Words Of Encouragement For Your Day (Monday 11/05/2012)

Handling My Business

Job 22:21-30 New Living Translation (NLT)

²¹ “Submit to God, and you will have peace; then things will go well for you.²² Listen to his instructions, and store them in your heart.²³ If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored—so clean up your life. ²⁴ If you give up your lust for money and throw your precious gold into the river, ²⁵ the Almighty himself will be your treasure. He will be your precious silver! ²⁶ “Then you will take delight in the Almighty and look up to God.
²⁷ You will pray to him, and he will hear you, and you will fulfill your vows to him. ²⁸ You will succeed in whatever you choose to do, and light will shine on the road ahead of you. ²⁹ If people are in trouble and you say, ‘Help them, ‘God will save them, ³⁰ Even sinners will be rescued; they will be rescued because your hands are pure.”

            My young people are in a season where they are now walking and dealing with adult issues and choose.  I have tried to prepare them, by reiterating what is important, and sharing with them the importance of prioritizing, especially in the area of their relationship, fellowship and living in obedience to the Lord.  But as many parents of young adults know, we can lead them to the water, but we cannot make them drink.  They are struggling to find their own way and often want to try to compromise or bend the rules.  We can model behaviors, pray with and over them, but they still have freewill, and choices to make concerning their lives.  We can do what we know the word of God encourages us to do concerning them and steward that relationship as best as we can, and give them back to God for Him to cover more fully, but in the final analysis, the choice is going to come down to them.

The one thing we can do for them and ourselves is be consistently consistent as it concerns us taking care of our business with God.  Often we wonder why things are not well with us, why are kids are in rebellion and why it seems that we are praying amiss and that our prayers seem to be hitting the ceiling with no result.  It could be because we aren’t handling our business, the way we know that God needs us to and is asking us to.  We are not making a purposeful effort to spend time in the presence of God, or bring our bodies, minds and spirits under subjection and obedience to God and His word.  We are living in our emotional world, giving in to everything we feel at every moment and barely living in the place where we acknowledge God in our lives and we definitely do not consult Him before we make a move as it concerns our lives. We are leaning to our understanding and our own will.  I had a little one, as we were talking about discernment and our need for it as Christians in our lives to make the right choices and to be more obedient and in submission to God, say to me “well we won’t always want to do that because we will want to do it our way or have it our way.  I was shocked because he said it so matter of factly, as if he had been taught it was okay to be disobedient against God even when we knew it wasn’t the right thing to do.  I quickly composed myself and explained to him that to choose other than obey was sin and that God’s original intent for us when He created us was for us to worship Him and be in fellowship and obedience to Him.

You see when we don’t handle our business and get with God, submit to God and choose obedience we can expect that we must then live with the consequences of our choices.  We often look at what Adam had in his original state, but we do not want to return to the state that God desired of us and asked of us to abide in so that He could provide us with the blessings of our obedience.  We have to begin to handle our business if we want to see God move in our lives.  Giving God the glory, respect, obedience and priority that He deserves, produces a life that is founded in His peace, love and His promises for us.  We have choices to make, in every aspect of our lives, but if we want the best of God, we must give Him the best of us!