God never freaks out.  There is never panic in heaven.  Things never start to unravel in such a way that even a single situation in all of the universe is beyond His sovereign rule.  Even the evil things done by His enemies to His people will be turned around to serve His purposes. No matter what we face today, let us remember that what happens in our lives is not ultimately decided by chance or luck, humans or demons, Satan or self, but rather there is a good, wise, powerful, loving King who reigns over all for the good of all those who trust Him.  Things are often out of our control, but they are never out of His.

It’s a fact.  It’s a certainty.  It’s a promise.  God will provide for your every need.  But He often won’t do this in the way you think He will. Instead, He will astonish you with a “didn’t see that coming” choice of the 81^st way you might have thought He’d come through for you.  It may come through a shepherd boy instead of a warrior, an ark instead of fair weather, a few fish instead of ample supplies, a manger instead of a throne.  But it will come exactly when it is needed to accomplish exactly what is needed.  Today, expect God to work in your life for good.  Just don’t expect Him to do it like you think He will.

How much authority does the Bible have in your life?  How is it shaping the way you see the world, the way you see polarizing issues, and the way you see yourself?  How fully and frequently do you rely on it as the final say in how you live?  The Bible isn’t an out-of-date, out-of-order, out-of-touch book with no real relevance for us today.  It is God’s Word that still speaks today telling us what is good and bad, right and wrong, true and false, beautiful and ugly, necessary and frivolous, wise and foolish.  God intends for us to seek it out and live it out as the ultimate authority for the Christian life.  Indeed, it is where life is found.

God wants you to be great.  But… It’s not about size.  It’s not about strength.  It’s not about superiority. It’s not about success.  At least, not in the ways that the world calculates those things.  In the world we live in, the more people who serve you, the greater you are.  In the kingdom of God, the greater you are, the more people you serve.  God intends for your greatness to be in ways that are radically different than the world’s standards, for He measures greatness in the cross of Jesus Christ and in every act of His children that expresses that same kind of servant love towards those in need of it.  By grace, be great today.

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.

It’s easy, common and right to feel and say how good God is when the trouble was avoided, the trial has ended or the treasure is received.  Oh, how good He is to us!  But when we don’t get what we want, or when we get what we don’t want, God is still good, and God is still good to us.   His goodness doesn’t disappear when hard things appear; it shines ever so brightly as He works for us to provide all the help we need to endure life’s disappointments, detours and disasters until we get to the other side to something better. Praise Him! For truly… God is good all the time. And all the time God is good.

Since trusting in Jesus is the basis for our hope of eternal life, how can we know that we really trust Him? The short answer is: we look for evidences that the trust we have in Him is changing us.  Genuine saving belief never leaves you the same.  We gradually become less like the world and more like Jesus as we follow Him in faith.  Trusting Him leads to ongoing and loving… Repentance, because we believe what He offers is better than sin.  Obedience, because we believe His ways are always good and right. Confidence, because we believe what He has promised us will happen.  We believe.  We change.  That’s how we know.

The attention of every single consciously awake and aware human being is captured by something at all times.  We are either focused on something that nurtures a deeper love for, stronger dependence on, greater obedience to and better enjoyment of Jesus or something that drains that from us.  Our aim as Christians should be to interrupt the fixation of others on the world and its ways and shine a spotlight on Him, so they can experience the blessings and benefits of knowing Him and the privilege and pleasure of worshipping Him.  Today and every day, as people look at us, let us encourage them to look at Him.

Do you know what your failure is for?  It has a purpose, and that purpose is to help you succeed.  Not just so you’ll try harder next time.  Not just so you’ll be wiser next time.  Not just so you’ll do better next time. But rather so you will rely more fully on Jesus next time.  His strength.  His guidance.  His way.  His plan.  His timing. His help.  The right response to failure is faith, for every person who turns to and trusts in Jesus will win in the end.  Remember this when you find yourself coming up short: Futility and frustration are intended to move you away from self-reliance to Savior-reliance.  And that move is always for the better.

Christians should talk more about what God does than about what we do.  Even when we speak of what we do, it should be as a platform to talk about the enabling power, provision and presence of God in our lives.  We don’t have it all together.  We won’t get it all together.  We can’t keep it all together.  None of us wear capes as if we are super Christians; we wear the righteousness of Jesus.  None of us have magical powers that enable us to do things; we have the power of the Holy Spirit.  None of us belong on the throne of worship; we belong to a Heavenly Father Who does.  Not to us, but to God be the glory!

Jesus is not only a doer of good to you, He is also an un-doer of bad done to you by people. They hurt your heart; He heals it. They distance themselves; He draws near. They sting you with their words; He soothes you with His. They overlook you; He pays attention. They cheat you; He blesses you. They intend you harm; He works it out for good. They judge your sins; He dies for them.  We all do each other wrong, but Jesus begins to make things right in us when we turn to Him, and He will someday make things right in all of creation.  Until then, let us seek His grace when others wrong us and when we wrong others.