This morning’s word is The Lord Is Near.
The anchor verse is Psalm 145:18.
“The Lord is near to all who call on HIM, to all who call on HIM in truth.”
We tend to look for GOD in the result. The breakthrough. The healing. The door that finally opens. The phone call we have been waiting for. When the answer comes, we say GOD showed up.
But the verse says something different. The Lord is near to all who call on HIM. Not just to those whose prayers have already been answered. Nearness is not contingent on outcome. Nearness is the gift itself.
One hundred and fifty-seven years ago today, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. They believed women should have the right to vote. They wrote, organized, spoke, marched, and persisted for decades. Neither of them lived to see the 19th Amendment ratified.
Anthony died in 1906. Cady Stanton died in 1902. The amendment passed in 1920.
They never saw the finish line. They worked anyway.
Faithfulness is not measured by outcome. It is measured by nearness to the One who sent you. They walked with what they had been given for as long as they were given to walk it. The result came later, carried by people they would never meet.
That is the Pentecost shape. The Spirit fills people for work that may not finish in their lifetimes. The first disciples did not see the church the Spirit was building. They saw a small room, a wind, a fire, and the next step.
I am asking myself today where I am looking for GOD only in the outcome. Where I am tempted to measure HIS nearness by whether the door has opened yet. There are places in my life where the answer has not come. The Lord is still near in those places. The verse does not say HE is near when the work is finished. The verse says HE is near to those who call on HIM in truth.
Nearness is the answer before the answer arrives.
So today the prayer is simple.
Lord, thank YOU for being near. Not because the work is finished. Because YOU are faithful. Keep me from measuring YOUR presence by the outcome. Let me walk with what YOU have given me today, trusting YOU with what I may never see.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.