40 Days of Prayer and Fasting 2006 - Day 34

Focus: Let Patience Have Her Perfect Work
By Dee Patton, IOC

Scripture Reference:

“But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” (James 1:4) (KJV)

“And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:4)(NASB).

Devotional:

Sometimes we go along merrily (or not so merrily as the case may be) for a long time…years in fact…and then out of the blue we see something, look at something, read something and perceive it in a whole new way. Small changes in us align. The tumblers fall into place and something unlocks. Small details and bits of understanding get pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle in our conscious and sometimes subconscious minds and WHAM! Suddenly things that were just bits before are now a bigger bit. Maybe not the whole picture yet, but enough so that we can see that it really might be a picture of something.

Puzzles take time to put together . . . longer for some people than others, of course. When that piece finally fits something that was lacking in us is fulfilled, perfected. It’s a process….a work on the way to completion. When we struggle on and persist, the picture grows and we want for less and less - lack for less and less. We become more complete and more completely who God means us to be.

Faith is knowing that all those pieces actually will be a completed picture eventually and that God Himself is helping with the project. And patience in not just waiting. Patience is knowing that something is happening when it looks like nothing is happening. Patience is putting that small troubling piece of jigsaw puzzle aside and working on the edges, finding something useful to do until the moment arrives when those tumblers align, when those pieces finally fit in our hearts and minds. Patience is knowing that if you keep after it you will eventually know where to put that piece of sky.

When you allow her to, Patience works, not only in you, but in others as well and in the situation itself - even when you can’t see it. Let her.

Prayer Points:
· Pray for that Fruit of the Holy Spirit, Patience, to grow in your heart. Not through more trouble or trial, but through trust in the Father himself.

· Pray that the Lord will show you that patience is, indeed, at work in your life and work.

· Pray for leadership, that they will be filled with the Spirit as they walk through difficult times of decision making.