She had an Egyptian maid named Hagar. Sarai said to Abram, “God has not seen fit to let me have a child. Sleep with my maid. MAYBE I CAN GET A FAMILY FROM HER.” ABRAM AGREED TO DO WHAT SARAI SAID.” (MSG)
And as they say, “The rest is history.”
Here was a decision that did bring about a son, but it was the wrong son. A problem, instead of the promise. Ishmael by name. What happened to the promised child, you ask? Well, thirteen years later Isaac would come; you know, the one that God had promised, not the one Sarai was determined to produce of her own accord! And boy did she get what she asked for! But this decision to try to make it happen brought terrible conflict in Abraham’s family and, honestly, even to our world all these thousands of years later as the descendants of Ishmael, the Arabs, and the descendants of Isaac, the Jews, continue to fight it out!
Now, look, Abram and Sarai had a worthy goal, the one God had promised, a family, but God was taking longer than Sarai expected. So, Sarai sinned the sin of “get-there-itis.” She made a disastrous choice because she had to get there, by any means necessary. She just had to get what she was asking for! Well, before you judge her too harshly, maybe you could look back on some of the choices that you have made in your past and see that you are not so different from Sarai. I know for a fact; I am certainly no different.
God took care of you yesterday. He is taking care of you now. He will take care of you tomorrow!
Let us be honest, there were some moments you could not wait, so you just took off, and you caused a crash. Or maybe you are about to sin a sin of “get-there-itis” today! And maybe it is even a good goal. Maybe it is something you want to accomplish for yourself, your family, business, ministry, or church. Maybe you want to get married, or something to help your child, or to help other people. BUT God has not made it come to pass. So, you are starting to push, to plan, to scheme, to arrange, to manipulate to make it happen.
And truthfully, I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have sat across from someone in counseling who has that very same testimony…’If only I just waited on God.’ How many marriages would not have fallen apart; ministries and churches split; homes foreclosed; businesses shut down; finances dry up, and all because we just had to make it happen, by any means necessary, instead of waiting for God to make it happen, in His time, in His will, in His way.
However, unfortunate for us, we preferred to travel down the harder road of trying to “help” God out. We start formulating plan ‘b-z’ since God’s plan ‘a’ is taking entirely too long! We start scheming and scamming only to get what we wanted, but not at all what we needed!
And the sad part of it all is that God had already promised them a son, the plan was already in the works. They only needed to trust God, walk by faith, and wait. And people of God, we are no different. There are some things that God has promised us, but we are getting antsy now. It has been 5 years since the promise of a child; 10 years since the promise of a spouse; 15 years since the promise of a ministry, and now we feel the need to “help” Heaven and the Hand of God (as if that were ever needed or possible!)
And one of the things I do not think we consider when attempting to “help” God out, is all the pain that comes from the process of trying to produce something before its time. Abram and Sarai’s marriage relationship is strained; Sarai and Hagar’s relationship is strained; Sarai gets lost in her emotions and acts out on the person she drafted into her plans in the first place; Hagar is not even consulted, she’s simply commanded to sleep with old man Abram and produce a child she wouldn’t be able to claim as her own; Abram is battling with 2 women and a kid on the way; and then when the kid gets here, Sarai is mad, Hagar is sent away…it’s just a mess! And all because Ms. Sarai could not wait on God, His will or way, she just had to get what she asked for!
Anything you do outside of the timing of God you will pay a steep penny for! And not only that, but so will all those you draft into your madness! Think about it, when is the last time you heard of a pilot crashing a plane full of people and he was the ONLY ONE to die?! People attached to you suffer from your choices and consequences!
Many of us are accustomed to having a back-up plan. We are depended upon to figure stuff out, to make it work, to fill in the gap, to strategize how to rob Peter to pay Paul. But all of that, is all of us, and none of God. You see, it is not like Sarai was hoping for a promise, the promise was already given, she did not even have to ask for it, it was given without the need of her request. All she had to do was wait on the timing of God for its fulfillment. And saints, that is exactly where we get it wrong! We tend to get impatient, devise a plan and go wandering instead of waiting. But what does the Bible have to say?
Listen: Your promise does not need you trying to clock its’ arrival time! God has already appointed its’ arrival time; you are just frustrated because God did not give you the ETA on your promise’s arrival. But it does not need to be put on your agenda! All you must do is trust God and WAIT! And the part I love about that Scripture is, “…IT CAN HARDLY WAIT!” People of God, what God has promised you is so excited to get to you that it can hardly wait, but what happens when you can hardly wait, and so you involve yourself where God did not need your assistance and now your Promise is on Pause!
And what happens next?
