Just Us: 3/24 Manna

DYSMAS CONDUIT

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(Isa 55:1)

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2010

Question for the day:

What have you been waiting for -- more than anything else?

What can we pray with YOU about today?

Good morning,

This is just a reminder that every day, while we are studying God’s Word to add to our website, someone from our ministry, Dysmas Conduit, is holding you up before the Lord in prayer. May He greatly bless you today as you pursue His will and He is glorified through you.

God’s blessings, our love,

George & Sidney Granger

CURRENT PRAYER REQUESTS:

Please pray for Mike Brommer as he spreads the Lord’s Seed and witnesses to His glory while on the road today. Please pray also that the Lord will lead him to Kingdom-profitable loads to carry, and that He grants Mike safe passage today.

Please hold up before the Lord a dear friend, Ann Long, who is to undergo cancer surgery on March 29. Also please ask for strength for her family, especially her husband, Dennis.

Please lift up in prayer Charlene Hock. Charlene was admitted to Covenant Cooper with chest pains on Sunday. Fluid was removed from one of her lungs. Please pray for clarity as more tests are conducted. Please pray for healing for Charlene and comfort and strength for her family! --Pastor Kurt

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR TODAY

March 24, 2010

Tired of Waiting on God

Tracie Miles

"Isaac was sixty years old

when Rebekah gave birth to them."

Genesis 25:26a (NIV)

Devotion:

Do you ever get tired of waiting on God to answer your prayers? Recently, I began to feel a sense of frustration with the wait, and also a little bit tired.

Tired of saying the same old prayer day after day, month after month, year after year. Tired of telling God about the same old problems that were still going on. Tired of hearing myself pray about the same old problems, leading me to wonder if God was as tired of hearing my prayer requests as I was of praying them.

So I bowed my head and admitted to God that I was simply tired of the wait.

In a heavy state of emotional tiredness, I turned to the crisp, white pages of my Bible. I was hoping God would illuminate a few verses that would jump out of the book and straight into my heart.

I began reading about when Isaac's wife Rebekah gave birth to twin sons. One particular sentence caught my eye and I went back to read it again and again. My heart leapt as I realized God was using this one little sentence to speak hope into my spirit. He used His spiritual highlighter just as I had wanted.

Genesis 25:26 tells us that Isaac was sixty years old when his twins were born; a simple Bible fact, yet profoundly meaningful to me on this specific day. You see, Isaac had been patient for the Lord to provide the perfect wife; he was forty years old when he married Rebekah. If you do the math you realize Isaac waited twenty years for Rebekah to bear him children! He could have chosen a concubine to bear him a son. But he was a man of great patience who waited on God. Eventually his patient faith was rewarded.

Isaac never gave up hope that his Lord could make the impossible, possible. He had learned that his Lord would provide. So he continued to pray the same desperate prayer for a son, day after day, month after month, year after year. In fact, we learn in Genesis 25:21 that "Isaac pleaded with the Lord" (NLT), meaning he earnestly and strongly prayed about his problem. He did not half-heartedly ask God for a son, he pleaded! He begged. He poured his heart out.

I can envision Isaac passionately pleading to God throughout those twenty years, with out-stretched arms and a tear-stained face pressed against the hot, dirty soil, begging God to answer his prayer.

Isaac was surely tired of the wait, but he never stopped praying or believing that his dreams could come true. And in God's perfect timing, they did.

If you are tired of the wait, you may be pleading to God just like Isaac. It may take twenty years for God to answer our prayers, or it may only take twenty minutes. But today, let us find comfort in remembering Isaac's patient faith and take hope in believing that God is not tired of hearing our prayers. Instead, He is simply waiting for the perfect time to answer.

Dear Lord, please help me have patience and faith while I wait to hear from You. Help me live in excited anticipation for the day when I will see how You answer my prayers, in Jesus' Name, amen.

Application Steps:

Consider prayers that have not been answered, but which you have not prayed about lately. Ask God to give you a renewed hope about those desires and faithfully wait on His timing.

Reflections:

Have I stopped praying about something because I've grown tired of waiting on God?

Power Verses:

Psalm 27:14, "Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD." (NIV)

Isaiah 40:31, "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." (KJV)

…and…

Taking a trip on the Bible Bus

1 Peter 2:1-5

The Living Stone and a Holy People

So rid yourselves of all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, desire the unadulterated spiritual milk, so that you may grow by it in [your] salvation, since you have tasted that the Lord is good. Coming to Him, a living stone-rejected by men but chosen and valuable to God- you yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.