21 Days of Prayer & Fasting: Day 6
America World’s goal is to make sure that orphaned children get the opportunity for a better life. We not only help provide shelter, food, education, and medical care to orphaned children around the world but most importantly, we help them get adopted into loving families. This year 100 children have already come home.
As we enter the Season of Hope we are once again entering into a 21-day time of prayer and fasting. Each day has a special scripture focus as well as a devotional written by America World adoptive mom, Cheri Strange. Enjoy Day 6 below, and please continue to join us each day for a time of prayer and devotion as we focus on meeting the needs of children worldwide.
Day 6 of 21 • This day’s reading
One of the greatest hindrances to becoming a willing participant in God’s plan for bringing hope to the hopeless can be unbelief. Sometimes the problems seem excessive, the issues insurmountable, and the savagery indomitable causing doubt and skepticism to surface. You wonder if God can make a dent, but certain that using you would be pointless.
Because, well… Who are we kidding?
It’s just you.
Let me guess. You’re probably not famous. Likely, your position is never going to win you any national acclaim. A lottery winner, millionaire, heir or heiress of a billion-dollar fortune you are not. It’s just regular ole you with a normal job, maybe a family, dirty laundry, and some bills to pay.
There’s no coincidence that the writer of Hebrews connected the great feats and victories in the history of God’s people to faith. These heroes and heroines could believe something they couldn’t see with complete conviction as if they were staring at it in their present realities. These were regular sinners, like you and me—people who didn’t have it all together on their best days. Such imperfect riffraff are exactly the squads God pulls from to perform reason-defying phenomenon and to right wrongs time and time again.
Abraham fit into this category. He wasn’t a significant candidate or particularly full of faith. Scholars believe he may have worshipped idols in his early days. We know he took matters out of God’s hands into his own to lie, risk his wife’s chastity for fear of his own neck, and asked her to lie more than once when life wasn’t working out like he anticipated.
What Abraham possessed that is celebrated in Scripture was an ear to hear when the Lord spoke, and a willingness to walk where the Lord led. Perfection wasn’t required—he didn’t need a spreadsheet with all the numbers worked out. The God-column didn’t have to outweigh his own plans. Frankly, Abraham left without knowing much of anything beyond a solitary directive.
“Go.”
And aren’t we thankful he did? Abraham’s willingness to hear and step out impacted your eternity as well as mine.
God still speaks clearly with regular ole people to accomplish eternal work.
Today, will you find a quiet space to listen? Sit with the Word of God before you, be open to hearing what He might say, be willing to move ahead without all the details and charts worked out.
This 21-day devotional is also available as a Plan on YouVersion. Follow along on your mobile device each day by searching “What if You Were the Plan?”