Thursday, August 21, 2008
I think, I think God is preparing me for tomorrow.
Be it my daily readings from my morning devotion or from Purpose Driven Life or from Our Daily Bread on facebook or from the cheena prayer meeting and even from Cleansing Stream, they all seem to talk about the same point.
Maybe, just maybe, it's really time.
I don't know.
All I know is it's been years...
Oh well, so this was yesterday's morning devotion -
By Love Transformed
R.T. Kendall
A Thorn Just For You
A thorn in the flesh is not the same for every person. But if you are a Christian worth your salt, you probably have a thorn in the flesh. What may be yours may not be mine. What may be mine may not be yours. For some it is a handicap or disability. For some it could be unhappy employment – or even lack of employment. It could be an enemy. It could be coping with unhappy living conditions. It could be a sexual misgiving. The list is endless.
The “thorn” may be recognizable to you but unseen by others. God may afflict you with some sort of impediment – by which you may feel He has stripped you of all self – esteem – but this could be utterly unrecognizable to anybody else. Why? Because this “thorn” is for you more than it is for them. Or it may be for them indirectly. It may be so embarrassing and humbling to you that it will make you a different person, such that others will not have an inflated opinion of you. But it is mainly for you – to keep you humble. Certainly it may end up being for others in the sense that they unwittingly do not extol you as they might otherwise have done. This is why Paul’s thorn kept him from being conceited; it kept others from exalting him beyond tat which was warranted. But Paul’s thorn was mainly for him, and yours is mainly for you.
It is one that is not to go away very soon, if ever. You will ask, “Do I have to bear this forever?” Maybe not, but you could. You are probably, though, going to have it for a while. Paul said, “I prayed three times that it might go away.” It’s like a prison sentence. It may be a life sentence, or it may be a short period of time. But as long as you are willing to let it go, your thorn may be healed. In other words, it will stay with you as long as you need it and as long as you let go of it.
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 2 Corinthians 12: 7
And this morning's devotion -
By Love Transformed
R.T. Kendall
Learn to Accept Yourself
O Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you. Psalms 84:12
Acceptance, therefore, means, you don't deny the handicap. Dont live in denial - pretending that it is not there. God has allowed it, and it is there to stay. How do you get your nourishment, your strength? Accept your handicap or disability.
But there is more. Know that God loves you. Most important of all, know that you are saved. The greatest thing in the world is knowing that you will go to heaven when you die. There is only one reason you are saved: that God was good to you. He gave you the gospel; never forget that this life is not all there is.
Know that you must be special, because you are special. There is a definite reason why God has given you this thorn in the flesh. It is to drive you closer to Him, not further from Him. It is to keep you from being smug, conceited, ot taking yourself too seriously. God could step in and take it away. But if He doesn't, it will stay only because God's purpose in it all is still unfulfilled.
Although I wish with all my heart that God would remove my own "thorn in the flesh", I have to say also that I have become reconciled to its permanence. What I never thought I would say to God, I now find myself praying: "Lord, I believe now that it would be wrong if you took my thorn away." I have stopped praying that it will go away, because I think it is one of the best things that ever happened to me.
I would therefore urge you, if you are waking up each morning and saying, "It's still here," to admit that, though you want it removed, there is a greater purpose in it all that God alone understands.
Whatever your handicap or disability is, if you accept it as being from God, it is only a matter of time until you see a purpose for good in it. Take your handicap from God with both hands. Why? Because He loves you, and it was His inscrutable, sovereign way of getting you to develop intimacy with Him.
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The teaching during Cleansing stream talked about "How to Enter the Cleansing Stream." Basically it's a 4 step process - Revelation (truth), Repentace (confessing and DEALING with the sin to get back on track), Renouncing (breaking what is holding onto us) and Restoration (a condition we must fulfill if we want something).
Then at prayer meeting on tuesday, Phillipians 3: 13-14 came to me - ... Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Been praying a lot more lately.
But I'm still unsure about many things, scared about many things.
I need...
Anyways, PR2 tomorrow!!!
Please pray for me!!!
I need it badly.
Ah Neh
bounced.
...
