This is the verse at the top of my reading today out of, "Streams in the Dessert". I want to quote some of it. I had just sent an email today to some friends, expressing my desire to want to trust God with my dad's death. I was saying that it was a process for me, and the process feels long, especially when I look into my precious mom's eyes and see how very sad she is. Here's my reading....
The "everything" mentioned here does not always come simply by asking, because God is always seeking to teach you the way of faith. Your training for a life of faith requires many areas of learning, including the trial of faith, the discipline of faith, the patience of faith, and the courage of faith. Often you will pass through many stages before you finally realize the result of faith - namely, the victory of faith.
Genuine moral fiber is developed by enduring the discipline of faith. When you have made your request to God, and the answer still has not come, what are you to do? Keep on believing His Word! Never be swayed from it by what you may see or feel. Then as you stand firm, your power and experience is being developed, strengthened, and deepened. When you remain unswayed form your stance of faith, even in view of supposed contradictions to God's Word, you grow stronger on every front.
God will often purposely delay in giving you His answer, and in fact the delay is just as much an answer to your prayer as is the fulfillment when it comes. He worked this way in the lives of all the great Bible characters, Abraham, Mosses, and Elijah were not great in the beginning but made great through the discipline of their faith. Only through that discipline were they then equipped for the work to which God had called them.
The discipline of faith...this just put things into perspective for me.
6 comments:
Love that!
I have about two weeks left in an 8-week study on Beth Moore's book entitled "Get Out of That Pit". Those paragraphs you typed just summed up the book so very nicely. Amazingly cool, I think.
The same idea, in sense, yet said in a different way.
I just found Streams in the Desert at a yard sale! For a quarter.
Streams in the dessert sounds kind of nice too... (Chocolate streams? Streams of caramel? Whipped cream?) Mmmmmm....
Sorry.
Thank you so much, Sheri--KJ and I were just at dinner tonight where she listened to me for a loooong time talking about my disillusionment after my grampa's death and other stresses this year. My faith is weak right now, it seems, as I wonder where God is and what He's up to. Thanks for this quote and how it answers the question of "why hasn't God answered yet"?
There has got to be some kind of joke about what Carla said and her last name being Stream. I just can not think of it. I am off my game.
She found her Littles, in a sand box, at a garage sale, and they were willing to leave when she gave them a quarter.....Um.Ya.
Where is Kristi when we need her:)
I really did find the book Streams in the Desert for a quarter. I bought it because Sheri had blogged about it.
Hard to know if I am serious sometimes I guess.
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