Bible Verse of the Day


2 Peter 1:5-8


For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

The Miracle of Waiting

Psalm 25:4-5 Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me: for You are the God of my salvation; on You do I wait all day.

Psalm 25:21 Let integrity and uprightness preserve me; for I wait for You.

Psalm 27:14 Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He will strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.

Psalm 31:24 Be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart, all you who wait for the Lord.

There is a lot of action required to wait and most of us are not very good at it. Waiting is not passive at all. I think that may be the mentality that makes us so crazy when we are in ‘waiting mode’…we feel we are simply sitting by doing nothing. Contrary to that thinking, when we wait on the Lord we are actively making changes which would be impossible without the waiting stage. Consider the butterfly.

The butterfly starts out as an egg on a leaf. God, in His infinite wisdom, arranged for the egg to be placed exactly where it needs to be for a built-in food source once hatched. The little caterpillar munches its way to a state of maturity as it prepares for the big changes ahead. In God’s timing, the caterpillar spins a cocoon to encase and insulate itself. This is where the heavy duty waiting comes in because the changes about to be made require complete isolation for the intricate, detailed miracle God is doing in its life.

A caterpillar went in and a butterfly comes out! Even once it’s gone through the struggle of breaking free from the cocoon, the wait is not over. Do you know why it has to struggle? That struggle was in God’s design for the butterfly to build strength. It has been proven that when a person intervenes and helps free the new creation the butterfly does not have the strength to fly as it should. The struggle of its new birth builds its ability to live as God intended. So struggle it must. Then it waits some more as its wings stretch and dry. A wet butterfly is a grounded butterfly. Finally, after all the changes and waiting, the beautiful creature that captures the hearts of so many is ready to take to wing and fly. Its life is fleeting but brings beauty and delight to those around it in the short lifetime.
 
We can draw a parallel between the life of a Christian and the butterfly. It’s all there in the butterfly’s story. Yes, Friends, waiting is very active. The amount of time we end up waiting, our metamorphous, depends on how much we resist God’s process for our own life. Personally, I embrace the cocoon time. I know I cannot make the changes necessary by myself and I welcome the insulation as God works on me. Waiting on God makes the difference between a caterpillar and a butterfly, imagine what He can do with us! Fly, my Friends, fly!

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