{"id":2516,"date":"2012-10-18T09:48:16","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T14:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/?p=2516"},"modified":"2013-01-24T20:47:07","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T01:47:07","slug":"lady-in-waiting-divine-encounter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/2012\/10\/18\/lady-in-waiting-divine-encounter\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady in Waiting:  Divine Encounter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><br \/>\nThis blog post is brought to you by Katie Blumberg<\/strong><\/p>\n<div>\u201cThe Lord God said, \u2018It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.\u2019\u201d Genesis 2:18<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This verse was one I clung to (and still do!) all throughout my college years of singleness. I have faith that the Lord has created a man to compliment my gifts and talents. I have faith that he has created me to be someone\u2019s helper, Encourager, and partner. So at the beginning of every new semester, and every time I walked into a church or worship service, or every time I started a new class or joined a new club, I would immediately be on the look-out for that man that the Lord was going to provide for me. How much time did I lose trying to place myself in the path of the \u201cman of my dreams\u201d rather than trying to place myself in the center of God\u2019s will for me?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Let\u2019s go back a bit to last week\u2019s conversation. If we are pursuing the God-given dreams, desires, and passions that we feel led to, we will find ourselves in the best possible place: HIS will! But what about that fear that if we were to do that, to give our hearts entirely to the Lord and to allow him to lead us in every decision, that we might miss out on the man of our dreams? Let\u2019s face it \u2013 not every woman who pursues the Lord\u2019s call on her life to be a missionary in another country meets a man immediately to pursue that dream with her. Sometimes it takes years. But what the Lord is concerned with is our faithfulness to him\u2026he has all the other details worked out!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.\u201d Psalm 37:4<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This verse does not say that you will immediately receive a husband. It doesn\u2019t say that if you follow him all things will go your way. It says that HE will give YOU the desires of YOUR heart, when you delight yourself in him. That\u2019s right! Our loving and faithful God longs to bring us things that we will enjoy, be blessed by, and that we long for most! But what are the requirements? We must delight ourselves in him. That means giving up to him the things we think we want and need the most. That means trusting that his will is better than ours. That means we must stop trying to arrange our own future marriage by throwing ourselves in every man-pit we come across, and allow him to ordain the perfect time for your meeting. Many of the best love stories I hear have much less to do with women who forced their way into a relationship with \u201cthe perfect man\u201d and much more to do with a divine encounter!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>So I will repeat the question that Michelle asked, do you trust God? Do you trust that he already knows the desires of your heart and is waiting for you to delight in him, so that he can make your heart look like his? Do you trust that the Lord does not want you to wallow in loneliness and singleness forever, but to meet and marry a man that you are attracted to inside and out? Do you trust the Lord to bring you into a divine encounter with a \u201cpillar of strength\u201d (like Boaz!) that will become your husband? Our perfect and continually faithful Father knows what we are longing for. He knew when he created us, and when he created our helpers, that it would not be good for us to be alone. But He is also a jealous God, and he longs for us to turn our hearts to him, delight in him, and find our wholeness in him before he brings about Mr. Right at the perfectly appointed time.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Let\u2019s seek the Lord and ask him to guide our paths, so that we are on the right one when the man he has been preparing for us decides to cross that path too!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><strong>Let\u2019s Pray:<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>Heavenly Father, Thank you for knowing us more intimately than we know ourselves. Thank you for knowing the desires of our hearts, and creating us with those desires! And thank you for already knowing the plan you have for our lives. You have a divine encounter awaiting each of us, and all you ask is that we delight ourselves in you and follow your will. Give us patience as we wait the days, months, and maybe years before that divine encounter happens. Give us wisdom to seek you even when it seems hopeless and we want to turn back and follow the logical and easy route. Teach our hearts to delight in you, Lord! In your heavenly and precious name we ask these things, Amen!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><strong style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">Your Assignment:<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>Sometime today find a half hour that you can give your undivided attention to God. Ask him what it means to delight in Him, and how you have been successful in this, and how you can learn to do this more. Report back what he answers!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><strong>Be blessed,<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Katie<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>_________<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>If you would like to be a part of this Online Bible Study, and join our Facebook Discussion Group, please click on the &#8220;Sign-Up Here&#8221; button at the top of our website, and follow the instructions. \u00a0We&#8217;ll be happy to add you!!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This blog post is brought to you by Katie Blumberg \u201cThe Lord God said, \u2018It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.\u2019\u201d Genesis 2:18 This verse was one I clung to (and still do!) all throughout my college years of singleness. I have faith that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[147],"class_list":["post-2516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-singles","tag-bible-study","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39pHp-EA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8200,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516\/revisions\/8200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}