Every person alive disobeys God, but the ways in which we respond to our sin is often in stark contrast with each other. Some people rationalize. Some people repent. As Christians, we have a faith in Jesus that is demonstrated by loving obedience, though imperfectly executed. That means we too will disobey God at times, but because of the love we receive from Him and have for Him, we will admit our sin by seeking His pardon for it and His power to be free from it. People who love Jesus repent by making war against their sin instead of making excuses for it. Therefore, let us strive for holy living while resting in the grace of God, remembering and rejoicing over this truth: what Jesus has done for us on the cross is sufficient to both cleanse and correct our transgressions.
The Mountain Reminds Us To Depend On God
We were not made to be self-reliant, self-sustaining or self-sovereigns. God created us to be dependent upon His gracious care and provision, turning to Him and trusting in Him, moment by moment for what we need for what we face. Our wisdom and willpower are inadequate for handling life, but His is infinite, and it is readily available to those who have put their faith in Jesus. Don’t try to make it on your own. You were never meant to. Whenever there is a mountain of little stuff piled up a mile high, or one big mile high mountain, that is too big for you to climb, perhaps God put it there as a gracious and loving reminder for you to depend on Him.
You Do Not Need To Pretend With God
We all keep secrets. There is not a human being on the face of the earth who fully discloses every thought, feeling, motive, desire, and attitude to others. The relationships we are involved in are to some degree built on us holding back some things about us. Not so in our relationship with God. We cannot hide ourselves from Him; nor do we have to. The One who matters the most, knows us most and loves us most. He also has committed Himself to the long-term transformation of making us more like Jesus. What comfort, what relief, what joy is ours that with God we do not have to pretend to be something we are not, because God is making us into what we are not yet. And there is absolutely no risk that He will walk away from those of us who have been gloriously saved into His family because of our faith in Jesus. For when He looks upon you and me, though He sees everything about us, what He sees most is a beloved son or daughter.
Your Story With Jesus Has Just Begun
Suffering will be a part of your earthly experience, but so will God’s sustaining grace in greater measure. You will never walk through the valleys alone, for Jesus, the suffering servant, is always with you. While things will often not turn out the way that you hoped for, God is actively working things out in your life for good and will graciously provide everything you need until you have no more needs. Be assured of this: there may be many unexpected and unpleasant plot twists, but God has written a beautiful story for you. And your story has just begun. It will unfold forever with Him in heaven where every chapter is better than the one before.
God Judged Jesus In Our Place
The tendency to harshly criticize others while liberally exonerating ourselves will only be eliminated by a proper response to grace. This comes from a God-given true understanding of our own need for spiritual healing and correction for our imperfections. Having then recognized that we ourselves are far from perfect and desperately flawed, we can rejoice in this stunning reality: God judged Jesus in our place. Only when we focus on Jesus’ removal of our condemnation will we ever be able to stop condemning the people around us. When you find that you are focused on and frustrated with the faults of others, remember that your life is riddled with faults too … yet you are loved, accepted, forgiven and helped by Jesus to make changes. From the overflow of grace given to you, extend it to others like you.
God Doesn’t Need Us, But People Do
God doesn’t need us to do anything for Him as if He could ever be deficient in some area that we could supply for Him. But our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, teammates, and complete strangers do need us to do for them. Not because God is failing to meet their needs, and we should make up for His oversight or indifference, but rather because in His loving providence, He has sent us to bring His aid to them. God puts us in places where needy people are right in front of us so we can be like Jesus to them by offering a helping hand, a guiding word, and a loving embrace. His hands. His words. His love. Delivered through us.
Will It Matter 100 Years From Now?
Here’s a simple, but significant, lens through which life looks radically different than we often see it… will this matter 100 years from now? How we think, feel, speak, act, and react would be wonderfully different if we saw things in light of eternity. Our motives and attitudes would change for the better if we remembered that this short life is not all that there is. And our very lives would create an everlasting ripple if we could look a century into our future to see the impact of our today. In dependence upon the presence and power of Jesus, let us give less priority to the things that really don’t matter and more priority to the things that do.
Helping Others Take Their Next Step With Jesus
God has divinely positioned you so that your life intersects with others for the purpose of helping them take the next step in their spiritual journey. You have access and influence and opportunity to shape the lives of the people you know for everyday and eternal good as God works through you. One of the greatest aims of your life should be that the people in your life grow in their relationship with Jesus because of their relationship with you.
Make The Right Choice To Spend Time With Jesus
Admit it, some days are a blur. We wake up, and over the coming hours, it’s a nonstop rush to not fall behind. The remedy for busy, frantic lives is not to speed up, but to slow down. The thing that will most help us with what we face each day is to simply spend time with Jesus getting recharged so we can be prepared for what lies ahead and refocused so we can prioritize the things that matter most. That’s the most important part of our day, and it should have the most intentional part of our schedule because it’s the most influential part of our lives. You know what the cure is for being overwhelmed, worried and frustrated about the many things on your schedule? Making the right choice to spend time with Jesus today.
God Puts Us On The Right Path
While delays, detours and dead-ends can bring about disappointment and frustration, they may be God’s way of blocking us from something He doesn’t mean for us to do or have. What we need to realize is this: when God says “No” to our plans, He is saying “Yes” to something that is far better for us and others who are involved. Many costly mistakes are avoided and many wonderful blessings are gained when He steps in to order our steps. When God graciously reroutes our lives, it is always to put us on the right path.
