Celebrate

What are your celebrations about? Are they celebrations of birthdays, graduations, and holidays? Do you celebrate accomplishments at work? Are your celebrations short lived? Do you rejoice and give thanks to God for all He has provided?

We see people celebrate of a lot of different things. In fact, we can celebrate something every day as a national day of something. Many times there are multiple things for the national day of celebration. In an attempt to remain on a perpetual high, we’ve gone far beyond the ten federal holidays.

Some of the national days make sense. Having a national day to celebrate brothers or sisters or cousins is good. Though I wonder why we don’t rejoice and gives thanks for them every day. I suppose the same is true for mothers and fathers, yet I can understand those days being called out specifically in respect to our elders.

Take a look at some of the national days to celebrate and you find days to celebrate coffee, eclairs, HVAC tech, onion rings, pink, hydration, pecan sandies, pralines, and parchment. It seems we are a desperate people looking for something to bring joy to our lives. We are looking for something to celebrate rather than being joyful that God has provided us another day to serve Him.

Might I suggest that we take time to stop and smell the roses, as the old saying goes. If we slow down just a bit to enjoy what we have and the day we have been given, we just might find that we are more joyful and don’t need all those national days.

I don’t know about all of you, but I get caught up in the rat race. I have too much to do in too little time. My mind is racing, I’m frantic, and I forget to slow down to enjoy God’s creation. Perhaps we need to stop adding to our to-do list and enjoy what God has given us.

Here’s something I have discovered: when I slow down, I think better. When I appreciate what God has given me, I’m happier. When I put things in God’s hands, they turn out better. My problem, and I suspect most of us suffer from the same problem, is I don’t slow down often enough.

I pray each of us will slow down a bit to appreciate what God has provided us with. I pray we rejoice in His gracious gifts. I pray we all give thanks to God for giving us another day to serve Him, learn from Him, and appreciate all He does for us. Take a moment to breathe and focus on God. Follow God’s guidance for your life. Rejoice in all He has done for you. Praise His Holy Name. Give thanks to God.

Psalm 9:1-2

I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart;

I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.

I will be glad and rejoice in you;

I will sing the praises of your name, O Most High.

Thirst Quencher

How thirsty are you? Have you ever been so thirsty that you could drink just about anything? What is your favorite drink? Does it change based on your mood or situation? Do you want something different to drink after mowing the yard versus when you first wake up?

We drink all types of drinks, don’t we? Many of us drink coffee first thing in the morning. We may drink water during the day. Perhaps we have iced tea or a soda at supper. We might decide to have a glass of milk or orange juice for breakfast.

When we go to a store, just about any store, we find all kinds of drinks available to us. There are energy drinks, sodas, juices, milk, coffee, and more. We can get them as fountain drinks or in cans or in bottles. We may spend an exorbitant amount of time choosing something to drink because of all the options available.

There is one offering of drink that can’t be bought at a store. It is the wellspring of eternal life that comes only by believing in and following Jesus Christ. He has promised it to us implicitly in His discussion with the woman at the well. We see in Revelation that it is not only promised but delivered.

Too often we go around thirsty. No, not physically thirsty. Thirsty in our soul. We are looking for something to quench our thirst and don’t find it. When we find ourselves in this situation, it means we are looking for it in the wrong places. We are looking for it in human terms on this earth. Instead, we need to be looking at Jesus and asking Him to give us the life water we long for. He will give it to us, but we must yearn for it more than our morning cup of coffee.

Jesus has offered us a wonderful gift. He is the One we can trust to always deliver on His promises. All we need to do is quit chasing after earthly sips that don’t satisfy and ask Him to give us what He has offered. It’s not as simple as it sounds, is it? It’s tough to give up our earthly sips, even if they don’t really satisfy.

I pray we all decide to ask Jesus for the water of life. I pray we seek it more than our unsatisfactory earthly sips. I pray each of us will make a choice to seek eternal life with Jesus over this earth. Choose Jesus. Choose eternal life with Him. Choose the wellspring of life. Ask Jesus and He will deliver.

John 4:13-14 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Who is in charge of your life? Do you think you are in charge of your life? Do you ever stop to spend time to think through who is controlling your life? What will you do when you find out you are not as in charge as you think? Will you allow Jesus to take charge?

