Jan 12, 2021
What would you say is the great effort of your life? The Jews were waiting for God to put things right. To this day, Jewish people wait for their nation to be justified. They're waiting on God to provide a Savior. Paul here uses promise language to describe how we wait for the hope of things being put right, too. We want to be made right. God is working to bring people to himself. And when we trust Jesus, he gives us a down-payment in the Holy Spirit who comes to live in us.
Paul contrasts our faith to that of some Galatians who wanted to continue to obey the Jewish laws. He reminds us that when we begin to live in the power of the Holy Spirit, we eagerly wait. Our waiting is not bored or passive, but eager. We wait to receive by faith the ideal, perfect, relationship with God that has been promised to us. We will experience that in perfection one day. And it will be sooner than we think.
This waiting expects. We expect God to make us right. We also know that today, we see God when we look for him. God is working, but we only see him working when we expectantly look for it. (See Jeremiah 29:13). Our expectations determine how much we see God. People who don't trust Jesus believe we are manufacturing this hope. But it is only when we expect, that we see God working. The faith to believe and the patience to trust produce this expectation.
Today at work, this expectation can bear fruit, but the real reward will come one of these days. We will be made right. Are you expectantly waiting? I want to live my life as one who expectantly waits. I believe that means that I lay up treasure, by being the kind of person Jesus wants me to be, and by loving his people the way he did. Ask God today how he would like you go to work, and how to interact with others. God will use your life to draw people to himself. Think about what we have to look forward to, and use that as motivation.