A Day to the Lord, part 3

I have often said that when the standard bearers lower their standards, their subordinates lower theirs even more. 



Why is this Important?

Let’s go back for a moment to 2 Peter and look at verse 9. 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”  This is another one of those verses that I have often pulled out of the chapter and preached from. I have often talked about this promise and how God wants all to come to repentance; therefore, it is the Will of God for all people to be saved. 

There is nothing wrong with that, but we need to look at this verse in light of the whole chapter. The first part of this chapter talks about the mockers who said, “… nothing has changed since the beginning of time,” – using that to justify their rebellion against the Word of God. Peter responds by saying that a day to the Lord, is a thousand years to us, showing how this world’s way of measuring the progress of something is flawed. And then he says, in this verse – don’t worry God is not slow, as in the way some people would count slowness, measuring time by, the number of mornings and evenings, but rather, He is patient. He doesn’t want anyone to perish and will continue to work in their lives for as long as it takes. 

In other words, it’s not over ‘til it’s over. It’s not over until the angels sing. God has not given up on you, or your lost loved ones, so you shouldn’t either. Nor has He given up on any particular promise we find in His Word. 

Not long ago, a man approached me and asked me to pray with him. He was very downcast because he has been praying about something that he wanted to happen in his life, and now he is in his late sixties and believes that God will never accomplish it (based on how many years he has already been waiting for it to happen).
 

I could have gone into the whole issue of whether or not he was praying according to the Will of God. I could have talked about whether or not he was allowing God to develop him into the kind of person HE wanted him to be. Instead I told him that all he can and should do is hang on to the promises of God. 

Are the promises of God true or not? Our experiences in life do not prove or disprove the promises of God. 

When the Devil tempted Jesus, Jesus’s response was, “It is written….” Jesus referred to God’s Word. If we don’t believe in the promises of God, then we have nothing to believe in. The power behind prayer is not the act of prayer, but rather, the promises of God are the impetus of prayer. The more we believe, the more we pray. This man had stopped praying a long time ago, because, after time, he had given up on the promise. 

Listen friends, we should never, ever, use how long we have prayed or waited for something as a reason to believe that God is not doing anything. God is patient because HE loves. 

How

How does God want us to live in the midst of a world that is falling apart? Look at what Peter tells us is going to happen in verse 10. 2 Peter 3:10 “But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.”
 

The day of the Lord is coming! Jesus is coming back! Don’t allow anyone who has said, “I’ve been believing for that all my life and it’s never happened, so I just gave up,” don’t let that influence you. The Word of God is true, no matter what another person may have experienced.

Continued tomorrow