Rocky sent me the following essay via email today. I hope that you find it very encouraging and inspirational! I certainly did! Read and enjoy!
Christine
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Our Time Will Come - by Rocky Chambers
James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
When the Lord moved me to Pasadena He set me in a nice neighborhood surrounded by a poor section of the city. He eventually moved me to a church that was located across from a ‘fleabag’ hotel. Consequently that church catered to a section of the population that struggled with many things; drugs, prostitution, poverty and so on. I became friends with one fellow in particular. He’s probably the most naturally talented musician I’ve ever played with. If he were determined enough he could easily become a professional musician. But he turned out to be typical for this church, a person who kept falling back into the same cycle of temptation and sin. He would be clean from drugs for about 3 months, start using again, then after a few months find himself living on the streets, then back in jail. He’d get clean, come out of jail and the whole process would start over. He lacked the determination to hear from God what He needed to hear to be set free. After being at this church for about two and a half years the Lord opened the door for me to leave, but that’s another story. What I saw there in general, and in this musician in particular, is something that I realize we all struggle with on some level, the need for perseverance. As James writes, we all face trials, but the difference in maturing and falling back is our determination to get through them to the victory God has waiting for us in hearing and receiving His wisdom.
I must confess I see this in my own life, that the thing I desire, the Godly desire, becomes twisted and darkened by my impatience, by the fact I lack perseverance and determination in this place. But I realize something different among those who are growing in the Lord and those who keep going round and round that same old mountain over and over gain. That difference is in the next phrase of what James writes. “If any of you lacks wisdom, ask God, and believe you will receive it”. I can honestly say that every trip I make around this mountain I’m asking God for wisdom, and I’m catching it one word at a time. I realize the more I try to figure it out, the darker and more twisted that Godly desire gets and the more likely I am to try and manifest it myself. Remember Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. They produced Ishmael, which eventually introduced strife into the camp. And it took many years for Abraham to come to that place where Isaac was produced. Ishmael was a result of Abraham’s godly desire (Isaac) becoming darkened by human reasoning that twisted and darkened that desire.
I have become convinced that at the heart of every human desire is a Godly desire. It is just that human reasoning often darkens and twists it and produces something we reasoned we desired, until we see it wasn’t what God really wanted for us. And to be honest here, I’m coming to the place where I don’t really know if what I want is my twisted desire or a Godly desire. But I do know this, when we become determined to wait with patience and are willing to persevere until the time comes for God’s desire to manifest, it will come. To borrow a phrase from a friend, “our time for the things we desire will come”.
Hat Tip: Rocky Chambers via email