Encouragement
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Every time, I look back over my life and see where God has brought me from, I am amazed. Amazed at how much He loves me in spite of myself. His grace and His mercy is so great that it makes my soul cry out Hallelujah! I’ve been through a lot of things during the brief stay that I have had on this earth. The things that I went through that should have destroyed me ended up being the very things that God used to exalt me. He took the same things that the enemy meant for bad and made it for my good. I went through some things recently that resulted in me getting evicted and being homeless for 5 months. But God kept me. He kept my mind on him. I knew that He was able to bring me through. But the one thing I did not know was WHEN he was going to bring me through. I knew I was going to come out of the situation victorious. I knew who was going to bring me out. But I didn’t know WHEN.
After being homeless for about 4 months, I was conversating with God and during the conversation, I asked Him, “God---when? I don’t have a doubt in my mind that you are going to deliver me. But when?”
God’s response was instantaneous, “It’s a matter of time.”
I said, “Okay God, it’s a matter of time. I know that you do not operate in our time so what do you mean by saying, it’s a matter of time?”
God’s response was, “It’s a matter of (T.I.M.E.) Trusting In My Efficiency.”
God’s response blew me away. I wanted to dig deeper because although I was familiar with the term “efficiency”, I wanted a firm definition so that I could see exactly what God was trying to tell me. I therefore went to the dictionary. I looked up the word efficiency.
Efficiency: skillfulness in avoiding wasted time and effort.
I was then lead to look up a firm definition for the word skillfulness.
Skillfulness: Possessing or exercising skill; expert
I then looked up a firm definition for the word wasted.
Wasted: Not profitably used or maintained: To fail to take advantage of or use for profit:
What God was trying to tell me is that it is a matter of trusting in his expertise to avoid time that is not used profitably. In other words, he was telling me that though it looked as if the devil was slapping me in the face every time I turned around, God was not going to let one slap be for nothing. Each slap was for a reason. A reason that only God knew. The devil didn’t even know because if he did, he would not have done it. Each slap made me trust God more. Each Slap made my faith stronger. Each slap was refining and purifying me. Each slap caused me to walk in the spirit realm with God and become blind to the physical realm.
The thought comes to mind of how the devil was determined to destroy Jesus. He was determined to kill him. He would not rest until Jesus was crucified on that cross. He wanted him to die a cruel death. And he wanted to make sure that he was good and dead.
After they took Jesus off of the cross and put him in a borrowed tomb, with my spiritual imagination, I can see the devil in hell rejoicing. He was rejoicing because he felt he had the victory. He thought he had finally won a match between him and God. I can imagine the look on his face when just as the hell party was really beginning to “jump”--in walks Jesus to break up the party. Although this happened more than 2000 years ago, things are still the same with us today. Just as the demons in hell start throwing a victors party feeling that they have conquered you. Just as their celebration is really beginning to kick in---Jesus walks in to break up their party! The bible does not state what happened when Jesus made his appearance in hell (Acts 2:31). But the bible does state that he took the keys back from hell ( Revelation 1:18) . As a matter of fact, not only did he take the keys back from hell, but he also took the keys back from death and the grave.
The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus is the perfect example of how efficient God is. The very thing that God allowed the devil to do to Jesus was the very thing that exalted Jesus. It seems like the enemy would finally learn that when he messes with a child of God, it never fails to backfire in his face.
Backfire: A fire that started in the path of an oncoming fire in order to deprive it of fuel and thereby control or extinguish it.
God is the fire that starts in the path of Satan’s oncoming fire. And the mighty and powerful fire of God’s Holy Spirit will deprive the devil of fuel, thereby controlling and extinguishing him every time. It never fails.
The devil can do no more that what God allows him to do. And the only reason God will allow Satan to play with us is because God knows that it will help make and mold us into the person that he has preordained us to become. God will never put more on us than we are able to bear. And everything that He allows should serve to make us stronger in our walk with Him. And you better believe that when the fire gets really hot, God is right there in the midst of it with you. He will carry you through the fire without the smell of smoke getting on you.
The reason a lot of us aren’t receiving the blessings that we want is because we are not trusting in God’s efficiency. Instead of asking God for the strength to climb the mountain, we ask him to remove it. We say that we want to be more like Him. He takes us for our word. He then starts to refine us and purify us. But many of us want to stop the purification process. We don’t want to go through anything. We want to wear the cross, but we don’t want to bear it. Or if we do decide we want to bear the cross, we only want to bear it for a little while. We don’t want to learn how to handle suffering. But we need to because suffering is something that every child of God must endure during some season of his life. Just as sure as we are living we will all have difficult seasons. If you haven’t had any yet, just keep on living and they will surely come.
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
We can easily deal with the time to be born, the time to plant, the time to heal, the time to build up, the time to laugh, the time to dance, the time to embrace, the time to get, the time to keep, the time to sew, the time to speak, the time to love, and the time of peace. But what happens when the time comes to die, to pluck up some things, to kill, to get broken down, to weep, to mourn, to cast away stones, to refrain from embracing, to lose, to cast away, to rend, to keep silence, and to hate?
If we want to get to the place in God’s kingdom that he has called us to, then we need to stop being fair-weather saints. We need to stop being holy rollers when everything is going good but as soon as the difficult seasons blow in, we are gone with the wind. We need to start trusting God more. We need to learn and understand that he loves us and everything that He allows to happen to his children is so that He may be glorified in them. God gets no glory out of others seeing us suffer. But He does get glory out of being our deliverer. It’s in the suffering that he matures us. So stop asking when he going to deliver you and start telling him that you are trusting 100% in his efficiency. When you tell Him that and believe it, you can stand still and be assured that God will bring you out of the fire smelling like roses! It’s just a matter of T.I.M.E.
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