Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Day 21: Blessing by Withholding the Blessing



This post is part of a 31-day series.



Like Paul pleading with God three times to remove his troublesome thorn, many of us have begged God repeatedly to remove either our depression and anxiety, or the circumstances that cause them.




Paul Maxwell writes at Desiring God about the dreaded answer to prayer:  not "Yes," not "No," but "Later."



“Later” is not merely divine ambiguity. 
“Later” is God turning up the emotional volume knob to reveal what’s in the heart. 
With “Later,” God amplifies a Christian’s spiritual state.  “Do you hear that?  Do you hear that insecurity?  Do you hear that fear?  I’m teaching you how to respond to that."


...Because he loves you, God will not bless you so richly that you do not have to trust him.  He blesses you seasonally, proportionately, and incrementally, because he wants to bestow you with both the gift itself and the gift of faith, and never the former without the latter.  CCEF counselor Ed Welch observes, “Such prosperity would be a curse.”  God blesses us with the fullness of himself through the momentary incompleteness of his material provision.





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