A few weeks ago my devotional reading was on Galatians 6:9 Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.
Since then I have been meditating on that. The truth is I am weary, but I have begun to ask myself what it is that I am weary of and if those things are worth it. The answer I have come up with is that yes it is worth it to endure.
For example my husband and I have been teaching a Sunday school class for about six years now with a break for a quarter each time I had a baby. Other than that the only time we have had a rest from it when we are out of town for the weekend, which happens a couple times a year. As I am coming closer to my time to birth another child I have thought to myself that maybe I don’t want to go back to teaching after this one. But the last two weeks of teaching have encouraged my heart.
We have one young girl in our class, who is about 12 years old. It is easy to see that she fervently desires to please God. Over the course of December we have taught about some of the prophesy leading up to Jesus birth. And that some of the prophesy is of Isaiah was 700 years before the brith of Christ. We posed the question “How does it feel to know that God already knows the future?”
This girl spoke up with great concern in her voice, saying that makes her feel so sad because if God has already planned for her to take a bad path and make bad decisions she can’t do anything about it.
Wow! I had not expected her to come out with that. So we spent a portion of two class sessions giving her examples in the Bible of God changing his mind because of people’s prayers. Like in Genesis 18 when Abraham negotiates with the angels over the number of righteous people to found in sodom in order to save the city. In Exodus 32 God wants to kill the Israelites but Moses intercedes for them until The Lord relents. And so we explained that even though God knows the future, when we pray according to His will things do change, He does answer prayer. And we should never think of God as a dictator making us do good or bad, we were born with free will.
By the end this young lady seemed much more at peace about the question. I hate to think of what would be her future Christian life if she had not asked that question now while she is young. If she had carried that misconception into her adult life and lived out her faith out of fear of God doing something bad to her.
It is for times like this that we know our ministry is worth it.
Seek Him for strength and perseverance to continue on in doing what is good.
- Bible Resources For chaplins - March 15, 2016
- Receiving from God - February 18, 2016
- To Delight in Him - January 11, 2016