Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Thursday 10/14/2010)

Sometimes The Work You Are Looking For He Has Already Done, You Just Missed It!

Hebrews 12:14-17 (Amplified Bible)

¹⁴Strive to live in peace with everybody and pursue that consecration and holiness without which no one will [ever] see the Lord. ¹⁵Exercise foresight and be on the watch to look [after one another], to see that no one falls back from and fails to secure God's grace (His unmerited favor and spiritual blessing), in order that no root of resentment (rancor, bitterness, or hatred) shoots forth and causes trouble and bitter torment, and the many become contaminated and defiled by it-- ¹⁶That no one may become guilty of sexual vice, or become a profane (godless and sacrilegious) person as Esau did, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. ¹⁷For you understand that later on, when he wanted [to regain title to] his inheritance of the blessing, he was rejected (disqualified and set aside), for he could find no opportunity to repair by repentance [what he had done, no chance to recall the choice he had made], although he sought for it carefully with [bitter] tears.

Have you ever been in a place waiting on God to do something that you thought needed to be done? I have I went through a season where I was waiting on God to change the heart of an individual, and for this individual to understand and accept me for who God created me to be, and respect me. Well, needless to say it never happened. But the crazy thing is God had done a work, which needed to be done, I had just missed it at that time. I did not see that God was allowing this individual to be removed because the respect and understanding for which God had made me was never going to be there for so many reasons. But during this time before God allowed me to see that this person’s exodus from my life was necessary, I placed a hold on my life waiting for this change, and when it did not come the way I envisioned it, I became despondent, because I thought God had not done anything. There have been times in my life that God has done what I was asking, but I got in the way and missed what He had done for looking at other people, their faults and issues, and even my own faults and issues. Many times God has moved and done what was necessary and we were just too slow to see it.

How is it that we can be so blind and amiss to what God is doing and how he is answering prayers in our lives? It is kind of simple and kind of complex at the same time. We have a way of thinking about how God should answer and when it does not fit neatly into the box that we have imagined, we think He has not done anything, that He has not heard us, or answered us. Another way is that we can get in the way of God answering. We often think God needs our help to fix people, situations and circumstances, so we put our two cents in all the while sabotaging our own answer which was right there all along. A third reason is because we are far from peaceable with people. We get filled with, anger, disappointment, bitterness and many other things, because we feel we should not have to put up with certain things, and that who is this person to be putting us through changes. We begin to view things through tainted and skewed vision, and it is in those moments that we miss the victory that God has placed in our hands; we missed the change, the deliverance, the blessing that He has bestowed upon us. All too often we are asking God to do something He has already done and He is saying didn’t you see it the first time, did you hear me call the first time, didn’t you recognize what you had the first time?

It is true that God is a God of second chances; He is merciful and filled with grace. But there are times when He would love for us to recognize Him when He moves the first time. We waste so much time waiting on God to do things that if we had got off our high horse, opened our eyes, prayed for our own deliverance and got over our own self and our own hang ups we could see it was done, and we had all that we needed right there. But instead we are standing there looking up with our mouths open wondering why God isn’t doing what we need Him to do. Ask yourself this question, would I have seen it if He did? Don’t miss God again, don’t think He didn’t answer again, when He has. Don’t get lost in your own mess, move out of the way and be sincere and earnest in your efforts to see God, when He moves, even if it is not what you think it should look like. It is about knowing Him first, and then you would be able to recognize Him when He does come and hear Him when He does respond!