Hopeful Beggar or Confident Child?

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%205,38,41,42&version=NIV">http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%205,38,41,42&version=NIV

As I read through our passages today, my heart is centering on Psalm 5:3 –

“In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.”

This Psalm brings to mind some questions that I’d like you to consider:

First question: How do you wait?

Do you wait in expectation? Do you wait with confidence? I wonder how often we take our requests before God and hope he hears us – hope he will do something, and then, because we’re not confident he will, we take our requests laid before him and then pick them up. We take them into our own hands, and try to take care of them ourselves. The results can be pretty messy.

Friends – what God desires from us more than anything else is quite simple. He desires our faith. He simply wants us to believe he loves us enough. He wants us to believe that he hears, he can, and he will step into our circumstances. He wants us to approach with confidence.

Recently, in a time of prayer, God very clearly spoke this to me: “You approach me as a hopeful beggar. I want you to approach me as a confident child of the King.” It’s interesting that those quiet words whispered to me went so deep into my heart. They pierced it because I knew it was true. But then, out of my pierced heart grew immense hope born of the certainty that what God said is true. I am a child of the King – you are a child of the King. I made a choice that day that I would approach with confidence. It’s changed my prayer life. Today I can say with certainty – God LOVES to answer confident prayers laid before him in expectation.

Next question: For what do you wait?

That’s a tough one because I think we very easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we are waiting on the Lord. However, I wonder how often we lay our requests before God and wait in expectation – not for the Lord, but for the thing we requested. We lay our requests before God and ask him for what we desire, and not for His desire for us. Be cautious, my friend. Waiting in expectation for God to fulfill what you have determined is best for you often leads to great disappointment. We are disappointed in God because he didn’t do what we wanted.

Friends – our God is not a God of disappointment. He is so very loving that although he’d love to lavish us with all we ask, he instead lavishes us with what we need. He lavishes us with His best for us. The problem is misplaced hope. Put your hope in God, not in what you hope he will bring you or do for you. It’s not easy – I’ve learned by being disappointed many, many times until finally I went to God and asked him how to place my hope in HIM and HIM alone. I asked him to show me the way because I couldn’t find it myself. And he did – oh, how he did! Don’t ask me to explain how – I just know that he did.

I don’t always get it right, but I have noticed that I’m not disappointed in God very often any more because I no longer wait on my desires. By God’s supernatural power and working in my life, I’ve learned to lay those desires before him and wait to see what he will do. Through His power I’ve learned to trust that what God wants for me is above what I want for myself and somehow, some way God takes the desires of my heart and changes them – or he meets me in the midst of my longing for them as he works out his plan. But no matter which he does, I choose - something I can only do when I ask for God’s help - to wait in hope for the Lord, and him only. And somehow, some way, I promise you he shows up – with plans fulfilled, with answers to prayers, with love that surrounds me in the waiting that is beyond anything I could ask or imagine.

“But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.” – Micah 7:7

Today's post was submitted by Carol Bartels