Trust in the Lord....He has a plan

Watched a program today that had hit home with me and I am sure it will with so many of you. I have trusted our Lord to provide for me during my unemployment, but decided to rededicate my life, trust and totally surrender to his will. Giving it all to him, much like the movie "Flywheel". I am going to trust, pray and dedicate my life like I have never before. In doing so, I must wait patiently, listen for further instruction.

Please permit me to share with you some notes I had taken from the program I heard from Dr. Stanley.

God's role in our waiting

As we wait was does God do? The Lord heals, comforts, teaches, and empowers us. He encourages us, answers our prayers, and gives us peace. (Phil 4:6-7)

What does it mean to wait on the Lord? First it requires patience. While waiting, we need to listen for further instruction instead of acting on our own and rush into something without God's instruction. While we wait, this requires to calmly accept what the Lord is doing in our current lives. Then, which is a daily challenge for me, we must trust Him to fulfill His will for us.

Depending on the Father instead of taking action can be difficult. Here are are a few verses from the bible that address waiting on Our Lord. Psalm 27:14 "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." (NIV) When we obey Him, we never have to worry about what others think of us. Reliance on God protects us from experiencing shame. Psalm 25:3 "No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame, but they will be put to shame who are treacherous without excuse." (NIV) Notice one thing, that resting in the Lord is not an passive act, but active - you and I are commanded to wait patiently for Him. Psalm 37:7 "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes." As a result of faithfully surrendering to His timing, we can expect His very best. Psalm 37:34 "Don't be impatient for the Lord to act! Keep traveling steadily along His pathway and in due season He will honor you with every blessing." (The Living Bible).

Why should we or Why do we have to wait?

God is..

Arranging our circumstances. The Israelites marched around Jericho many times prior to attacking the city. Anxiety and fear crippled the enemy, preparing the way for victory. David was selected as the next king of Israel years before he took the throne. But he waited on God's timing and refused to take the life of Saul, the Lord's anointed leader.

Purifying our motives. Instead of acting out of lust, greed, or pride, we should be stirred by love, service, and obedience. When our motivations are not right, God will often wait to bless us.

Teaching us to rely on Him. If every prayer were answered immediately, we might never learn to trust God. That is why sometimes He promises to provide, then asks us to wait.

Protecting us from any unseen danger. The Father sees and knows all things, and knows what is best for each of us. Those who rush ahead of Him run into unexpected difficulties. Essentially, by doing so, we are telling God we know best and we always end up with second best. If we would only patiently wait for his time, we can receive and expect his Best.

Preparing us to make the greatest impact on others. When you and I choose to wait on God's provision, our lives can be awesome testimonies of His faithfulness.

At this time, you are most likely thinking...What are my choices?

Whenever God asks us to wait on Him, we have three options.

One...is to manipulate circumstances. Doing this will forfeit the Lord's best and may even result in disaster.
Secondly...you and I can walk away from Him. Basically meaning, we can allow disappointment to destroy our relationship with the Father.
Thirdly...is to wait on the Lord, watch Him work, and reap the reward. Whenever God calls us to a season of rest, we can either work against His purpose for our lives or decide to surrender to His will.

Alright, I get that, now what are the requirements on waiting on God? Actually there are four specific qualities.

First...faith. It is easy to trust Him when life is going good and all is well in our lives. But, can we rely on Him when things get difficult?

Secondly...Waiting on the Lord requires patience. We must set aside our own agendas and allow Him to work.

Thirdly...we need humility. Prideful people often disobey God; they might believe their plans are better than His or worry too much about what others will think.

Fourthly...we must have courage. There are three ways courageousness plays a role: we need it to resist the temptation to do it our way, to disregard negative peer pressure, and to stand firm against the fear of failure. It takes determination to wait for God to work when nothing seems to be happening.

Now that we know what are choices and requirements are, we need now to what are the Consequences of NOT waiting on Our Lord.

Their are four consequences we need to know.

1. You and I will be disappointed. Regardless of how wonderful your plans seem in comparison with anticipating God's best, disobeying Him ultimately leads to disappointment.

2. We will step outside of the Lord's will. By manipulating circumstances instead of depending on God, we find ourselves in a dangerous place outside His perfect plan for our lives.

