I am God of the moment

“I am not just God of the outcome… I am God of the moment.”

These are the words that I heard the Lord speak to me very clearly in the early part of December last year. I was at a Prayer Meeting with some of my friends and we were all sitting around the Breakfast Table talking, sharing and laughing. One of my friends received a phone call on her cell phone and answered it. It wasn’t good news. In only a moment, everything had changed.

This is when I heard God speak these words, “I am not just God of the outcome… I am God of the Moment”. I shared this with the other women who were there, but I continued to feel this message stirring inside of me. “What exactly does that mean?” I asked the Lord. Over the next month and a half I would begin to hear His answer.

I felt as if the Lord was showing me that I spend a lot of my prayer time praying towards the outcome of certain situations. I felt as if He was showing me that in praying that way, that I was focused not on the present, but on “somewhere” down the road and off into the future.

As I began to ponder this, I felt some thoughts began to come together and take order. These are what I’d like to share.

First off, I began to think upon all that Jesus had invested in us. I love that word… invest. Jesus gave up all that He had (His heavenly home and position) and invested all that He is (His life’s blood) into us.

This made me think of us, and that we are to follow Jesus’ example in our own lives. This means investing all that we have… and all that we are. This means investing our time, our money, our energy, our love, our talents, our abilities, our strengths, etc.

The next thought that comes up is who do we invest these things in? We invest them into our families… our spouses, our children, our grandchildren and also into one another. We invest them into the next generation… and more specifically, to whomever it is that the Lord puts on our minds or hearts.

In a moment things in our lives can change. A relationship can end… a marriage, a friendship, a relationship with one of our own children who makes a wrong choice.

A loved one can be taken away… there can be a death, or someone we love can be called off to war, or perhaps even “leave” us by way of dementia or Alzheimer’s.

A job can be terminated. Your health can be threatened. You could receive a diagnosis that you weren’t expecting… or someone close to you might go through something that you aren’t able to help them with, etc.

However… there is a flip side to all of this.

 

In a moment, God can restore hope into a broken heart. In a moment He can restore vision and purpose into our lives. In a moment He can restore strength. In a moment He can restore joy. In a moment He can restore faith and hope. In a moment He can restore dignity. In a moment He can restore broken relationships. In a moment He can restore life and courage.

It is here that I would like to focus our hearts. Let us concentrate and focus on what it is that God is doing…and let us follow in His lead… moment by moment.

The verses that I’d like to concentrate on this morning are as follows:

II Corinthians 4:15 thru 18 (Amplified version):

“For all (these) things are (taking place) for your sake, so that the more grace (divine favor and spiritual blessing) extends to more and more people and multiplies through the many, the more thanksgiving may increase (and redound) to the glory of God.

Therefore, we do not become discouraged, (utterly spiritless, exhausted, and wearied out through fear). Though our outer man is (progressively) decaying and wasting away, yet our inner self is being (progressively) renewed day after day.

For our light, momentary affliction (this slight distress of the passing hour) is ever more and more abundantly preparing and producing and achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory (beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease!).

Since we consider and look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are visible are temporal (brief and fleeting), but the things that are invisible are deathless and everlasting.”

So… there we have it. It is here, in the truth written to us in the above verses, that I would like us to direct our focus. I would like to ask the Lord to help us to take our focus off of all that surrounds us… and to help us put it onto Him. We must look to Him in our distress and see the road that He has mapped out for us. He has promised to never leave nor forsake us… not now and not ever. His ways are much higher than ours, and we must not allow our gaze to drop into our circumstances, lest we lose the direction that He is giving us. Our God is utterly trustworthy and forever faithful. He will not allow us to go through more than we can handle. He is always ready to love us, to lead us and to strengthen us through every difficulty and challenge that we face.

It is a series of moments that make up a lifetime. Let’s take this moment and really purpose in our hearts to make it count… not only for ourselves, but also for all of those whom the Lord has placed around us. One day we will look back at all of the moments that have become our lifetime…I wonder if we will like what we see. Will we see the beauty and design of a life fully lived and committed to the Lord and to the call that He has placed upon our lives… or will we wish that we had done it all differently.

I love the fact that Jesus gave us a choice. It is so powerful and wonderful a gift that we have been blessed with. We have been given the opportunity to partner with Him, to kneel down right alongside Him in intercession and to cry out with Him to His Father about the things of our hearts and then to realign them with the things of His heart. I believe there is no greater privilege.

I pray that you will choose with me today, that which will not leave us disappointed tomorrow.

Written by Beverley A Napier