Prayer

"Have you ever asked God to do something major in your life, and then experienced disappointment when He appeared to be working little by little rather than all at once?" This is the question Stormie Omartian raises at the start of her devotional entitled "The Power of Little by Little". The passage to read and consider is Exodus 23:20-30. In these verses, God promises "an angel" to protect the Israelites. According to the King James Study Bible, this angel must have been "the Angel of the covenant (Is. 63:9; Mal. 3:1), the preincarnate Christ Himself". The second half of verse 21 says, "...for he will not pardon your transgressions:  for my name is in him." Recall Luke 5:21 - "Who can forgive sins, but God alone?" The second promise God gives is found in verse 27:  "I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee." In every battle fought, in every obstacle faced in the presence of their enemies, God promised to protect the Israelites by instilling fear within their adversaries.

The verse emphasized in this passage of Scripture is verse 30:  "By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land." God has His will and way in carrying out every tiny detail of our lives IF we trust Him to follow through. The thing is, we have to be willing to be patient and let God work. When we take matters into our own hands instead of seeking the only ONE who truly knows what He's doing, the details God has been working on all along become distorted, and the plan so strategically layed out for us to follow may very well be ignored. Omartian highlights 2 Peter chapter 3 verses 8 and 9. Verse 9 says, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward." There is a reason we do not encounter immediate success in certain situations. Being patient is a golden characteristic truly inhabited when trust is at its best. Allowing God to work little by little in our lives will result in great change.