Thursday,
August 20, 2026
FRUSTRATED?
Ezra 4:4-5
4 Then the people of the land
weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building,
5 And hired counsellors
against them, to frustrate their
purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of
Darius king of Persia.
Total span from Cyrus’s
accession to Darius’s reign:
From 559 BC to 522 BC = 37
years.
Gal 2:21
21 I do not frustrate the grace of God: for
if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.
Only twice in our Authorized Version do
we find the word “frustrate”. Once in the Old Testament and once again in the
new. Let’s take a look.
Ezra was trying to rebuild a
damaged Temple and
was frustrated by the people of the surrounding lands. Here the word is the
Hebrew parar and it means “to break up or to violate.” The idea is to
slow the progress of the Temple or to cause the work to cease. That’s what
happens when we are frustrated. Our purposes are being hindered. Things aren’t
going our way, or the progress is painfully slow.
Paul, in Galatians, uses the Greek
word atheteo
which means “to set aside, to disesteem, or to neutralize.” He explains
that he does not want to frustrate God by trying to purchase a salvation by his
own works that has already been paid for on Calvary’s cross! I imagine the
frustration of a teacher trying to get through to a “slow” student who persists
in doing things the wrong way.
If you feel frustrated today, then pay attention to the “IT” in our closing verse. Actually,
the it
is in italics indicating that it was included to make it more
understandable in English. The phrase is “He shall bring to pass.”
Ps 37:5
5 Commit thy way unto the
Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
Lord, it is frustrating to
keep trying to do what You do not want done, but I am self-willed and obstinate.
Lord, I do not know Your purpose, but please bring IT to pass. AMEN
