“Teach me Your way, Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. Do not turn me over to the desire of my enemies, for false witnesses have risen against me, and the violent witness. I certainly believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage;
Yes, wait for the Lord.!” (Psalm 27:11-14 NASB)
George Mueller (1805-1898) wrote these words of wisdom, “The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.” What can we pull out of the text above that will help us strengthen our faith and simultaneously put an end to anxiety; apprehensions and concerns that arise for one reason or the other.
From the word above I extracted eleven things that people of faith do. Let me share them with you, and after reading them, pick three things you will commit to working on starting this Saturday.
- Put yourself in a position to be taught God’s way.
- Pray to God for help in being teachable or having the desire to be taught.
- Seek to be led by God to a level path so you can stand on ground that will cause you not to teeter or fall because of the opposition you are facing in life.
- Realize why you need the Lord. You can’t do it by yourself. By the way, recognize, as a side note, at time your foes are internal and sometimes they are external – but regardless of the locale of the foe, adhere to the fact that we sure do need the Lord.
- Look for help when your adversaries (enemies, evil, challenges, changes that show up unexpected, opposition, open invitations to sin, adversaries, antagonists, peers, pressures of life, trials, temptations, and troubles, etc.) try to lead you in an unrighteous/wrong/evil direction. Somewhere I read, in another Psalm, Psalm 46 to be exact, I read, “God is a very present help in times of trouble.”
- In your present tense, not just in times that are yet to come, recognize you need faith now.
- Believe that you will see the goodness of the Lord even when you can’t see it right now – in the land of the living. Remember that definition of faith in the Hebrews, “Now faith is the certainty of things [a]hoped for, a proof of things not seen.”
- Wait for the Lord! Don’t define your wait time by your standard and do not set deadlines so as to think you can dictate when the Lord will show up. Just wait on the Lord. You yourself have declared, “He may not come when you want Him too, but He shows up right on time.”
- While you wait, be strong! Isn’t your strength in the Lord?
- While you wait, take courage. Haven’t you heard, “He gives His people strength; the Lord blesses His people with peace?”
- And if your find yourself forgetting to wait, remind yourself to wait for the Lord! The Lord: The active One! The Self-Existent One! The Holy One! The Omnipotent One! The Omnipresent One! The Omniscient One! The One who is always in your “present” situation, because He will never leave you or forsake you!
Have a sensational, anxiety free, faith-filled, God-conscious, and Christ centered Saturday. Let all that carry over into tomorrow in the assembly of the saints! Make sure you are in the position to be taught! Be blessed!
Committed to the climb,
Mark L. King