Ask the Lord for rain in the springtime; it is the Lord who sends the thunderstorms. He gives showers of rain to all people, and plants of the field to everyone. Zechariah 10:1
It rained at my house the other day. You might read that and shrug, “big deal!” But where I live it is a big deal. I prayed that it would keep raining and raining for a week. Unfortunately, after a day the beautiful rain stopped. While it fell, I sat mesmerized by the beauty of it. Knowing it was filling reservoirs and streams, washing our streets, and filling birdbaths. God is so good!
It made me think about all the natural resources we have been gifted from God. With the most “controversial” being crude oil or petroleum. I think so many people forget that crude oil, which could arguably be one of the greatest natural resource gifts, streams out naturally in places under the sea and from the ground. More than 4,000 years ago asphalt (made from crude oil) was supposedly used in the construction of the walls of Babylon! Persians found crude oil along the Euphrates and used it medicinally and for lighting. It’s crude oil that has made so much of our modern world possible. And when you think about it, other than uses for human needs, it serves no other purpose!
The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them. Psalm 89:11
God has gifted man with billions of trees, coal, natural gas, water, fertile soil, all manner of minerals and more. What an amazing God we have that He would create resources for us to “discover” along the way to improve our lives! As appointed stewards of this world, given to Adam in the garden, let’s give thanks for this bountiful land and remember who it all belongs to.
Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.”And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” Genesis 21:6-7
As I write this we are about four weeks away from the Thanksgiving holiday celebrated in the United States. And already I’ve heard from a few anxious friends concerned about gathering with family. To be fair, they are all worried about their spouse’s family! But what makes holidays potentially stressful – dealing with the various personalities and their idiosyncrasies – is also what brings us such joy. Our families.
When Sarah was gifted a child in her advanced age the Bible doesn’t talk about all her worries. Although I could imagine there might have been a few. Instead, what the focus is on is laughter and joy. God’s creation of man included the eventual creation of family. And there’s something about family that always feels so different than friendships. We are bonded by some mysterious force from the heavens. The good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly in our families stays with us forever unlike a forgotten friend.
“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12
The command to honor our parents is the first command telling us to do something for another human being. It stands to reason that God puts family pretty high up on his list. And while there are those whose parents have made honoring them difficult due terrible sin and lack of repentance, for so many of us we must remember God’s love for family and how He wants us to love them.
I love my whole family, those of blood and those my rolling stone has picked up along the way. Some I must work harder to obey the command, while others it comes easily. I thank God for all of them — because I have benefitted from them all while in this crazy, mysterious union.
Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you. 2 Thessalonians 3:16
For many years I was in search mode with my faith. I kept searching for something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. At first, I thought it was to be accepted. Then I turned to searching for joy. I finally landed on the underlying need for all my searching – peace. I realized what I wanted each and every day was to wake up with sense of peace, go through my day with peace and lay down my head at night peace-filled.
In a recent Bible study I did by Christian teacher Jackie Hill Perry on the book of Jude, she explained the two different types of Christian peace. 1) Peace with God and 2) Peace from God.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. John 14:27
During the Christmas holidays one of the great misunderstandings or misuses of Bible words are “peace on Earth.” So many non-Christians (and probably many self-identified Christians) think this means no war, no strife. But the “peace” we can be so thankful for is the peace we now have WITH God after we repented and entered into a life of submission to Him. In effect, our relationship, which was fractured, is now repaired. Secondly, the peace with get FROM God is the knowledge that He is in ultimate control of this world and we know our final place will rest with Him in eternity.
Although it’d certainly be awesome if this world were to stop being at war with each other, if violence wasn’t an everyday occurrence, I know that the unrepentant man will always act for the passions of the flesh.
Now that my search is complete, I am working every day to live in God’s gift of peace. I can easily fall into the well-worn paths of the world that I created but I’m forging a new road with His help.
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1
When you hear people argue about God being a man-made construct I always wonder what they think about the concept of hope. Hope, in general, is experienced by other animals in simplistic forms. My dog hopes that a piece of my dinner will fall off my plate in to his mouth. And given his level of whining and drooling his hopefulness can get pretty intense. But if my dog were to say, get cancer, would he understand the hopefulness of being cured? When my previous dog, Molly was old and ill we called in a woman who does home euthanasia. As the drugs were administered into Molly’s body we gave her a feast of her favorite treats. She resisted succumbing in her desire for one more treat. But was she able to hope to not die? To hope that something better awaited her after death?
