Daily Devotional for Monday September 15, 2003
Changing your circumstances
( Proverbs 14:23 )
Changing your circumstances. As you can imagine, each day the volume of emails that pour into Liveprayer.com are mostly prayer requests from people living through very difficult circumstances in their life. The special word I have for you today is this. "God wants to help you change your circumstances!" While prayer needs to be the first thing that we do, and will be a key part of the process throughout, God expects us to do our part in the changing of our circumstances.
So many people who are hurting, in the midst of dealing with great problems in their life, will simply live each day with those problems and do nothing. My friend, your circumstances are not going to change until YOU make the effort to change them. You are not going to magically wake up one morning and have everything be OK. That is not reality. If you want things to change, YOU need to be an active part of making that happen.
Like everything, there is a right way and a wrong way to make changes in your life. As I mentioned, prayer is the first step. The second step is getting a gameplan. Use others in your life that you can trust to help you formulate that plan. The plan will usually not be something outlandish, but will normally be very practical and based on good common sense. Also, whatever plan that the Lord helps you to formulate, realize that it will not be something that will cause things to magically change overnight. You didn't get into the problems that you are facing overnight, and rarely will God deliver you from them overnight.
Many times, our problems can be traced to sin, rebellion, in our life. Doing things our way instead of God's way. Once we decide to turn to God, He will help us work our way out of the problem over a period of time. It is never easy, but we start to learn basic principles like self-discipline, operating in His strength and not ours, depending on Him each step of the way. Theses are good elements that we should learn to incorporate into our daily lives to help us avoid many of the problems life throws at us in the first place.
Once you have the plan and are working it faithfully each day, you will start to see things in your life change for the better. Again, the changes won't happen overnight, but gradually, day by day. The worst thing that you can do though is do nothing. You can not expect your circumstances to change by doing nothing.
The reason I find most people don't take an active role in the changing of their circumstances is because as painful as things may be, they are afraid of change. The Bible tells us we are not to have a spirit of fear. If you are serious about seeing your circumstances change, you must get serious about trusting God to help you make those changes. We are often more comfortable living in the pain we know, then trusting God who has promised to help us gain victory.
I love you and care about you so much. I pray today that those of you who are dealing with circumstances in your life that need to be changed, will heed this special word today, and get serious about making those changes. God will give you the wisdom to formulate a workable plan, He will give you the strength each day to follow through, and He will lead you to victory.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE IN PAIN ANY LONGER. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES YOU ARE IN ANY LONGER. TODAY IS YOUR DAY. TODAY IS YOUR DAY. TODAY IS YOUR DAY. NOW IS THE TIME. TRUST GOD AND LET HIM LEAD YOU OUT OF EGYPT, AND INTO THE PROMISED LAND. THE SAME GOD THAT LED THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL FROM BONDAGE MANY YEARS AGO, IS THE SAME GOD WHO WILL LEAD YOU OUT OF BONDAGE TODAY!!!!!! Amen.
In His love and service, Your friend and brother in Christ, Bill Keller