Dust Off And Remember Who Is In Control

Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

Matthew 6:27 

When has God ever told us that we should worry?  As a matter of fact, God reminds us to not worry, throw your worries away, be still and remember that He is really in control. And yet we worry anyway.  Why is that?  

Think about this, what do we have to worry about that will change our lives forever?  The things we tend to worry about are so insignificant in the God's plan for our lives, yet it is these tiny things that we focus our attention on instead of letting God handle it.

Here's the point for us to take with us, worry doesn't do anything for us except replace God in our lives.  When we worry, we are telling God that our issue is too much for even Him to handle.  Instead, my challenge for us today is every time we find ourselves worrying, immediately stop and tell God, "I'm glad YOU've got this instead of me!" And then find something else to think about.

Me?  I'm going to spend more time being thankful for each and every one of you!  Thank you for, not only reading these, but for making my life one where I praise God for bringing us together.  Thank you for the comfort.  Thank you for the smiles and laughs.  Thank you for letting me be your friend!

Rely on the Reality!

Don’t be afraid, for I am with you.
    Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you.
    I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.

Isaiah 41:10 

 

Do you struggle?  Boy howdy, I do!  And honestly, have been (are) times when I don't even take the counsel I give others.  I tell others to "take care of yourself so you can take care of others" and then I add more things to my schedule and wonder why I have trouble sleeping, why I may come across as crabby, why I feel so stressed out/burned out/exhausted.  Hmmmm.....Isn't it odd that the same God who came right out and told us that "In this world you WILL have trouble" (John 16:33) is also the same God that tells us not to be afraid?

 

Recently, I realized that I had one of two choices:

1. I could keep going like a freight train and end up hating life....OR

2. I could return to the basics of faith and remember that God is ALWAYS with me no matter what!

 

When I have gotten discouraged, God has been there to remind me that I am His child.

When I have been afraid, God has been there to remind me that He takes care of His children.

When I have felt weak and helpless, God has been there to remind me that I need to rely on Him for strength, guidance, and wisdom.

 

God is God for a reason. And I am glad He is!

Doing Life Together

⁴ Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, ⁵ so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

Romans 12:4-5 

 

 

Learning is fun....at times.  Okay, let's just say, learning the hard way is seldom a joy ride, but the lesson is still learned.  Having said that, I have to thank our Crime Scene Investigators for teaching me an invaluable lesson: "When you enter a scene, you bring part of yourself into it and when you leave, you take part of the scene with you."

 

This is also true of our lives.  Believe it or not, every single time we have any sort of interaction with someone else, we leave part of us with them and we take part of them with us. Don't believe me?  Think about the number of times you have smiled at someone and they smiled back.  You have share yourselves with each other.  Now, think of the number of times you have had a disagreement with someone and both walked away angry.  We have shared ourselves with each other, but in a negative way.

 

So here's my challenge to all of us: Share yourself with others so you both benefit from the encounter!

But I Don't Know What To Say

When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.

Matthew 6:7 

 

Praying is one of the most intimidating things we can do most times.  Why? Because we aren't sure what to say or how to say it or whether we are using the right words in the right order or we're just not sure how to pray.  I've received quite a number of emails asking about praying and prayer and how to do it "right".  

 

Let me be plain, if you don't pray because you don't know what words to use, pray anyway, God knows your heart, so you're not trying to impress anyone with your words.  Be honest with Him.  Answer this question: How do you talk with your best friend? And I'll bet even they don't know as much about you as God does who loves you in spite of yourself.

 

Prayer, and this has been discussed before, is a conversation.  The best description of pray I have yet found is by a monk named Francois Fenelon:

  

"Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. 

 

Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; 

tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; 

tell Him your longings, the He may purify them; 

tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you conquer them, 

talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; 

lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, you instability. 

Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself and others. 

 

If you pour out all you weaknesses, needs, and troubles there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subjects of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back; neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration they say what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved, conversation with God."

 

 

 

Be Genuine!

Therefore, humble yourselves under God’s power so that he may raise you up at the right time.

1 Peter 5:6 

 

I like words.  I like finding out how they came to be and I enjoy writing them (although Auto-correct and I are not on speaking terms currently).  When I read today's verse, the word "Humble" stuck out for me.  So after some careful and diligent research, I discovered that the word translated as "humble" means: "to have a modest opinion of oneself; to behave in an assuming manner."  In other words, "Be genuine under God's power so that He may raise you up at the right time."

 

Be genuine!  Be authentic! Be real! Be honest!  Sounds easy, doesn't it? We all know people who seem to be chameleons changing according to the crowd.  But God has called us to be genuine!

 

Genuinely Care.

Genuinely pray!

Genuinely listen!

Genuinely speak!

Genuinely love each other!

 

One of my favorite authors shared a thought I found profound: "Religious stuff doesn't make us better...it makes us more religious."  Being "religious" is not genuine.  It is not authentic!

 

 

Cleaning Our Perspective.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Hebrews 13:8

 

I must confess that almost all of these devotionals are written as self-talk, reminding myself of just how awesome God is and just how I miss out on that fact more often than not.  Take today's verse for example.  When I read this verse (for the umpteenth time so far in this lifetime), I was struck with the fact that I need to clean up my perspective!

 

Here's something I need to deal with: Yesterday will never return! Let it go!

You see, I tend to cling to things that happened in the past.  We are supposed to learn from the past, but not try to live in the past or cling to the past. Thus, I need to clean up my perspective about the past.

 

Here's something else I need to deal with: Tomorrow isn't here yet!  I remember as a child, having to get a shot for some sort of illness.  The doctor would always tell me, "Now this my sting just a little."  And I would tense up in anticipation.  And before I realized it, the shot was over and it wasn't nearly as bad as I had anticipated.  Tomorrow isn't here yet, but God has already been through tomorrow, so there's no need to try to do God's job by getting all tensed up about it.

 

Finally, yes there's a third point, I need to deal with the fact that I am still breathing right now.  Therefore, God's not through with me yet!  My job is to go through today and welcome the people who God brings across my path; Help those who are in need of my help; and love others like I want to be loved.

 

Jesus has never and will never change.  We will, so we need to have a perspective clean up fairly regularly.

There's A Reason You're Weird

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Romans 12:2

 Yesterday we discussed getting rid of all the garbage that we accumulate in our lives and letting it go because Christ took it all to the Cross.  Yet we sometimes tend to miss how quickly and subtly we can slip right back into the old habits and our old ways of doing things.  We begin to act like we did before we became a Christian, and even though we TELL people we are Christians, no one would know it or believe it because we don't act like it.

Now......I'm not saying you need to adopt the attitude of piety whereby you walk about pompously saying "Bless you" to everyone you pass.  Follow the example of Christ, even though he hung out with prostitutes, tax collectors, and the rejects of society, He never became like them.  We can talk to *gasp* sinners, because we ARE one and because Christ has changed us.  

If you read closely what Paul writes, you will see that quite a bit of it deals with the focus of our thoughts.  Why?  Thought always precedes action!  Therefore, when you focus your thoughts on God, then your actions will follow.  When you focus on the love of Christ, your actions will reflect that.

We are called to be weird for a reason!