"Creation is Groaning" isn't the same as "Murmuring and Complaining".

We have been talking about hope. Last night in Romans 8 we were reading these verses from God's Word Translation (20,21) Creation was subjected to frustration but not by its own choice. The one who subjected it to frustration did so in the hope that it would also be set free from slavery to decay in order to share the glorious freedom that the children of God will have.


We continued speaking about how we could not have hope unless God, who's image we were created in, had hope. This verses states that he does. In addition to this Philippians 1:6 states "For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. (NAS)" This assures us that God does have a plan, so our hope is to be established not in what we see happening around us but in the fact that God knows the struggles we must come through in order to form our personality, character, integrity and endurance to be transformed into His image.

I pray that we not be weak willed, that we percevere in His strength, through His spirit and demand that our spirit prosper even as our soul prospers. We do not have to sit back and wish....we can plow through with hope of reaching the finish line. I pray that we keep our eye on the road leading forward which is for our good, always asking for the correct path and following it.

With love,
Candace

Visions Become Reality

The parched ground shall become a pool . . . —Isaiah 35:7

We always have a vision of something before it actually becomes real to us. When we realize that the vision is real, but is not yet real in us, Satan comes to us with his temptations, and we are inclined to say that there is no point in even trying to continue. Instead of the vision becoming real to us, we have entered into a valley of humiliation.

Life is not as idle ore,

But iron dug from central gloom,

And battered by the shocks of doom

To shape and use.

God gives us a vision, and then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of that vision. It is in the valley that so many of us give up and faint. Every God-given vision will become real if we will only have patience. Just think of the enormous amount of free time God has! He is never in a hurry. Yet we are always in such a frantic hurry. While still in the light of the glory of the vision, we go right out to do things, but the vision is not yet real in us. God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the vision. Ever since God gave us the vision, He has been at work. He is getting us into the shape of the goal He has for us, and yet over and over again we try to escape from the Sculptor’s hand in an effort to batter ourselves into the shape of our own goal.

The vision that God gives is not some unattainable castle in the sky, but a vision of what God wants you to be down here. Allow the Potter to put you on His wheel and whirl you around as He desires. Then as surely as God is God, and you are you, you will turn out as an exact likeness of the vision. But don’t lose heart in the process. If you have ever had a vision from God, you may try as you will to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never allow it. - By Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest