Week 6 Day 4
Pray:
Ask God to reorient you to Himself. Confess any known sin. Thank Him for His forgiveness. Be still and reflect on Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s Word. Pray for others in your life that they, too, would know and love God today.
Read:
Hebrews 11:11 And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
Reflect:
Abraham had faith in the faithfulness of God. He believed that God would keep the promise he had made. What was the content of the promise? It was that Abraham would be the father of a nation with descendants so numerous they would be virtually uncountable. The problem was that in order to have multiple descendants you have to start with a single descendant. The promise was epic in nature, but the fulfillment of the promise was very mundane: a baby had to be born. Sarah, an older woman, had to become pregnant and bear a child. Before you move on from that fact think about not just her joy at getting pregnant after so long but what it would be like to live at that time, be that age, and go through pregnancy. The promise was epic; the days of gestation were certainly not. If you are a Christian, then God has given you an epic promise: eternal life in Christ. You will see him face-to-face someday and will become like Christ in character. He has promised believers will experience eternal life, which is not merely a large quantity of life but an entirely different quality of life. However, in the meantime, the days will often not feel epic. They will “tick” by in mundane movements of the clock and calendar. There will be times for many of us that will not just be mundane but will involve pain. Pain that is physical, pain that is emotional and mental. However, even in the mundane and in the pain, we do have to wait to the end to experience some of the “epic” nature of the promise of God. What makes the promise so spectacular is that it means we will have a fuller experience with God someday. We can know him in fuller and fuller ways right now, during the days of pain and the days of mundane. This is where and how the epic breaks into the mundane: to move through your days looking to know and love God and to make God’s love known. Whether you are sitting at a desk fighting to stay engaged with your work, or lying in a sick bed fighting to stay alive, you have the opportunity today to encounter God. You can see where God is moving in your life now and join him. This is the intersection of the epic and the mundane. Close the gap today: see the epic in the mundane.
Pray:
(Personalize this prayer today; make it specific to the circumstances that face you.)
Ask God to lead you through His Spirit as you go through your day. Ask Him to bring to mind the truth of the gospel and its implications for what you will encounter today. Tell Him “Yes” to His will and ask Him for His power and protection to live this “yes.” Ask God to create and reveal opportunities to proclaim the good news today.