I've been concerned about not hearing from God, and told Him about it when I was brushing my teeth. God spoke through two others even before I woke up.
I woke up about 7ish, and worried for two hours that everything I’ve done in the past was a waste of time. I finally got up to brush my teeth, and I prayed, “Lord, I’m afraid I won’t be able to hear from You, not because You don’t speak but because I can’t hear so You’ll have to be very, very clear.”
After I brushed my teeth, I checked email and saw emails from two different friends. Friend 1 said, “This is very odd, but I think this is for you.” It was a devotional she was reading, and the message was more or less, “Nothing is wasted. In the midst of trials, God is doing something in you, and not just for you.”
Friend 2 said that he was meditating on Ecclesiastes, and thought of me. This is what he wrote:
“I pray that God guards you against thinking of your efforts there as meaningless. They weren't, because I trust they were done in obedience. I pray that God will lead you to take the next step, whatever it is, in joyful obedience.”
Friend 2's email was sent at 1am, and Friend 1's email at 12:10am. God knew that I would be worrying about this for two hours after I woke up, and he knew the request on my heart when I brushed my teeth.
So, He decided to set up His answer to me a few hours before while I was still asleep.
Neither friend is in the habit of sending me their devotionals, and neither friend has their spiritual eyes fully opened.
However, that's not all. Here are my sermon notes from yesterday on the Christmas story. I thought it spoke to me powerfully.
Genesis 12: 2-3
God may not show you the goal until you are willing to go.
God is like a father holding our hands as we learn to walk. The baby may fall but the father is always willing to help.
A promise from God created a great deal of tension. The promise of a child at 75.
Genesis 15
God comforted Abram by reaffirming his promise. The opposite of uncertainty is not certainty but faith and trust that God will do what He has promised. In the meantime, we learn patience. A delay is not a delay at all but divine timing.
Abram chose to believe.
Having faith God doesn't prevent Abram from asking for evidence. But the sequence is belief first, then questions.
What we see in Abram’s situation:
“Faith seeking understanding.” -- Thomas Aquinas
God honors Abram’s question and settles him by making a covenant.
The consequence of violating the covenant will be like the animals who have been torn in half. Death and destruction.
During that time, if the covenant is made between two parties of unequal power, the covenant is one sided, and it is the weaker party who has to walk in between the animals.
However, God walks in between the animals instead of Abram because he knows Abram will fail. He chooses to bear Abram's failures even when he knows that Abram will fail to uphold their covenant, and He chooses to honor His promise to him anyway.
During the 400 years of silence between the OT and the NT, God was preparing a new covenant, and a new son, God's own son. God's son was the payment when Abram broke the covenant.