3. God can not give us His best. Why would anyone want the Father's second choice for our lives? Yet, that is exactly what we get when we fail to wait on Him.

4. We bring hurt, pressure, and suffering on ourselves. Although following God's will is no guarantee that everything will go perfectly, resisting Him always has negative consequences.

5. Others are hurt. Disobeying the Lord usually results in harm to others. Selfishness, addictions, and outright rebellion affect those around us.

Briefly, in conclusion.

Believers often grow impatient while waiting on God to work. We believe the lie that He is unaware of our struggles or will fail to deliver us. Acting on human wisdom, you and I rush ahead of our heavenly Father.

I pray that we, including myself, learn to anticipate His answer - and do it joyfully. Why? God's Word says that He acts on behalf of those who trust in Him. No, he does not promise to give us all we want. But when you and I watch for His provision, it will come - every time - at His time.

Prayer

Prayer: “Give Us Today the Food We Need”
Scott Lyons
4/12/2010

The Father gives life and all that is necessary to it—not that we might be idle but that we might be free from anxiety. Yet we still worry because we do not fully believe. Or, perhaps, we worry because we have set our trust upon the Father’s gifts rather than on the Father himself, and the “worries of this life and the lure of wealth” are choking us (Matthew 13:22, NLT). God has made it clear to us that he does not desire our happiness so much as he desires us, so much as he desires that we be sharers in his life, converted to Christ, divinized, set aflame. It is true what the old bluegrass song says: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” We are afraid to die. We are afraid of being crushed as Christ was crushed, like olives in the press, and poured out for others. We are afraid that this petition reaches too far, beyond simple physical concerns and into spiritual ones. And so it does.

When we kneel and pray, “Give us today the food we need,” we are requesting eternal things. Some of us, when we pray, voice this request because we want to learn how to begin to trust our Father again and to trust him without reservation because “[He is] good and the Lover of mankind.” Then, even though the road ahead is filled with pain, we are content because our good Father is before us and behind us.

Within this petition is a unique word, epiousios (translated as the food we “need” in the NLT and as our “daily” bread elsewhere). To my knowledge, this word is only used in the Lord’s Prayer and is unique to Matthew and Luke.
There are a variety of interpretations of what the writers meant when using the word. But among them, let us remember that when we pray for our “epiousion” bread, we are literally asking our Father for our “super-essential” bread, and throughout the centuries, the Church has seen this bread, among other things, as the Bread of Life given to us that we might not hunger again. And thanks be to God, who gives us this Bread in his “today,” so that Christ, who is given, is always being given. And we, who are temporal and in constant need, must ask daily for the One who is always being given, and thus we daily receive him.
Yet as we kneel and pray, “Give us today the food we need,” we are also requesting temporal things. It is necessary for us to do so in order to confess that whether we are rich or poor, our daily sustenance is from the Lord and not simply the work of our own hands. (In the same way, we confess this truth as we give thanks for the food we eat.)

In this way, we also understand that the Lord instructs us to petition him for necessity and not for luxury. Just so we read in Proverbs 30:8-9 (NLT), “Give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.”

Furthermore, the Lord’s Prayer is a common prayer, a prayer for us, and in this petition we pray for solidarity with the poor—that they too might receive their necessary food. And if it is a prayer for the poor, then we are reminded of our obligation to participate in this petition, to not only be supplicants but also to take part in the satisfaction of this plea. We cannot forget Christ’s parable about the beggar Lazarus (Luke 16) or Christ’s discourse on the final Judgment with the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25). And so we become players within this petition as we offer up our own gifts, perhaps out of our own poverty, and as we offer up our very selves for “the least of these.”

Lastly, this petition is a request for today’s needs, and a cure for our anxiety, for “your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matthew 6:32-34, NLT).

As you pray the Lord’s Prayer, all of these thoughts will not come to your mind. Who could expect them to? But one element may stand out from the rest because of the need you feel. The petition may feel different in the morning if you are overwhelmed by temporal needs, and then in the evening you may simply need Christ. Remember that the good Father knows all your needs. Remember that he loves you. And pray like this.