Glory Seed Devotionals, 2016: Year of the Blessing
God is great, God does good…
PEACE be unto you!
Of all the things life has taught me in my 69 plus years is to be very careful in calling good, good or bad, bad because there are times when what we consider good is actually bad and what we might consider bad is actually good. For instance one person may consider debilitating illness as bad yet someone else can see something good coming out of it. After being diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis in 1981 I first saw that as something bad yet after several months I could see my relationship to God deepening.
I remember an elderly gentleman standing up in a worship service and praying God would heal me. No sooner he said amen when I silently prayed, “Don’t heal me yet LORD I am growing spiritually right now.” It would be several years before I went into remission. Today I wear an ID bracelet that says Myasthenia Gravis yet I am symptom free.
When I read today’s scripture some of those times when good was bad and bad was good surfaced again in my memory. “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” (Philippians 1:6) One of the important “draws” from Paul is that everything God does for and in our lives is good – God does not do bad things, even though they may appear that way to us. Draw number two from Philippians 1:6 reminds us we can trust in God even though we suffer from shortsightedness when it comes to seeing beyond today. In retrospect when I asked God not to heal me of Myasthenia Gravis because I was growing spiritually I was exercising trust.
I don’t know if you walking that fine line between what is it good or is it bad like I was but if you are please consider this not from Paul or from me but from the Holy Spirit, who doesn’t suffer from shortsightedness. “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” (Philippians 1:6)
Believe in presence of the GOD and in the strength of his GRACE!
Gary
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Unless otherwise noted, “Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.”