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!

Others need us to point them to where they can go for help in hardships.  Others need to believe us because they see us going there ourselves. The people in our lives need to see us suffer well, handling hardships with hope because we have Jesus in our lives.  They need to see and hear our joy-filled, hope-filled, peace-filled confidence in this:  He will get us through every test, trial and tribulation until He gets us home. As we walk through seasons of suffering, let us testify to the faithfulness of Jesus in walking with us so others can know, that because grace is available, they never have to walk alone either.

God’s love for you does not rise with every new entry on your resume’ and does not fall with every new entry on your rap sheet.  God’s love is not based on your performance as if He only cares about you when you get it right.  You are loved; not because you are perfect, but because you are His.  You are valued; not because of what you have made of your life, but because you were made by Him.  You are treasured; not because you cross off items on a checklist, but because Jesus died on a cross for you.  God will continue to shape you into the person He made you to be. But He deeply loves the person you are today.

Our hope is not in who sits in the Oval Office, but in Who sits on the throne in heaven.  Our hope is not in who governs us on earth, but in Who reigns and rules over the entire universe.  Our hope is not in what laws are passed, but in the One Who has written His law of love on our hearts.  While politics, parties, programs and policies do have an impact upon our lives and our country, and we should take these things seriously, the optimism we have for everyday and eternal well-being does not rise and fall on one of us, but on Jesus, Who is God with us.  This is where we pin our hope:  Jesus governs our lives.

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, let us get people to look at us so we can encourage them to look at Him.

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 life won’t have its ups and downs. It means whatever life is like, we will find the lasting satisfaction we fail to find elsewhere when we look to Jesus.

You will never experience real peace until you rest in God’s grace.   Anything else results in some version of regret for your past, pressure to measure up in the present, or worry about what might happen to you in the future.  Peace is elusive when we look to ourselves to make things right because there is always this ever-present feeling that we are not doing enough.  Indeed, we cannot do enough.  Nor do we need to, for Jesus has done it all.   Resting in God’s grace means trusting that Jesus forgives, Jesus frees and Jesus is faithful to provide.  Herein is peace found:  All I need to be and do rests on all Jesus is and does for me.

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.

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.