In a group of Christians I once asked what would be their first question for Jesus when they finally see Him. One person said, “Why did it take you so long to get through to me?”
I feel like that some days. It reveals a lack of patience. He saved me and is saving me, but I’m tired some days of the cycle of victory, then realizing more incompleteness in my transformation, then another win, then more conviction of sin. I want what is promised: “obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:9) Like a child, sometimes it seems time is either ‘right now’ or ‘forever’ and I’d like the ‘right now’ instead of waiting.
Today’s devotional reading points to the future goal of what is going on every day:
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)
MacArthur writes: “You rejoice because you have and continue to hold on to the logical result of your proven faith—your ongoing deliverance from sin. ”
The battle is real. I know that I need ongoing deliverance because sin is an ongoing problem. Fifty years or so ago, I was given new life in Christ and made a new creation by Him. I am no longer a slave to the penalty and power of sin; but I am certainly not yet fully glorified and still subject to sin’s influence. I can relate to Paul’s description of the struggle between the flesh and the spirit:
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:19–24)
There are days when I can say with him: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (Romans 7:25) yet there are days when that deliverance seems impossible. It is something like a roller-coaster ride when the ups and downs never end and the ‘right now’ is too strong to let me even think about the end of the ride that is certain to come. No light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
PRAY: Lord Jesus, I know You are my Savior and You are the Great Deliverer. It is only through You that I have victory over sin, death, and eternal judgment. I’ve not stopped loving and trusting You yet some days am just tired of the ups and downs. Is this is why Your word says:
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28–31)
I need to wait on You, even if it seems too much for my energy levels to simply hope for Your help and trust that You will renew me again. Normal fatigue is okay, but spiritual fatigue is not.
PONDER: Waiting is the hard part but if I am waiting for myself to be perfect, or waiting for answers to long-prayed prayers, that could be a long wait. Instead, I need to be waiting on the LORD, enjoying Him rather than in experiencing anything else. He is always with me, even in these times when patience seems a foreign language.