Power of the Resilience…Tarry Until

When Pastor Khong spoke at service yesterday, he read from

Luke 24:49 Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.

Many people and things came to my mind – past and present. The gist of it is that we never know when and what the Lord is going to do, it’s a choice to remain resilient and hang in there until something happens. Humanly, we like to see things happen in a tangible way, that’s the only way (we think) to prove that God cares and He exists.

When bad things happen, we tend to blame others but have we never thought that it is ourselves to blame or God is using people or circumstances to bring us to our senses? When you think that you are hurt by people, have you ever wonder – perhaps things or people that happen in your life are just tools that the Lord is using to awaken you from the very thing that you need to work out, yet, you look at things for what they are. What’s the point of blaming others for your calamity and your pain? This ‘Tarry Until…’ brought me back to a book that I read years back – “The Resilient Life” by Gordon MacDonald. One of the chapters is entitled – “Resilient People understand the Importance of Repairing the Past”. Have you ever thought about your past and point of having a past?

An extract “These yesterdays can powerfully affect today — the right-now — and dominate our relationships, our choices, our views of ourselves, even our understanding of God. If our yesterdays are in a state of good repair, they provide strength for today. If not repaired, they create havoc.”

Another – “Sometimes they lie deep within us as if asleep, almost forgotten. Then they are awakened at some strange, unexpected moment, and they affect our thinking and our choices.”

Our yesterdays can be very scary, but they can also be the very motivation of our today. The scariest thing that can happen is that we use our yesterdays as an excuse for our misunderstanding of God, putting the blame on others, and yet not trying hard enough to wait upon Him. God may not come as a flash of lightning, He may just come suddenly when we least expected.

My prayer goes to friends who need this resilience of the Lord (myself included) and that we, as children of God, will remain faithful to His Call.