Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ

Yes, God Will Make Us

PSALM 119:49 – Remember Your Word to Your servant, in which You have made me hope.”

 

THEME OF THE DAY:  YES, GOD WILL MAKE US.  God will do it.  He must do it.  We need Him to do it.  It is painful, but a painful act of love.  Why is it painful? Because we don’t like being stretched out of our comfort zones.  We like familiar territory.  We like status quo.  We like safe, comfortable, and known surroundings. I was talking to someone recently who looked a little stressed. I asked, “You okay?”  The reply, “No, I am anxious.”  My response was an obvious “Why?” even though I already knew.  This individual was going someplace to do something out of her comfort zone and it was causing anxiety.  Well, this is what God will do – take us out of the familiar to make us exercise faith in Him and His Word.

 

Go back and read today’s scripture again.  Listen carefully to the latter part of the Psalmist’s prayer.  He didn’t say, “in which You offer me hope.”  He said, “in which You made me hope.”  And what was God doing?  Making him trust His Word.  Making him abandon himself to His promises.  Making him surrender himself to the sure power of scripture. God does this.  Put in situations that we have no place to go but Him and His Word.  We are “made” to go there.

 

The Apostle Paul illustrates this well in his own experience of God “making him hope” in His Word (Person) by upsetting his comfort zone – For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again (2 Corinthians 1:8-10).

 

For our faith to mature, God must “make us” trust His Word. This means He will bring circumstances, situations, and relationships into our lives we cannot change, have no control over, and without any strength of our own to cope with or handle. These places, directed by the Lord, reveal our weaknesses and total insufficiency. They “make us” trust in the sufficiency of His Word for we have nowhere else to go. And it is in these places we spiritually grow; our faith in Christ matures.

 

So, child of God, don’t get too comfortable in your comfort zone.  Bad things happen there like a lukewarm heart, spiritual apathy, and a loss of joy. But God, in His love, will move you out of those places of “comfortable Christianity.”  Be submissive, be trusting, and let Him “make you” move.  It will be the process of building you up in our most holy faith.

 

PRAYER: “Father, thank You for taking me out of my comfort zones to mature me in the faith.”

 

QUOTE: “God wants us to trust His Word so He will put us in situations to where all we can do is trust His Word.”

 

Because of Him,

 

Pastor Jim