Thursday 6 September 2007

Waiting on God - Living In Confidence

During my quiet time a couple of days ago I read the following scripture.

Isaiah 40:28-34 (New American Standard Bible)

Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth
Does not become weary or tired
His understanding is inscrutable.
He gives strength to the weary,
And to him who lacks might He increases power.
Though youths grow weary and tired,
And vigorous young men stumble badly,
Yet those who wait for the LORD
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary.

I love this passage. It inspires me. It gives me energy whenever I think about it. I don't have to do it all! In fact I am not suppose to. I am suppose to wait on the Lord and He will give me new strength. Oh boy have I needed to hear this. I have been struggling with all the needs that five kids in a house bring and I have been falling into bed at night and I am tired!

I think the thing that we have to remember about waiting on God is not that we just sit there and watch time pass but that we live in confidence that He is going to act on our behalf. My biggest challenge in this situation is not to run ahead of Him and try to solve the problem myself. Maybe there is something in your life that is dragging you down or making you tired. Maybe you have a situation that seems overwhelming and you don't understand it. Good news, God is working and He has given you an opportunity to live in hope. He is right there and He knows all about it and (this is my favourite part) He knows what "the best" resolution for us would be.

For any of you that have been reading this blog for a while, you know that I love to look up words in the dictionary. So I looked up the word inscrutable as it describes His wisdom from verse 28.

"in·scru·ta·ble" - defn. –adjective

1. incapable of being investigated, analyzed, or scrutinized; impenetrable.

2. not easily understood; mysterious; unfathomable: an inscrutable smile.

So this is good news. God's wisdom is not like ours. He sees our situation different than we do and He has a plan. Yeah God!

I encourage you to read all of Isaiah 40. The first section concentrates on God's promised deliverance , the second section is about His ability to deliver His people and verses 28-31 is Isaiah's response to the attitudes of God's people that might think that God has given up on them or He does not care.

Be encouraged, when we live in confidence of the character of Our God - we live a life of faith, a life where we truly give ourselves to Him without reservation, a life where we are moment by moment giving our concerns into our caring Creator's hands. In this state, He is able to transform our lives, our situations and our problems into "His best" for us.