Jesus Will Always Speak The Truth In Love To Us
What power and courage and hope and peace is ours because of the voice of truth sounding forth from Jesus! But we will not hear these life-giving, chain-breaking, hope-inspiring, course-correcting, God-honoring, truth-telling, joy-producing words if we neglect the Word of God. While He does speak through His Spirit, circumstances and other people, He speaks loudest and clearest in the Bible. We must repent of basing our lives on man’s truth, making up our own unbiblical truths, and neglecting the truth of the Scriptures. Instead, let us strive to read the Bible more frequently, understand it more fittingly, believe it more fully, and live it out more faithfully. Those who listen to it will hear the sweet voice of Jesus bring words fit for the occasion, giving grace to those who hear. We can always count on what He says to be true for us and good for us.
Accept No Cheap Substitutes For Jesus
Every day we are offered cheap substitutes for God and His way of living. They promise us a great deal on getting a better life apart from Him … you can get comfort in food, peace by running from your problems, security in your bank account, self-worth by achievement, guidance via a self-help manual, rest through a weekend getaway, and happiness in whatever makes you feel good for the moment. Yet none of those things lead to full and lasting satisfaction. While they certainly satisfy for a moment, they are never enough. They always leave us wanting something more or something different. But here’s the good news: God has already richly supplied us with every possible blessing in Jesus to satisfy our souls. In moments when we feel our hearts craving better lives than the ones we are experiencing, remember that the source of such a life is found in Jesus. Look to Him for comfort, peace, security, self-worth, guidance, rest and happiness and you will always be satisfied. He is in you. He is with you. He is for you.
Setting Your Mind On Jesus
Every waking hour something has captured the attention of our minds. We never stop thinking. We are constantly entertaining new thoughts, pausing at times to dwell on some of them. These thoughts have the power to shape how we believe and behave, for better or for worse, so we must let our minds land most often on Jesus. The more we think about Him, the more it will rewire how we think about ourselves and others. It will change our perspective on how we interpret our circumstances. It will cause us to reprioritize what matters most so we don’t waste our time on lesser things. It will stir up a healthy fear and trembling before God because of the sin in our lives and thus bring about repentance. It will produce greater joy, peace, comfort, security, strength, hope, and contentment as we rest in what we have come to know about who God is and what God does. We think about everything. Setting our minds on Jesus will change how we think about everything.
If We Knew All That God Knows
For those who are trusting in Jesus, God is always doing much more in us, for us, around us, and through us than we are aware of. All we see is the show, but He is working behind the scenes. All we see is the ship, but He is working beneath the surface. He is precise. He is punctual. He is providential. There is nothing that happens unless it serves His purposes. We don’t have to make sense out of everything that is going on or that we are going through; but we do need to trust that God is tirelessly at work in ways that would make sense if we knew all that He knows.
Removing Things In The Way Of Our Happiness
When we attempt to live as sovereigns over our own little kingdoms, striving to fill them up with all the things we think will make us happy, we will discover that real happiness is elusive, and lasting happiness is impossible. Why? Because frustration and futility are hard-wired into every attempt by God’s people to find soul-satisfaction in something other than Him. He alone knows best how to give us fulfilling lives (far better than anything we can find elsewhere), and when we prioritize pursuing Him, His ways, His kingdom and His plans, He will give us all that is necessary for our full and lasting happiness in Jesus and will remove the things that are in the way of it.
Encouraging One Another To Follow Jesus
Every Christian faces the ever-present danger of distraction, frustration and temptation to become preoccupied with things that don’t matter, things that don’t satisfy and things that don’t last. Everywhere we look are messages that point us in the wrong direction away from God. That’s one of the reasons why God wired us for Christian community: to help each other keep the faith and keep our focus.
We must continually encourage one another to follow Jesus because the world is continually encouraging us not to follow Him.
Nothing You Do For God Is Ever Wasted
The enemy wants to convince you that God isn’t using your life to make much of a difference in this world. He wants to bring you down so he can shut you down. But remember that nothing good you do for others in the name of Jesus is ever wasted. So, don’t give in or give up! Keep doing what you were made to do even when it is hard, unpopular, tiring, inconvenient, thankless, lonely or unnoticed. God is working through you to make a difference that will ripple into and throughout eternity!
An Ongoing Appeal For Your Heart
God has a purpose for everything He allows to happen, and one of them is an ongoing appeal for your heart to come back to Jesus so He can satisfy your soul, quench your thirst, and give you a life that is far better than anything you can dream up for yourself. Let us all look to Him to make us happy, and, in doing so, we will not only be satisfied ourselves, but we will proclaim to a discontent world that nothing in this world will ever satisfy like Him.
To Have Everything; To Have Nothing At All
To gain all that the world has to offer yet not have Jesus is to have nothing at all. To gain all that Jesus has to offer yet not have the world is to have everything.
Fear Not: You Are In The Boat With Jesus
Like the disciples in Mark 4:35-41, you can find yourself terrified by the storm raging around you. But no matter how great the storm that arises in your life, Jesus rules in absolute control over when it rages and when it ceases. If it doesn’t scare Him, it shouldn’t scare you either because you are in the boat together.
Reach out for Jesus today for peace. Be honest with Him about what frightens you, ask Him to calm your heart and give you a fresh faith that He will get you to the other side. Then, worship Him as One who has authority over all things and a purpose for all storms.
