YOUR PRESENT

PRAYER JOURNAL 3/30/19

Acts 17:26-27 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they may grope Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.

Take a walk down memory lane, way back to High School.  I’ll make a wild guess that your parents and grandparents wondered what was happening to society.  They probably made the statement, “I’ve never seen it this bad before” or “What is the world coming to.”  The church said, “How are we going to protect our young people” or “Can they stand for God in this evil world.”  In every generation, some stood strong in their commitment to God and others were drawn away by the lure of the world.

I was a teenager during the 70’s.  I attended a school populated with over 3,000 teenagers.  There were “designated” areas you just didn’t go because that was where the drugs were exchanged.  I lived during the time of busing and desegregation, where kids were taken out of their familiar neighborhood and away from their childhood friends and forced by the government to attend school with strangers in an unfamiliar environment. Gang violence; Hell’s Angels and other gangs from Chicago would come to our Northern Illinois city and infiltrate the schools.  Girls got raped in stairwells and bathrooms and boys were knifed in the swimming pool. It was not the ideal environment that our nostalgic longing for the “good old days” would have us remember.  BUT…I had a praying Mom, a caring church, a loving family and I STOOD FOR GOD!

As I study Esther and her situation, I realize that maybe the 70’s or the 90’s or the 2000’s or even 2019 is not the worst situation or the most difficult time to stand firm in your commitment to God.

Esther lived in a strange land, in captivity.  Her parents died when she was very young and she had been raised by a cousin, her father’s brother’s son. She had been chosen to have a life of sequestration behind the walls of harem in hopes of one day becoming Queen, AND….she was only about 14 years old.   NOT PERFECT CONDITIONS FOR STANDING STRONG IN HER FAITH!

But God had a purpose; He had preappointed Esther’s time and boundaries. God had a plan.  God has a GRAND PLAN and He strategically places men and women in different times in history at different places on earth so that His plan may be fulfilled and Men and Women will seek and find Him.

GOD IS A GOD OF YOUR PRESENT!