I often prayed, “Lord, what is taking so long?” and often in my heart I would hear God reply, “YOU.”
I guess what I am trying to say is that we already have every blessing ready for us in Heaven, I’m not talking just spiritual but also material as well. We do have material needs, even Jesus had to pay his taxes (Matthew 17:27). At the time when I was praying this, I was NOT spiritually mature enough to HANDLE what God wanted to bless me with. It was more than memorizing bible verses and passages and more than knowing ABOUT God.
The Lord wanted me to KNOW HIM PERSONALLY and to come to the point that NOTHING but HIM mattered, NOT MONEY, NOT CARS, NOT MY JOB, NOT MY FRIENDS and FAMILY OPINIONS, JUST HIM and HIM ALONE. When we get that principle down in our hearts we start to see God as the kind LOVE He is – GOD IS LOVE but if that is true than why was I not LOVING people as God loves people?
If God is in me and He is Love than why was I failing to love others as He does? Simply put, it was because I was being selfish. You cannot serve to masters, because you will end up choosing between one or the other. I was trying to serve ME and GOD at the same time. A person can NOT do that because SELF always wins. So one of us has to “die to self” (Luke 17:33), and it wasn’t going to be GOD. So James had to get out of the way. So I knew what was needed, so my new prayer was, “Lord please help me get out of the way”, The Lord sent this scripture to me:
Job 13:15 King James Version (KJV)
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.
What this says to me is that NO MATTER what comes in my life, IF I know that I am lined up with the Word of God as JOB was, then I can TRUST what God brings into my life as being best for me and/or for others as well (we are blessed by Job’s suffering via the Book of Job). So now I know that MY sufferings are a blessing for myself as a growth process and to others because MY hardships mature me spiritually and I in turn am equipped to bless others. However, what if my suffering only blesses someone else and not me?
Well now we have a perplexing process that takes place. Because if my suffering blesses someone else and not me, and if in that suffering I am glad for another’s sake because my hardship benefits them, than though I suffer, I am blessed because I have learned that the true expression of LOVE is to GIVE selflessly for the sake of others, even if I benefit not and even if the person receiving does not deserve it in my own opinion. Christ is the full expression of this type of LOVE (agape love).
This is not easy due to sin nature. Sin nature wants to preserve SELF often at the expense of another. But all of us are required to come to this understanding, not only in our minds, but our hearts, for God looks at our hearts and judges our actions based on our love devotion. So KNOWING ABOUT GOD is one thing, but KNOWING HIM is to love Him and to love him is to serve Him (John 14:15).