Receiving and Waiting
by Roy Lessin

In your walk with God two things will always be true: You will be receiving from Him and you will be waiting upon Him. Your faith must trust Him for both. You need to receive from Him what is yours for today and wait upon Him for what will be yours tomorrow.

What are the things that are yours today and your faith can receive? Here are a few–you don’t have to wait for His peace, His grace, His mercies, His forgiveness, His cleansing, His truth, His salvation, His strength, His presence, His life, His blessing, His love.

Even though there are many things that are yours today because you are in Christ, there are also things that require your faith to wait. They include prayers you are waiting to see answered, promises you are waiting to be fulfilled, bible prophecies you are waiting to see happen, God’s timing in relation to your personal guidance, clarity to take the next step, and the coming of the Bridegroom returning for His bride.

What should your faith do in response to what is yours today? Receive! What should your faith do in response to what will be yours another day? Rest! As you wait upon the Lord, wait with a quiet heart, not an anxious one; with a thankful heart, not a complaining one; with a peaceful heart, not a striving one; with a hopeful heart, not a discouraged one; with a confident heart, not an uncertain one; with a steadfast heart, not a wavering one; with a patient heart, not a hasty one.

You do not need to try and control or manipulate your future. God is able to fulfill all that He has said and all that He has promised. As you wait, continue to pray, continue to trust, continue to believe, continue to hold hope in your heart, continue to obey, and continue to rejoice every more. You have a God who cannot and will not fail!

His timing and His timetable are always perfect. He knows what He is doing and He does it well. Remember, all creation testifies to the wisdom of His ways–in time the green fruit ripens, the wheat becomes golden, the baby bird takes flight, the sapling spreads its branches, the peonies flower, the gardenia gives its fragrance, the sunflower brings forth its abundance of seeds.

Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the LORD.
Psalm 27:14 NLT

meet me in the meadow

held
by regina franklin

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John 6:1-13
He was testing Philip, for He already knew what He was going to do (John 6:6).

Our kids often come home excited to tell us the interesting things they’ve learned in school. So when our 9-year-old asked me if I knew how to balance a book at least an inch high off the counter on just a sheet of paper, I knew there had to be a logical explanation though I couldn’t envision it. Taking out a sheet of notebook paper, he folded it lengthwise several times, and then, after coiling it, he rested the book on the folded paper. As I watched, I thought about how far my ideas had been from the actual solution.

Reading Scripture, I can see I’m not the only one who deals with limited sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). In an account of miraculous provision, Philip’s solution was limited to what he could conceive in his human understanding (John 6:7). Misunderstanding the purpose of Jesus’ question, Philip didn’t realize that Jesus didn’t need Philip’s input because He was short on ideas. He wanted to know the source of Philip’s hope. Like heat applied to gold, Jesus’ question served to rid Philip of the dross of self and bring him to a place of dependence on God. Jesus didn’t expect Philip to meet the need; He expected him to trust. God was and is more than enough.

When life brings us to those places where the solution eludes our grasp, we can look around frantically and in panic cry out to God regarding His injustice in forcing such a thing on us. Or we have the option to lift our hands in surrender, stake a claim on what we know God has done in the past, and rest in the unchanging nature of His character and love (Psalm 9:10). He can “accomplish infinitely more than” we can see (Ephesians 3:20).

our daily journey

Spontaneous Love

Love suffers long and is kind . . . —1 Corinthians 13:4

Love is not premeditated—it is spontaneous; that is, it bursts forth in extraordinary ways. There is nothing of precise certainty in Paul’s description of love. We cannot predetermine our thoughts and actions by saying, “Now I will never think any evil thoughts, and I will believe everything that Jesus would have me to believe.” No, the characteristic of love is spontaneity. We don’t deliberately set the statements of Jesus before us as our standard, but when His Spirit is having His way with us, we live according to His standard without even realizing it. And when we look back, we are amazed at how unconcerned we have been over our emotions, which is the very evidence that real spontaneous love was there. The nature of everything involved in the life of God in us is only discerned when we have been through it and it is in our past.

The fountains from which love flows are in God, not in us. It is absurd to think that the love of God is naturally in our hearts, as a result of our own nature. His love is there only because it “has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit . . .” (Romans 5:5).

If we try to prove to God how much we love Him, it is a sure sign that we really don’t love Him. The evidence of our love for Him is the absolute spontaneity of our love, which flows naturally from His nature within us. And when we look back, we will not be able to determine why we did certain things, but we can know that we did them according to the spontaneous nature of His love in us. The life of God exhibits itself in this spontaneous way because the fountains of His love are in the Holy Spirit.

my utmost for his highest