Sometimes (most of the time!) when I am waiting on the Lord, it seems like I am waiting IMPATIENTLY instead of PATIENTLY. It's like I'm telling Him that I'll wait on Him but He'd better be gettin' a move on. I'm waiting for Him to work His will in the lives of the believers but He sure is taking His time about it....I am not quick enough to notice and appreciate His patience with me. I don't seem to expect Him to be patient and longsuffering with others. I forget that the mercy He shows me is also the mercy He shows each and every one of His elect.
All of you who read this blog know of the struggle I have with forgiveness. God has convicted my heart again and again to teach me that I must forgive those who offend me. I finally was able to forgive some longstanding hurts and now that I have reached the other side of that particular struggle, guess what? I have caught myself judging others who are refusing to forgive me and my church family. Praise God for the Holy Spirit! Just when I get to feeling all righteous about FINALLY submitting to God, the Holy Spirit chimes and reminds me how many years I refused to submit to the Lord's calling to forgive. He reminds me that He has done ALL of the work of cleansing my heart of that particular sinful action, that nothing I can do would ever bring me to the point of repentance.
I have been thinking of this a lot because of an upcoming wedding. My dear, dear friend will be there. She has cut off communication with me. I know that my stupid, clumsy actions caused the break. I know that God convicted my heart to say the things I said but now I need to always remember that He uses even our feeble efforts to either bring His elect to Him or drive those away who do not belong to Him. I need to be reminded just how long it took me to come to repentance on the issue of forgiveness and to remember that God is never finished with those who are His elect and called according to His purpose. I need to remember that, as was the case with me, there will be NO rest for those dear ones until they do forgive the offences that happened in the past. My bible says that if I do not forgive my brothers and sisters, I will not be forgiven by my Lord. That scares me. It convicts my heart. It causes me to cry out to my Father, "Please continue the work You have begun in me. Please make me entirely Yours! Please cleanse my heart of all bitterness and hatred and help me to forgive!"
I want to be there with my love and joy shining out of my eyes when God brings those dear ones to repentance. I want to enfold them in my arms and tell them how dearly I love them. I want to see our fellowship restored. However, if this is not God's will for us, I will wait patiently for Him and I will remember that "all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose". All things, even salvation or destruction are for our good and His glory.
I am excited about this wedding, though the parents of the bride are so angry with our congregation. I pray that it will be a blessed day for them and for their daughter, as our daughter's wedding was for all of us. I hope that God will show me a way through to reconciliation with them. I pray that healing might begin there. But I will wait patiently on the Lord and will be loving and longsuffering through real and imagined slights.
By the way, if you see me railing against someone, remind me of this post!
Till next time....
Friday, July 31, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Waiting on the Lord
On Sunday we had the best sermon on waiting on the Lord and allowing Him to work his will with patience. I am not good at that. I get so impatient with my circumstances, with my family and with myself. I get angry easily and want things to change instantly. Just ask my husband. Since I married him, I have watched several employers take advantage of his patience and perseverance and he just keeps plugging away, doing his job to the best of his ability. It doesn't matter to him whether his boss ever appreciates him, he still does his best. I am trying to be that way but too many times I lose my temper or want to retaliate for wrongs done to me. He doesn't do that. He gets up in the morning, gets dressed, and goes to work every day whether he likes the work or not. He puts in a full day to finish the job, whether he is being treated fairly by his boss or not.
His most recent job was a prime example of this. He worked as a backhoe operator for almost 5 years, putting in septic systems. He hated it. He was always getting yelled at by his boss and sometimes by the customers because of things that were beyond his control. During the time he worked there he saw other employees getting pay raises, when he got none, he saw others being treated with a modicum of respect when he wasn't respected at all by his boss. During all of this time he kept looking and looking for another job in his chosen profession of ranching. There was always a door closed on every opportunity. He applied for the job he has now back in February or March of this year and another person was hired at that time. He went back to work digging holes, and was told that he would have to start working overtime hours but "bank" them and use them as vacation days. In other words, comp time. He was told to use materials that had already been used and the customers were charged full price for these items. He would come home and tell me these things and I didn't know how to help him so I ended up nagging him a lot. Still he was patient and still he worked his hardest for this company.
He got a call back on the job he had applied for way back and was hired on the spot. He went to work the next day and gave his two week notice. There were a lot of people telling him he should just quit and not give the courtesy of the two week notice, but that is not my husband. He gave his notice and went to work faithfully every day and at the end of the two weeks, left with great relief.
