For those who are trusting in Jesus… The bad that we are going through is nothing compared to the good that we’ll get to, good is going to come from the bad we are going through, and God will give us all that we need to get through the bad to the good. Our struggles are real, but they are not permanent or pointless, and we are not pitiful or powerless. The enemy wants us to live in defeat and despair as if our lives are only going to go from bad to worse. But our redemption stories move from bad to good when we met Jesus earlier, good to better as we follow Jesus now, and better to best when we see Jesus later.
Mindful And Merciful
We may be growing in the likeness of Jesus, but there are times we don’t look much like Jesus. It is easy to see these faults and flaws in other people while overlooking our own sinful shortcomings. Hypocritically ignoring the log in our eyes while harshly judging the speck in the eyes of those around us will only be remedied when we recognize our sin, repent of our sin, receive forgiveness for our sin, and resolve to help others be as forgiven and free as we are. We point ourselves to Jesus; we point others to Jesus. Today, let us be as mindful of our sin as we are of others, and as merciful to others as we are to ourselves.
Savior Help Is Better Than Self Help
People are desperately in need of the gospel, but they reject it because they would rather rely on good advice for what they need to do rather than receive good news about what Jesus will do for them. Humans love self-help strategies that promise you can fix yourself until they inevitably find that these strategies don’t actually help self. Well-meaning sayings like toughen up, lighten up, buck up and cheer up are just a set up that make us want to give up. Real, lasting inside-out transformation will only come when we ask God to begin and complete His good work in us. He’s ready, willing and able to do it if we’ll stop trying to do it ourselves.
Biblical Humility Is A Response To Grace
Biblical humility is a response to grace. It is an acknowledgement that God helped us over and over in the past and an awareness of our need for God to help us again and again in the future. When you are humble, you know that the good things about who you are and the good things you have done are because Jesus has freely and fully made it so. We work hard, but He empowers us. We make decisions, but He enlightens us. We take opportunities, but He equips us. We keep going, but He encourages us. Let us humble ourselves and exalt Him, for nothing good about our lives would be possible without Him.
He Will Keep You Going
One word that defines every genuine Christian is this: perseverance. That is, those who are heaven-bound keep going until they get there. Grace will make sure that they do! He who has called us is faithful to keep us! So… If you find that serving Jesus feels fruitless or pointless, keep serving. If you find yourself fighting back discouragement and fighting for joy, keep fighting. If you find yourself tempted to give in to the world and its ways, keep resisting. There will be many moments that you fail and fall, but don’t despair. Trust in Jesus and trust in this: He will pick you up and power you on… so you can keep going.
Praying Comes Before Doing
Crawling comes before walking. Planting comes before harvesting. Starting comes before completing. There is an order to things, and for followers of Jesus… Praying comes before doing. You and I often handle things backwards from how we should handle them by acting and then seeking God when we should seek God and then act. The best thing we can do to handle what we face in life is to seek our Heavenly Father before we do a thing more. We ask. He answers. We act. He assists. This is the only way to live happy, holy lives. Turning to Him shouldn’t be our last resort; it should be our first line of defense.
Resisting The Temptation To Get Revenge
When we try to make others pay for their sin, we have forgotten that Jesus paid for our sin. As recipients of grace, we are to release our instinct for revenge when others wrong us to let God judge, punish and make all things right in His timing and in His way. Our role is to model His grace, not His judgment. Even when we must seek appropriate justice, it should be motivated by love, not hatred. So, let us overcome evil with good and leave it to God to do the work He means to do. We who have received grace should be the quickest to extend it, praying that others will turn to Jesus as we ourselves have done.
God Has Written Our Stories
God has written our stories. We may not know how this chapter ends and the next one begins, but we trust that God knows exactly what He is doing in every scene of our lives. People aren’t always who they ought to be. Places aren’t always what we want them to be. Plot twists aren’t always what they seem to be. But God is writing a beautiful story for those who put their faith in Jesus! We don’t know what comes with each new turn of the page, and it won’t always make sense to us, but it doesn’t have to. Because our faith is in the One who does know the happily-ever-after ending to our story. After all, He’s the One who wrote it.
Don’t Let Anything Keep You From Him
Hard times can cause people to harden their hearts against God, but good things in life can make us just as unfeeling toward Him. When things go wrong, we are tempted to blame God; when things go right, we are tempted to ignore God. Overcoming this sinful tendency to live as if God doesn’t care or as if God isn’t there will only happen when we regularly remind ourselves of just who He is and just how good He is. He helps us in hard times and gifts us with good things so that we will… Remember Him. Rejoice in Him. Return to Him. Remain with Him. Don’t let the seriousness of the bad or the shininess of the good keep you from Him.
The Gospel Is A Rescue Plan
The gospel is not a self-help plan; it is a rescue plan. God does not ask us to fix ourselves in five simple steps, but rather to trust in the one stunning step He took in sending Jesus to fix all that is broken in us. His generosity is breathtaking, His goodness is jaw-dropping and His grace is amazing, for He treated His Son like a sinner on the cross so sinners like you and me could be treated like a son. The more we are aware of the depths of our sin, the more we will appreciate the depths of His salvation. So… let us marvel at and rejoice in this today: Jesus paid a debt He did not owe because we owed a debt we could not pay.
