Lord Prepare Me

Matthew 24:44 New Living Translation (NLT)

44 You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.

So I'm low-key excited about this devotional. I knew God was speaking when He said it. Last week, He woke me up when I prayed about what I should say for the devotional last week (before I realized I hadn't posted It's the Grace for Me) and He said, "I'm preparing you." It was crazy! I heard myself talking in my sleep and saying "Lord prepare me. Lord prepare me." 

So that brings me to the text, a lot of times when people use this text it's like preparing for death type of thing. But God said "not this time." Granted, yes, we do not know the day or hour that God will show up to take us to glory, but we also don't know the day or the hour that His glory will be revealed. To be honest, we've all gotten so comfortable with complaining and suffering that we (well y'all because I'm prospering in the pandemic) forget that God hears us. God hears our cries, and when he hears us He comes to us and what comes with Him? His glory! When His glory shows up NOTHING else matters.

Romans 8:18 New Living Translation (NLT)

18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.

Now here's the crazy thing, ever since the pandemic started there's been more and more prayer meetings and virtual prayer circles breaking out, but where is your  confidence?

Isaiah 40:28-31 New Living Translation (NLT)

28 Have you never heard?
    Have you never understood?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of all the earth.
He never grows weak or weary.
    No one can measure the depths of his understanding.
29 He gives power to the weak
    and strength to the powerless.
30 Even youths will become weak and tired,
    and young men will fall in exhaustion.
31 But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
    They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
    They will walk and not faint.

1 John 5:14-15 New Living Translation (NLT)

14 And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. 15 And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.

Where is your hope? Faith is the substance for things hoped for and evidence for things not seen. Without faith it is impossible to please God, and without hope your prayers are just words that go up and come back down like you're tossing a ball up or something. But when you really have faith in what you prayed, you start preparing. So my prayers here recently has been "Lord prepare me!" Because the truth is that many of us pray for things, but we're not in the position to receive them. I don't mean just spiritually. I mean actually preparing. We pray for a new job, but don't have a resume ready. We pray for our business to take off but we're not in a place where we would even know what to do if it did. We wouldn't be able to handle it. 

The Bible says study to show thyself approved. Studying will show you what to do in certain circumstances. Last week during Truth on a Thursday, Elder Mark said we don't create "do" goals; we create "who" goals. It's not enough to say "I want to save up x amount of money." The real question is "What do people who are saving money do?" They aint going on shopping sprees every day that's for sure. 

Matthew 24:45-51 New Living Translation (NLT)

45 “A faithful, sensible servant is one to whom the master can give the responsibility of managing his other household servants and feeding them. 46 If the master returns and finds that the servant has done a good job, there will be a reward. 47 I tell you the truth, the master will put that servant in charge of all he owns. 48 But what if the servant is evil and thinks, ‘My master won’t be back for a while,’ 49 and he begins beating the other servants, partying, and getting drunk?50 The master will return unannounced and unexpected, 51 and he will cut the servant to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So you start preparing. Now the preparation is not always pretty. It doesn't always feel good. For some of us, the life we have lived up until August 20, 2020 has been preparing us for the exact moment when God's glory will be revealed. We don't know when it's going to show up, but to whom much is given much is required. For each and every one of you reading this, God has required each and every trial that you've been through. It didn't feel good, but it was all working for your good. 

Come here, David. David had to be ignored. David had to be ridiculed. David had to be overlooked. David had to be different. David had to be a shepherd. He had to fight with lions and bears. I know none of that felt good, but it was preparing David to be the King David that we all know. 

Matthew 25:21 New Living Translation (NLT)

21 “The master was full of praise. ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together![a]’

If God can trust you to watch over something as lowly as sheep, and you do it with all you have, He can trust you. If you go back to Matthew 24, you'll see that the servant was not serving up to par. They were playing with it because they thought they could do what they wanted to. They were not faithful to the call. 

