Day 21

 No sugar or dairy

Are you in a place where you never in your wildest dreams imagined you would be standing? Do you wonder how you can escape this nightmare? Are you constantly begging God to deliver you from it?

And the crowd rose up together against [Paul & Silas] . . . and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, . . . and [the jailer] . . . threw them into the inner prison, and fastened their feet in the stocks (Acts 16:22-24).

Moses was sent by God to deliver the descendants of Israel, God’s chosen people, from the hand of the Egyptians. When the people heard the news, they were probably so excited, “Wow, Moses is coming to rescue us, let’s pack up and be ready to go.” But no, you can’t leave yet, things are actually going to get worse. Your slave masters are even more cruel and you have to work even harder and still be beaten with whips, and then endure some of the plagues the Lord uses to set you free. The next time the Hebrews saw Moses and Aaron, they swore at them. What happened? Moses was sent by God to rescue His people.

But God had a plan through their suffering, “I will use my mighty power and perform great miracles to deliver them from slavery and make them free. And I will accept them as my people and be their God. And they shall know that I am Jehovah their God who has rescued them from the Egyptians” (Exodus 6:6, [The Living Bible]).

Even in the mist of beatings and prison, God had a plan through Paul and Silas’s suffering. Paul and Silas are beaten and bloody, with their feet in stocks yet we find them praying and singing hymns of praise to God. In all of Paul’s experiences, he never questioned or lost sight of God’s assignment. “Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,” he pressed on!

You are the only you this world will ever know and something about your life is meant to make something about God known in a way no one else can do! [Taken from LeRoy Wagner]

Lord, help us to never lose hope, and continue to trust your love and care!

 

How are you handling your assignment from God?