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A Sacrifice That Changes Everything | Marlin D. Harris
Welcome to our 31-Day Corporate Fast.
In 1988, I was 15 years old, sitting on a plane flying from Oklahoma to Seoul, South Korea. I felt that I was leaving more than a country but leaving my entire concept of normalcy and certainty. I was going from the world I knew to a world that I was completely unprepared to face. My father had received military orders to move from Ft. Drum, New York, and for the next 3 years, live in Taegu, South Korea. Now, this is not uncommon. Military families travel across the globe to new duty stations all the time and often make wonderful and amazing memories and experiences while living in a foreign country. But that was precisely the problem – we were certainly not a family, and this was most definitely not promising to be an amazing memory. My stepmother was a non-functioning alcoholic, and my father was a functioning one. I was placed in their home because my home of origin had become too unstable and abusive for me to live in. I was traveling 5,000 miles away from what I had come to know as normal, with people that I had just met less than 9 months ago. I sat on that plane believing that I was leaving one disaster and heading into another one. Nothing could have convinced me that day that this one experience would have so deeply changed my life and so firmly established my faith and confidence in God.
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By Andrena Sawyer, Minority Christian Women Entrepreneurs Network
"So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
Genesis 18:12
"Sarah said, 'God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.' And she added, 'Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.'”
Genesis 21:6-7
Waiting can exhaust every human emotion we have. Maybe you can relate to going from optimism and hope one day to sadness and depression the next and cynicism and doubt the day after that. I have been there, and while it is easy to hide behind positive self-talk, the truth is that waiting does not always feel good. It can hurt, and if we listen to the enemy's lies, it sometimes feels like punishment. The good news is that God is not subject to our emotions. He can turn our circumstances around so that what feels painful today brings us laughter tomorrow.
Like Elizabeth, John, and Sarah, there is another person whose waiting seemed like punishment, though it was a setup for a grand unveiling of God’s precision.
For generations, Joseph has been the poster man of waiting seasons. He was given a dream by God, but shortly after betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, and then sent to prison. If Joseph were a friend to many of us, we might suggest to him that he was under attack from the enemy and in need of serious prayer, fasting, deliverance, or all three. Genesis 50:20 says otherwise. Not only was his journey not punishment, but it was necessary so that God could get the ultimate glory in his life. Genesis 45 shows us a picture of a man who had been through so much and was overcome with emotion at the realization of God's big picture.
Similarly, in Genesis 21: 6-7, Sarah is overcome with emotion as she laughs at the manifestation of her promise of becoming a mother. Her laughter in that instance is the opposite of her laughter in Genesis 18:12, where she scoffs at the audacity of it all. She, too, was familiar with the range of emotions that waiting can trigger.
As we end this devotion, I encourage you to consider your circumstances. Is it possible that what you are waiting for is a necessary part of a testimony God wants to use you for? Is it also possible God’s grace is moving you toward showing His glory in a way that will redeem even the most hopeless of emotions?
Published on Jan 19 @ 12:28 AM EDT
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