Waiting On God
ISAIAH 30:21 

Almighty God formed you. He knows your talents and weaknesses, as well as every detail of your situation and potential results of any decision you might make.

Your Creator knows what is best for your life. His plan for you, which is motivated by wisdom and love, is executed with perfect timing. This last part can be hard for us to accept, especially when it involves waiting.

But patience is often part of the plan. In some seasons of life, God teaches us to trust and to yield our longing for immediate gratification. We demonstrate surrender and humility before Him when we submit to his timetable.

Of course, there is another option. God gave us the free will to choose His plan or step away from it. When life does not follow the desired path, we can try to make things happen in our own power. But this never works as we hope. In fact, it always leads to disappointment and difficulty, causing us to miss God’s best for our lives. Though this choice is tempting at uncomfortable times, the results are undesirable.

Scripture contains rich promises that we can claim throughout life—and God always keeps His Word. As His followers, we are to believe with faith, anticipate with hope, and wait quietly with patience (Rom. 12:12). In the meantime, we listen and obey.

Embrace whatever “season” God has you in right now. If it’s a time of waiting, choose to learn patience, trusting that His plan for your life is beautiful. Walking in His will requires us to remain sensitive to His voice. Our loving Father protects us from making mistakes when we readily listen to Him

The Great Physician

Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her.

Mark 1:30

This is a very interesting little peep into the house of the apostolic fisherman. We quickly observe that household joys and cares are no hindrance to the full exercise of ministry; rather they furnish an opportunity for personally discovering the Lord’s gracious work in one’s own family. They may provide better instruction for the teacher than any other earthly discipline. There are those who decry marriage, but true Christianity and family life live well together. Peter’s house was possibly a poor fisherman’s hut, but the Lord of Glory entered it, lodged in it, and worked a miracle in it. If these words are being read this morning in some very humble cottage, let this fact encourage the inhabitants to seek the company of King Jesus. God is more often in little huts than in rich palaces.

Jesus is looking around your room now and is waiting to be gracious to you. Into Simon’s house illness had entered; fever in a deadly form had prostrated his mother-in-law; and as soon as Jesus came, they told Him of the sad affliction, and He hurried to the patient’s bed. Do you have any illness in the house this morning? You will find Jesus the best physician by far; go to Him at once and tell Him all about the matter. Immediately lay the case before Him. It concerns one of His people, and therefore He will not regard it as trivial. Notice that immediately the Savior restored the ill woman; none can heal as He does. We dare not assume that the Lord will remove all illness from those we love, but we dare not forget that believing prayer for the sick is far more likely to be followed by restoration than anything else in the world; and where this does not happen, we must meekly bow to His will by whom life and death are determined. The tender heart of Jesus waits to hear our griefs; let us pour them into His patient ear.

The family reading plan for

September 2, 2011

1 Samuel 26 | 1 Corinthians 7