He Goes Through Them With You
All times. All places. All circumstances. That’s when and where Jesus will be there with you and for you if you are trusting in Him. There are occasions so wonderful that you never want them to end. There are occasions so painful that they feel like they will never end. The key to not being distracted by the highs and defeated by the lows is to keep your eyes on Jesus and experience His strengthening, sustaining, satisfying presence in both the ups and the downs, the wins and the losses, the pleasures and the pains. Turn to Him. Trust in Him. Treasure Him. You can rightly go through all things because Jesus goes right through them with you.
He Won’t Just Tickle Our Ears
You can talk yourself into just about anything. Other people will try to talk you into something. Only God will talk to you truthfully about everything. There are many voices that speak into our lives such as family and friends, news and social media, advertising and entertainment, and especially ourselves … but the loudest (most influential) should be God. We are being shaped by influences all around us which is why it is essential that we devote unhurried time each day to read the Bible, pray, and listen to God-sent voices who speak His truth to us. When we listen to Him… He won’t just tickle our ears; He will delight our souls.
We All Drift
We all drift. We all move away at times from the beautiful design of how God intends for things to work and the wonderful harmony that God intends for us to experience. One of the reasons He wired us for community is to help each other make our way back to Him when we lose our way, focus, joy, purpose, peace, strength, or hope. When we see each other discouraged in our faith or distracted away from it, let us point each other to the God who sent Jesus to be the anchor for drifters like you and me. He always receives us back, refreshes our hearts and restores our course. He may let us drift, but He will not let us go.
For Recovering Sight-Walkers
I’m a recovering sight-walker. Give me the plan. Give me the map. Tell me where we’re going, how we’re going to get there, what’s going to happen along the way, and what awaits us at our destination. While the Bible does give us the “big picture” view of these things, the everyday details of our individual lives aren’t specifically given to us in advance. It takes faith for us to follow Jesus into the unknown, uncertain and, often, unfamiliar spaces where He leads us. But our faith rests firmly in this: when Jesus calls us to leave our comfort zones, we can be sure He will always go with us and provide for us.
Satisfaction We’ve Been Looking For
If our contentment depends upon our lives being full of good times and good things, we’re going to ride a roller coaster of highs and lows. We will never be satisfied for long. Why not? Because we will find that the details of our lives are constantly changing so that we often have what we don’t want or want what we don’t have. Jesus offers us something infinitely better… His unchanging presence. His unchanging promises. His unchanging provision. This doesn’t mean that life won’t have its ups and downs. It means that no matter what life is like… When we look to Jesus, we will find the satisfaction we’ve been looking for everywhere else.
His Every Promise For Good
We will not always understand what God is doing, but we can be confident that whatever He is doing is for the ultimate good of those who love Him and have been called by Him. Our confidence rests in this: Our love for Him is the evidence of His call to us. He is the Author and Finisher, and though there are moments when our love falters, there is never a single moment when God abandons the call He has made upon our lives. His work for us does not rise and fall based on whether our love for Him is strong or weak. He will keep us loving and keep us going until we see His every promise for good fulfilled forever.
Asking Rightly And Always Receiving
Many people feel like their prayer isn’t “working” so they barely or rarely pray at all. Prayer, as with all of life, should be about God being honored in us and us being happy in Him. This is why we are to pray for… The hallowing of His Name. The coming of His kingdom. The doing of His will. In other words, we ask God to help us and others: Praise Him. Pursue Him. Please Him. Prayer isn’t about filling up our kingdoms with what we think will make us happy; it is about being filled up by all He offers in His kingdom so we can actually be happy. When His desires become our desires, we will ask rightly and always receive.
Being With Jesus, Part 2
Think about the best qualities of the people you admire and adore. What would your list include? Things like: compassionate, generous, helpful, honest, dependable, strong, wise, just, kind, fun-to-be-around, forgiving, accessible, intuitive, welcoming, joyous, calm, merciful, gracious, loving and so forth. You’d love to be around someone who checked even a few of these boxes. Listen… Jesus checks them all. Along with every other good and right quality. And, more than that, He doesn’t possess any bad or wrong quality. It’s not just what He is, but also what He is not, that makes Him so wonderful and so wonderful to be around. Nobody else in your life is like Him. Nobody else in the universe is like Him.
Being With Jesus, Part 1
The incomparable and incalculable benefit of following Jesus is that we get to be with Jesus. We get the pleasure of His company and the contentedness of His presence. It’s not just life. It’s not just the best life. It’s not just the best life now. It’s not just the best life now and forever. It’s the best life now and forever with Jesus. We go with Jesus not just because it’s the smartest thing to do and the safest thing to do, but even more so, because it’s the satisfying thing to do. Giving up all the world’s substitutes for Him, in order to be with Him, is not a trade-off; it’s a trade-up. It’s an infinite upgrade to know and enjoy Jesus.
Cheering, Not Criticizing
We should never approve or applaud someone else’s sin. But we should also be a lot more gracious with other believers who live differently than we do. It can be helpful to remember that every one of us who is following Jesus does so at varying paces and is at varying places in that journey with Him. Not everyone will… Understand things like we do. Interpret things like we do. Practice things like we do. Rather than criticize others because they aren’t carbon copies of us, let us cheer on others to continue growing in the likeness of Jesus. None of us are as mature as we will be; but we’re also not as messy as we used to be.
