Devotionals

Accepting God's agenda

by Susan Barnes 
02/16/18
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"Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth." Matthew 5:5

Meekness isn’t weakness, nor does it mean becoming a yes-person, who always succumbs to the demands of others. Rather, we cultivate an attitude where we can be comfortable about not insisting on having our own way. It means we refuse to manipulate people or circumstances to achieve our own ends.

David displays this quality in 1 Samuel 24 & 26. He had the perfect opportunity to kill Saul on two occasions and become the king. Even though, David knew that God had anointed him as the next king of Israel, he said, "The Lord himself will strike him (Saul); either his time will come and he will die, or he will go into battle and perish. But the Lord forbid that I should lay a hand on the Lord's anointed" (1 Samuel 26:10-11). David knew that killing Saul wasn't God's way. He was learning to do things according to God's agenda and timetable, rather than enforcing his own will.

Sometimes we think we know how God should respond to a particular situation and we can fall into the trap of demanding that God comes through for us on our terms and in our timing. Perhaps we have read testimonies of other people's experiences of God and expect that God will do the same thing for us. Yet God treats us as individuals and won’t conform to any of our false expectations. God operates on what is best for us because he has a particular purpose for each of our lives.

We learn to be meek by accepting God’s agenda and his timetable.