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.
