Tuesday, April 7, 2015

God's Teaching of Patience (Heb. 6:13-14)


SPIRITUAL DIARY

 

My Worship Time                              Focus:  God’s teaching of patience

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Hebrews 6:13,14

1.  Message of the verse:  “saying, ‘I WILL SURELY BLESS YOU, AND I WILL SURELY MULTIPLY YOU.’  And thus, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise.” (NASB)  “’I will certainly bless your richly, and I will multiply your descendants into countless millions.’  Then Abraham waited patiently, and he received what God had promised.”(NLT)

God promised Abraham that he would have a son who would be born in his old age and would be the son who would continue on with the blessings that God would bestow upon his family who became the nation of Israel.  God fulfilled his promise in spite of Abraham’s sin and failures to God.  As stated yesterday some of God’s promises are not affected by the failures of His servants.  However the long-term affect of the sin can still produce heartache.  An example of this was when Abraham went down to Egypt and lied about his wife to protect himself had long term effects on even the people of this country because he was not suppose to go there and he certainly was not suppose to lie and one of the effects of this lie was bringing Hagar back with them and without Hagar there would not be any Arabs today.  I would like to mention that the word translated “waited patiently” is the opposite of the word translated slothful.  Warren Wiersbe translates this verse as follows:  “You will obtain and enjoy what God has promised if you diligently apply yourself to the development of your spiritual life.”  This is what the readers needed to hear because of how they were thinking about going back into Judaism and he knew this was not the thing for them to do.

2.  Spiritual meaning for my life today:  The Bible has a lot to say about patience and you hear often in Christian circles that you should not pray for patience because if you do then God will send tragedy into your life so you have to learn patience through it.  I have recently heard that this is not true all of the time and thus it will not hurt to pray for more patience and I do believe that God will not automatically send a hardship your way unless it is in your best interest to do so.  I also know that many, many times in my life I do things in to big of a hurry just to get them done no matter how it turns out, and many times I wish I would have had the patience to do it right the first time.  I remember a sign in the nurse’s office at work that said, “how come you always have time to do it over, but never have time to do it right the first time.”  This is a lesson that is hard for me to do and I believe one of the reasons is because I do not always take the time to pray about it in the first place.

The Word of God was convicting to me as I read it today and it also has given me some challenges.

My Steps of Faith Today:  Sandy and I are in real need of praying together about things that we need guidance from the Lord on.  One of these things is when we plan on doing some of the rooms in our house over again with new decorations.  We have failed to have patience with each other and with the Lord in this area of our lives.  I need to step out on faith and begin this process in our lives together again and do it this time as the Lord leads.

Memory verses for the week:  Psalm 40: 1-3

  1. I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me and heard my cry.
  2. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay; And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.
  3. And He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear and will trust in the LORD.

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