It seems throughout God’s animal kingdom creatures were gifted with just enough mental capacity to meet their basic needs. It’s obviously so or else we’d see them building super computers and skyscrapers. The animal kingdom doesn’t concern themselves with their fellow animals’ living conditions in far off lands, much less those in the house next door. As humans, God instill in us something that no man can truly explain. A sense of the past, the present, and a hope for the future.
It’s that hope, that “looking forward to God’s good work” in our situation that is so uniquely human. And I praise God for it.
Like love, hope is found in many forms. We can hope it doesn’t rain out the baseball game. We hope we get the job. We hope our vacation turns out the way we dream. We can hope for a better life. Hope for a cure. Hope for a child. But the hope God really wants us to rely on is the hope based on trusting that what He has in store for you and I is for good.
We can have hope that the trials we currently are going through will teach us something important and will leave us with something good. We can have hope that God has a good plan for not only ourselves but for our families who believe in him. We can place our hope in a future beyond this place more glorious than we can imagine.
I’m so thankful God gifted us with this unique brand of hope. Without it we have hopelessness and despair. We would be left only with anger and disappointment and confusion.
When I look around these days, I can see the destructiveness from lacking in God’s hope. The aching and yearning for answers. It leads people to depression, violence, and self- harm. But that’s because deep in each of us is the knowledge that brokenness is not the state God wants for us. Its foreign in our bodies and therefore makes us uncomfortable and unhappy with life. We desire to be hopeful. Some of us just haven’t accepted the prescribed method – God.
I have told you this so that
my joy may be in you and that
your joy may be complete.John 15:11
A prayer to live a joy-filled life.
Gracious God your gifts and blessing to me cannot be counted. And yet so often I turn to the negative parts in my life and place my constant thoughts in them. When I rise I forget to be thankful that I have yet another day in which to serve you and be blessed by you. And as I go about my day when you place joyful moments at my fingertips I take them for granted. When I lay my head down to sleep I can easily recall all that went wrong in the day rather than what went right. But your joy is there for the taking. I want to live basked in your greatness, your beauty and your joy. I can and will, with your help, find joy in every circumstance. You are working for my good at all times and I just need to remember that promise. Thank you for giving us your Son who implanted the Holy Spirit in us – a spirit of joy and of goodness. I pray this in your Son’s Holy name, Jesus. Amen
I always called her a Pollyanna. The term comes from the movie of the same name in which a young girl arrives at a small town filled with bitter people. But her neverending, cheerful spirit wins them over. Nowadays, a “Pollyanna” seems to be said as a negative. That, along with wearing “rose-colored glasses” are attributed to people who just want to see the positives in everything. I know, makes you sick, doesn’t it?
But my mother-in-law truly is such a person. And this last year that cheerful, joy-filled spirit was truly tested, not only with all the lockdowns but with a diagnosis of cancer. On her worst days she was a bit dispirited. Yes, worst days. I mean the woman seemed to look forward to her cancer treatments because she would probably run into a friend and chat for hours while the poison did its deadly work.
A cheerful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up
the bones.Proverbs 17:22
At times being a “bit dispirited” can seem like my best day. I’ve been a well-trained, tried and true pessimist for so long that the concept of daily joy is a lot of work for me to achieve. It’s easy to sit back and marinate in the mess of life. It takes work to get up, dust ourselves off and say “oh well let’s make the best of this.”
Thank goodness our strength comes from the LORD. I’m committing myself to stopping negative thinking and instead, like playing a game of “Where’s Waldo,” searching for the joy in the moments of my life. I know they are there because joy is one of the promised fruits of His spirit.
He’s there somewhere! Just keep searching!
I stood in Walmart the other day waiting in a long line to check out. Normally, I’d be mentally lopping off all the heads of the cashiers for taking so long and planning my complaint letter to management for not opening more registers. Instead, I settled in to God’s joy. I was happy to have found all the items on my long list and the people watching at Walmart is topnotch! I was so bathed in God’s joy that I even let someone with only two items go in front of me.
