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God is a gracious Father who considers what we ask, not a genie who does as we command. He is a prayer-answerer. He is not a wish-granter. God has the power to do anything for us, the wisdom to know what is best to do for us, and the pleasure of doing for us as we submit to His will and praise His Name. There is nothing so big that God cannot handle it and nothing so small that God does not care about it. He especially delights to answer in ways that enable us to better know and make known Jesus so that He is honored in us and we are happy in Him. So let us call upon Him with confidence that He will answer.

There are days when our faith falters, but Jesus does not abandon us. There are days when we feel like giving up, but Jesus does not let us. There are days when we are too overwhelmed to carry on, but Jesus does not move on without us. Jesus came from heaven to earth to make a way for sinners like you and me to go from earth to heaven. And every step we take together is assured because of His willingness and faithfulness to do the Father’s will: namely, to keep us until the end of this life and raise us up at the beginning of the next. Rejoice! We will remain faithful to Him because He remains faithful to us.

It’s so easy to give up on people who don’t seem to get it or don’t seem to care. It’s so easy to distance yourself from people who are negative. It’s so easy to walk away from people who don’t agree with us. It’s so easy to check out of relationships when we give more than we receive. But don’t stop showing people the love of Jesus, because it is the love of Jesus that can soften a heart, transform a life, rewrite a story, and impact an eternity. Though it is sometimes hard to do good to others, let us never give up on people by remembering that Jesus never gives up on us. As He does for us, may we do for others.

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.

Satan wants to convince us that our doing good isn’t actually doing much good. He will skew the facts, point to the wrong metric, and mislabel our actions as failures. But God doesn’t measure our success by social media likes, comments and shares. God sees us quietly toiling behind the scenes loving Him by loving others and measures our success not by our fruitfulness or fanfare, but our faithfulness. What’s even more encouraging is this: God is working through us in ways that are unknown to us. So… keep on faithfully serving King Jesus because it all counts. Nothing you do for His kingdom will ever be wasted.

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 trust 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.

It is right to enjoy the good gifts of God in the way that He designed them to be enjoyed because that’s why He gives them to us. The sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches of the created world are supposed to be enjoyed because God made them to send and made us to receive … pleasure. But rather than enjoying them too little (ingratitude) or too much (idolatry), let us enjoy them as they were intended, as a catalyst for treasuring the Gift-Giver far beyond what He might give to us. The gifts that God sends us are wonderful; but they are nowhere near as wonderful as Him. He is the real gift!

God is great in every way that divine greatness can be measured. Great in character. Great in attributes. Great in essence. He is great in words and deeds, wisdom and knowledge, power and authority, presence and sufficiency, righteousness and justice, goodness and eternality, mercy and grace, truth and love, sovereignty and glory. He is so great that we do not have the capacity to understand the height, width and depth of His greatness. We can only admire it, enjoy it and proclaim it. Let us worship Him now and forever with our hearts, heads and hands, for the right response to our great God is great praise for Him.

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 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. He is working all the time and often it is through us.

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. Our wisdom and willpower are inadequate for handling life, but His is infinite, and it is readily available to those who trust in Jesus. Don’t try to make it on your own. You were never meant to. When there is a mile-high mountain or a mountain of little stuff piled up a mile high 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.