I have seen my husband behave this way for nearly 27 years. He has treated every one of his employers in the same fashion. He has dealt honorably with them even when they haven't treated him in the same way. It has taken me almost all of that 27 years and a lot of listening to the faithful preaching of the gospel to come to the point where I am trying to deal with my own rebelliousness (did I spell that correctly?) and learning to wait patiently on the Lord. How easy that sounds and how hard it is for my wayward heart to submit to that. But God has given me an example to follow in my Lord and Savior and an earthly example in my husband. I pray that He will continue the work He has started in my heart and that I can patiently wait on the Lord's will for me. God is good and He always finishes the work He starts in His elect.
Till next time...
His most recent job was a prime example of this. He worked as a backhoe operator for almost 5 years, putting in septic systems. He hated it. He was always getting yelled at by his boss and sometimes by the customers because of things that were beyond his control. During the time he worked there he saw other employees getting pay raises, when he got none, he saw others being treated with a modicum of respect when he wasn't respected at all by his boss. During all of this time he kept looking and looking for another job in his chosen profession of ranching. There was always a door closed on every opportunity. He applied for the job he has now back in February or March of this year and another person was hired at that time. He went back to work digging holes, and was told that he would have to start working overtime hours but "bank" them and use them as vacation days. In other words, comp time. He was told to use materials that had already been used and the customers were charged full price for these items. He would come home and tell me these things and I didn't know how to help him so I ended up nagging him a lot. Still he was patient and still he worked his hardest for this company.
He got a call back on the job he had applied for way back and was hired on the spot. He went to work the next day and gave his two week notice. There were a lot of people telling him he should just quit and not give the courtesy of the two week notice, but that is not my husband. He gave his notice and went to work faithfully every day and at the end of the two weeks, left with great relief.
I have seen my husband behave this way for nearly 27 years. He has treated every one of his employers in the same fashion. He has dealt honorably with them even when they haven't treated him in the same way. It has taken me almost all of that 27 years and a lot of listening to the faithful preaching of the gospel to come to the point where I am trying to deal with my own rebelliousness (did I spell that correctly?) and learning to wait patiently on the Lord. How easy that sounds and how hard it is for my wayward heart to submit to that. But God has given me an example to follow in my Lord and Savior and an earthly example in my husband. I pray that He will continue the work He has started in my heart and that I can patiently wait on the Lord's will for me. God is good and He always finishes the work He starts in His elect.
Till next time...
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The End of an Era
Yesterday, I went to a memorial service for a dear friend's father. When I was growing up this friend, who is two years older than I, was my hero. She was smart, pretty, she could ride her horse better than a lot of the boys I knew and she was always so kind to a younger girl with a case of hero worship. She had a brother who was a year younger than I and he died in a car wreck in 1980, the fall after I graduated from high school. I never knew my friend's dad very well. He always seemed larger than life to me but I watched his daughter and sort of formed an opinion of him because of her actions. She was our county fair queen one year!
My husband and I married in November of 1982 and my friend married her husband in the summer of 1983. She moved to the mountains to ranch with her husband and raise her family and I didn't see her much after that. She brought her children out to our county fair so that they could see what it was like. After that I heard that she was having some pretty harsh struggles of her own. I prayed for her whenever she would come to mind and seeing her yesterday was a true blessing. She told me that she had divorced her husband and she is ranching on her own and taking care of her children on her own. I know that she would absolutely not have divorced her husband without thinking of the cost to her family. Like my sister, she tried long beyond the time when others would have stopped trying. Now she is rebuilding her life. She is still beautiful, still bright and sunny and still doing for others. She told about singing to her father as he was dying to ease his passing. I don't know the state of her spiritual life but I do know how I love her and am glad to see her doing well.
I'm looking at the title of this blog and wondering whether I got off the track of what I really wanted to talk about. I was thinking that the end of an era was the dying of my friend's father. I see this generation of men dying and it is the end of an era. This way of life on the plains of Eastern Colorado is a way of life that we love, ranching, farming, neighbors helping neighbors, all of those thing seem to be passing away. But as one era dies, God brings about new and better things. While as humans we mourn it, we also need to remember that God is in control of all things and does nothing by chance. In the fullness of His time, He brought the Gentiles to Him, He sent His only son to die for us so that we could be saved, He provides all things for His people. Now that I look back at this blog, I don't think I got off track. Things change. But God always has a plan and a purpose and His plan is perfect. His will is perfect. He is perfecting me in all ways at all times.
Till next time.....
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