Genesis 16:3-6, “So SARAI, Abram’s wife, took her Egyptian maid Hagar AND GAVE HER TO HER HUSBAND ABRAM AS A WIFE. Abram had been living ten years in Canaan when this took place. He slept with Hagar and she got pregnant. When Hagar learned she was pregnant, she looked down on her mistress. Sarai told Abram, “IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT that I’m suffering this abuse. I PUT MY MAID IN BED WITH YOU and the minute she knows she is pregnant; she treats me like I am nothing. May God decide which of us is right.” You decide,” said Abram. “Your maid is your business.” Sarai was abusive to Hagar and Hagar ran away.” (MSG)
I find it amazing that Sarai gave her husband to another woman to bed and wife, and yet her response to her own devised plan is: “…IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT…” Sounds a lot like another portion of Scripture involving Adam and Eve: “GOD, IT’S THE WOMAN YOU GAVE ME!” Or maybe another example found in King Saul, “IT WAS THE PEOPLE’S FAULT I MADE THE SACRIFICE!” Or maybe Pilate? “I KNOW JESUS IS INNOCENT, BUT I’LL GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT AND WASH MY HANDS OF IT ALL!” In other words, when things go as we Asked, but not as we Wanted, the Blame Game Begins and the Finger Pointing Starts! But that is often what we do, when the back-up plans, THAT WE MADE FOR GOD, do not work out, it is everyone else’s fault, but our own of course! And all of this could have been prevented if only Sarai WAITED ON GOD! But there is no need to get mad now! This was your genius plan, this was your proposal, this was your idea! You picked the plan and the woman and gave them the blueprint to follow in building you a son, and yet, this is his fault?! No dear, you needed to wait on God, because He already made you a promise, your problem came about because of your own impatience and plans!
Now, let us be fair Abram because you indeed had a hand in this mess too! Remember what God told you Abram: Genesis 15:4-6, “Then God’s Message came: “Do not worry, he will not be your heir; A SON FROM YOUR BODY WILL BE YOUR HEIR. “Then he took him outside and said, “Look at the sky. Count the stars. Can you do it? Count your descendants! YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE A BIG FAMILY, ABRAM!”AND HE BELIEVED! BELIEVED GOD! God declared him “Set-Right-with-God.” (MSG) Abram, God gave you the promise of not only a son from your own body, but also that you would have a big family. It concludes that you believed God…so what happened?! If you believed Him at the time, He gave the promise, why would you lose sight of the promise in the meantime? All you both needed to do was wait and trust God, but as my mom would say, ‘that was too much like right’!
Hagar had come to realize that God sees her, talks to her, watches over her and she is lived to talk about it! You see that is what we need to learn how to do. When we have gone off running into hiding because of the pressures and pains of life, and we find God in our desert and wilderness experience, and we See Him, and Hear Him, then we need to go and tell others About Him! Someone right now is waiting for fractured you to become whole so you can help them find their peace to piece their lives back together again, and that can only happen when you have met the Prince of Peace Himself. And believe it or not, but He still shows up in the desert and wilderness. He sees, He hears, now it is time for you to See, Hear and Tell!
The Bible says, “The Lord talked to Hagar. She began to use a new name for God. She said to him, “You are ‘God Who Sees Me,” She said this because she thought, “I SEE THAT EVEN IN THIS PLACE GOD SEES ME AND CARES FOR ME!” (ERV)
Wherever your “…EVEN IN THIS PLACE…” is, know that God sees you, hears you and cares for you. Even if your ‘this place’, is a place of sorrow; grief; anger; bitterness; loneliness; brokenness; abandonment; lack; pain…God sees you, hears you and cares for you “…EVEN IN THIS PLACE…”
Even if your ‘this place’ is heading to divorce court; the psychiatrist; another specialist; the unemployment line; in the midnight hour of tears…God sees you, hears you and cares for you “…EVEN IN THIS PLACE…”
Even if your ‘this place’ just left the abortion clinic; the maternity ward with no baby; a place of stagnation; confusion; fear of tomorrow; low-self-esteem; rejection; suicidal thoughts; high; drunk; going to jail or just getting out…God sees you, hears you and cares for you “…EVEN IN THIS PLACE…”
At dialysis; receiving chemo and radiation; struggling in rehab; in the wheelchair; on the cane; with the walker; dressed up; dressed down; and too weak to even get from under the covers…God sees you, hears you and cares for you “…EVEN IN THIS PLACE…”
Are you getting this?
You are God’s Beloved, no matter where your “…EVEN IN THIS PLACE…” currently has you. You cannot ever go unnoticed by God. He loves you too much to lose track of you, even when it is you who laced up your sneakers and went running right outside the Will of God for your life. He is still there. Don’t you see Him? Don’t you hear Him? Well, He sees and hears and cares about you, no matter what you have done; how many times you have done it; who you did it with; why you did it in the first place; where you did it; when you did it; He does not even care if it was deliberate, and all your fault, your Father loves His children! And like the prodigal son’s father, your Father sees you as far away from Him as you are, and still He is heading in your direction with arms open wide and a whole new garment of clothing to shed your past and mistakes. He is ready to restore you, why are you delaying your own recovery? Today, take IT, and all of IT to Him, and let Him take all your staleness and grant you a fresh start. Today is a great day to begin again. Last time, you ran off with your own plans and mission. This time stick with God, the road ahead will be so much easier!
Remember, God sees you, hears you and cares for you… “…EVEN IN THIS PLACE…”
Blessings
J.P. Olson
