Down and Out and Whatnot

I don't feel like I've shared a little bit of what the Lord's been teaching me in a while, so I figure I probably should. I brought it up the other day, but I've been pretty down lately. Downright depressed is probably the best way to put it. Being unemployed takes its tole. I try not to think about it too much, but I've been struggling a lot lately. My self-worth has been taking a pretty heavy hit. Add to that the fact that I really haven't been hearing from the Lord much lately and you've got a good recipe for the mopeys.

But I've had Abraham on my mind lately. Specifically that part in Romans 4 where Paul talks about Abraham. When the Lord calls Abraham and promises that he will have tons of descendants, he's 75. I'm pretty sure that that means that his wife Sarah was around 65. If at that moment God had allowed a 65 year old woman to conceive, that would have been miraculous and the Lord would have received glory from that. But that's not what happens. Twenty-five years pass with nothing good happening in the baby making department.

The way I am, I feel like if God promises me something and I've waited a couple of weeks, I should be exalted as the patron saint of patience. After 25 years, I would had already moved through the doubting phase and moved straight to the "I must have heard Him wrong" phase and moved on. But Romans 4:20-21 says that Abraham never wavered in his faith. It just grew stronger everyday and he held on to the fact that God is able to exactly what He promises. So even when the Lord wasn't doing the miracle, He was still getting glory from Abraham's faith.

And a bit of wisdom that John Flowers told me recently keeps being brought back to my mind. Abraham having a son after he was called would have been a huge miracle, but the longer the Lord waited to give him what he was promised, the more impossible it seemed and the bigger the miracle would be and the more glory God would receive.

That's what I'm trying to hold onto right now. Because that's how I feel right now. It's easy for me to think that everyday that passes without me getting a job, it becomes even more impossible for me to get one. But if I view my situation the way the Abraham did, then I realize that everyday that passes brings me one day closer to the Lord doing a miracle.