The issue is that too many people want the title but don't want to endure fro the title. They don't want to be humbled. They want to be self-made. They want to say they've never failed, that they've never had a bad day, that they've never gone through anything. That's fine but when those are the circumstances, you don't respect the title enough to know what to do with it. 

I'm going to be very frank, and I try not to talk about politics on this platform, but the reason why a lot of politicians and people who are less melanated (🤧🤧🤧) don't understand the Black Lives Matter movement because they don't know what it is to go outside and be afraid to be attacked for no other reason but for the color of their skin. Some of them don't know what it is to send their children off to school and they not come home. They don't understand it because they have not experienced it, and thus were not prepared for it. 

Now the other issue that people have not mastered is the mindset. Anybody who teaches any kind of course on going from one way of living to another always addresses mindset. To be honest, one of the biggest issues that people tend to have is their mindset. Their minds aren't ready to handle the level that God wants them to be on. Honestly, that was one of David's biggest struggles. I think I've talked about it before in a previous devotional about how mentally, David was still the shepherd boy. He was still the boy that was not acknowledged so a lot of his actions were a reflection of that. 

He wasn't the only one who struggled mentally. Jeremiah also struggled. In Jeremiah 1, when God told Jeremiah he would be a prophet unto the nations. God didn't ask Jeremiah anything, but Jeremiah volunteered information that really didn't matter. He said "I'm just a child." God ain't ask him nothing about that. But for many of us, when we're presented with something we immediately go back to our previous circumstance. Unfortunately, some of us use it as a crutch. 

Moses did the same thing. When God told him to go back to Egypt, Moses gave every excuse in the book. Why? Because his mind was underdeveloped. It wasn't developed enough to receive what was spoken. God didn't ask Jeremiah or Moses anything. He told them but they told God all these excuse like God wasn't God. 

I'll admit it: I'm guilty of it too. It wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I accepted that God had called me to a certain type of people. Every time somebody tried to tell me I have a calling I would be like 

Why? Because in my mind, God couldn't use someone with me. I immediately said "I didn't grow up in church like that. We definitely aint do stuff like this." The crazy thing is I haven't been in that church in 10 years, but I would rely on my upbringing in the church as a crutch and as an excuse for why I couldn't move forward with my calling. 

So what happened after that?  I started what I like to call "strength training." We all know that one verse that everybody quotes. Philippians 4:13! But there is a part before that, Verses 11 and 12 are key in this situation. 

Philippians 4:11-14 New Living Translation (NLT)

11 Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. 12 I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. 13 For I can do everything through Christ,[a] who gives me strength.14 Even so, you have done well to share with me in my present difficulty.

Now let's break this down real quick. These verses show a few things: Paul has gone without, he had to learn, and the difficulty doesn't ever stop. 

Remember earlier when we spoke about people who do not have experience? Same concept. People who grow up with money don't know anything about the Ramen noodle struggle, right? If you've never gone without, you won't know how to make ends meet. I can't tell you now as an adult how I was able to survive off Ramen, EasyMac, and that meal plan in school. There's something about that struggle that teaches you. 

Romans 5:3-5 New Living Translation (NLT)

3 We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. 5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

Each of your struggles is building you. It's training you! You never know how strong you are until you have to use your strength. A couple of years ago my sister cousin had a series a strokes, and I remember when my mom told me at 6:30 in the morning as I was walking out the door to go to work. Interesting fact--I don't handle crisis well, especially when it's with close family. Also, I'm not one of those people you can talk to early in the morning. It throws off my entire day. So hearing all of that first thing in the morning really triggered me, but because I've been practicing getting a hold of my emotions, something in me stood up and said "I am not afraid." That practice was my strength training. It's strengthening my relationship with God that could keep me that calm. 

Now lastly, Paul says he is in currently in difficulty. I think one of the biggest misconceptions about Christianity is that it stops all problems. That's not true. It doesn't stop all problems, but it gives you a way out if you exercise your faith. That's like losing a bunch of weight an then you stop the lifestyle. Next thing you know, you're back where you were originally. Sometimes you have to go through seasons of difficulty to remind you of just how strong you've been created to be.