I could have turned a simple shopping trip into a miserable experience very easily. I’m counting on God to keep giving me opportunities to flip the script from pessimist to Pollyanna. Because when the day comes when I need it most, I want to be well-trained and tested in living a joy-filled life.
If you want this too, add the prayer to your daily prayer list and watch and see how God works in your life!
Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.” Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
Matthew 12:22-28
I love the part in these verses that states, “Jesus knew their thoughts.” How amazing is it that right now, this very second, Jesus knows your thoughts? He knows the thoughts of believers and non-believers. What would He think about your thoughts right now? Are they focused on the worries surrounding the election in the United States? Are they worried about new virus-related shutdowns? Are your thoughts of your precarious finances or your failing marriage? Or, are they thoughts of how God has come through for you before and today is no different? He has shown the way; he has opened doors before and this issue you face right now can be placed securely in His hands.
The “people were astonished and said, ‘Could this be the Son of David?’” How often when God paves the way to solutions we might not have ever dreamt, that we even ask the question, “could this be Jesus?” Or do we stand firm in single mindedness and state, “Thank you Lord.”? The Pharisees were so afraid of losing their power and control they wanted to be convinced that Jesus was healing with Satan’s power. And although when our prayers are answered we might not think Satan had something to do with it, how often do we just shrug and think of it as a coincidence?
I’ve written before of the struggles I have with my parents. They are non-believers. My father has stated he is an atheist. And to put it mildly they are miserable. They lead small, scared lives. I was led this year to pray vehemently for them. When I pray for them, I imagine the wall they have securely built around themselves. A nice, sturdy brick tower. I’ve asked God to break that wall down, to soften their hearts. I know I can’t do it. It must be God’s actions. And last week I had the chance to see their faces peeking through a few bricks that had been displaced. I’ve offered to assist them during this difficult time of isolation. I’ve brought them meals, puzzles, a Kindle. I’ve offered to buy a meal service for them. But each time I’ve been met with annoyance. But last week I received a desperate text from my mother. She explained they haven’t been eating right and are very lonely. So, I made up some meals and delivered them. They were so grateful. That may sound normal. But grateful isn’t normally in their vocabulary. I lost track of how many times they thanked me. As I drove away, I caught myself thinking like someone of this world – “well, finally they allowed me to help. I could’ve been doing that all along.” I forgot that this was not my doing. A few blocks away I stopped my car and I prayed. I prayed a grateful prayer to the Lord on High – the only way those bricks could’ve been removed. I don’t know if my parents will reach through and try and shore up those bricks again. But for that day, that moment, I thanked God for allowing me to do His works and be His hands. It was truly amazing.
“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
James 4:6-8
We can’t continue to have one foot in for Jesus and one foot out. Because that equation is actually both feet out. In math, a positive times a negative is always negative. The covenant with God is based on trust. And when we vacillate between trusting Him and not, we allow Satan or worldly “solutions” to chip away at our peace.
Patterns are pointers. They can very much reveal where a person is headed. Positive patterns tend to produce productive outcomes. Negative patterns can’t help but produce negative impact. Obedient patterns tend to produce closeness with God. Disobedient patterns can’t help but produce chaos and destruction.
Lysa Terkeurst, Trustworthy
So, when take for granted the miracles that Jesus works in and around our lives, what we are saying is we don’t trust that it’s Him. Think of King David. He was promised the kingdom but not only was it many years before he was made king, he had a target on his back by King Saul. Put yourself in his shoes. Many of us may have just given up and thought either God was lying or we misunderstood. And, at the moment David had a chance to kill King Saul, he sought God’s counsel and remembered His promises. But what if on the day he were crowned he said, “Finally, I struggled and I fought and I accomplished this.” David instead said,
Because of your promise, and according to your own heart you have brought about all this greatness to make your servant know it. Therefore, you are great, O Lord God. For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
2 Samuel 7:21-22
Take a moment and read the full text of 2 Samuel 7:18-29. You will read of a man amazed by the greatness of God. A man amazed by the goodness of God. A man amazed by how God is so trustworthy. May we, this week in the midst of our fears and struggles and joys be so amazed. May we stop the car, sit down, stop thinking and look up to the heavens and say “I trust you fully God and I know that it is YOU at work. I thank you for prayers fulfilled.”
emboldened.net 