from Pleasant Grove Baptist Church https://ift.tt/2HQhQ6V
via IFTTT "I see the heavens opened up..." This is the beginning of the great reward for the saints of the living God. He is waiting to take us home! When Stephen was finished, when he had done all that God had for him to do, and the world, the "church" turned against him, Stephen saw Jesus waiting to take him home. What a glory! God always has a plan. In some instances the plan is deliverance. The prison doors were opened by an angel to let the saint walk out freed by God's own power. But in other cases, such as Stephen, the plan is to indeed let evil end the life of a saint and take them home to heaven. Either way, there is a plan. It was not God's plan for Stephen to walk away from this group seeking to stone him. Deliverance to fight another day might have seemed the greatest miracle, but in fact no. God's plan was to honor Stephen with the title of first martyr. God's plan was to shock the world of the new saints to test them and their resolve. God's plan was eternal rest for Stephen, he had done well. Do you know God's plan for you? Is it deliverance to fight another day or is it eternal rest, or somewhere in between? The point is, God has a plan, for you, for today. That plan is the goal of our daily walk. Faith is accepting the fact that God has a plan for every detail of our life, and accepting that what happens is indeed that plan. Now sure, we make mistakes. We frustrate the plan of God and end up with consequences for our mistakes and sins. But, never can we alter God's plan. Never can satan alter God's plan. God is still God and is in complete control! So what then when life is hard? Accept it on faith! Are we to accept the good days as God's plan and not the challenging days? Are we to take the blessings and not the disciplines? How is that faith? Who gave us the right to pick and choose, as if God missed something and bad things happened? God is God. Period. End of story. He has a plan for you and is working out that plan. He will not be thwarted! This is the key to removing anxiety, worry, stress from our life. Accept that what is happening is somehow in God's plan for you, and seek Him! As Stephen said in his final discourse before they rose to stone him, God's plan was for the children of Abraham to spend 400 years in a foreign land as slaves, mistreated and oppressed, babies murdered, horrible living conditions. THAT was God's plan for them! Think about the generations of people who suffered at the hands of the Egyptians and never saw deliverance! They lived God's plan! So we, today, are living in God's plan. Based on His wisdom, our past, His desires, He has a plan all worked out for you. And through this plan His glory will be revealed. Our job? Faith, seek, submit, honor by relaxing and accepting God's plan. At the end of it all, on our final day, Jesus stands waiting to escort us into the glory of heaven. That is when we are finished here and our faith is complete.