We think we are in charge of our decisions, and we are for the most part. Yet our decisions are based on our experience, our beliefs, and what we have learned. Our decisions are influenced by outside sources. Our decisions can often be predicted by others based on prior decisions, our behavior, and our normal attitude toward life.

Does it bother you that you are predictable? Many of us have probably not thought about how predictable we are. Yet we will make decisions based on how well we can predict someone else will react to them. Stop and think about how you do this.

If we are so predictable, how can someone else predict how we will react? They are observing us. They catalog all our reactions. So, when we react negatively toward something, that is filed away. When we react positively, that is also filed away. When we react one way when we are in one mood and differently when we are in a different mood, that is filed away.

We are influenced by the people we are with. We are influenced by our current situation. We are influenced by our education, whether formal or informal. The factors that influence our decisions are far greater than we often realize.

We do have a choice concerning those influencers. We can spend time educating ourselves, whether formal or informal. We can choose who we spend time with, whether in person or through movies, television, or internet. We have choices.

Since we have choices, how will we choose in the future? Will we choose to improve our decision-making process? The better choices we make regarding our influencers, the better our decisions will be. When we choose to do the proper thinking and research, we can make decisions that are better for us.

Why wouldn’t we choose to have the One who is in charge of all things be our guide? Jesus has had everything in His hands to control. The Father placed this world and all of us into Jesus’ hands. When we choose to follow Him and allow Him to be the major influence on our decisions, our decisions are better, and our lives are better. Perhaps we should put the advice of Carrie Underwood’s song, Jesus Take the Wheel into action.

I pray we all decide to allow Jesus to be our main influencer for all our decisions. I pray we take time to think and research each of our decisions. I pray each one of us will turn to God in prayer before making decisions. Put your life in Jesus’ hands. Trust Jesus with your whole being. Allow Jesus to guide your thoughts. Make your decisions based on Jesus’ teachings.

John 3:35 The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.

Reflections

Do you ever step back and evaluate your experiences? Have you looked back over your life and see how it has changed over the years? Do you take in the changes and learn lessons from past decisions? Have you looked back to see how God has moved in your life?

I venture to say that not many of us will look back across our lives to see how God has worked in them. Oh, we will remember and reminisce with family and friends about this or that. We’ll enjoy some good laughs and maybe a few tears as we remember the past. Often, we remember the good times more than the bad. But we will often laugh at even the bad times.

Why is it we are so negligent in looking back at our past to learn from it? In today’s world, we have put more emphasis on the right now, this very moment and its experience than we put on bettering our lives. It’s about living in the moment, experiencing it, rather than learning to make the next one better.

We also don’t put much stock in listening and learning from others. We can learn a lot by listening to others who have had a wide array of experiences. I know I certainly was less likely to listen to others when I was much younger than I am today. I’m not sure if that is due to getting older or having had the experience of listening to someone else and finding their advice to be true that has caused me to be more open to listening. Either way, I’m glad I listen more today.

Through reflection and listening to others, we can see God working in our lives. In fact, it is often through others that He is giving us advice. This is especially true if the advice is coming from our immediate family or our church family. God works through those who care about us to give us good advice. He also uses them to give us the hard advice sometimes, the type of advice we don’t really want to hear.

We need to take time to reflect. We need to find a quiet time and space to sit down and think about how God has worked in our lives. We need to recognize how it happened and apply those lessons in our lives as we go forward. It will make us wiser and help us be better listeners and decisionmakers going forward.

I pray we all take time to reflect on how God has worked in our lives. I pray each one of us will set aside a time and space to be quiet and reflect. I pray we learn valuable lessons during our reflections. Spend quiet time with God. See how He has worked in your life. Learn the lessons He wants you to learn. Become wiser. Be a better decisionmaker. God is working for you.

Psalm 86:17

Give me a sign of your goodness, 

that my enemies may see it and be put to shame,

for you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.

Overcome Fear

Are you fearful? Do you fear losing your job? Do you fear being attacked? Are you afraid of going into a relationship? Are you afraid of losing a relationship? Do you fear our world is crumbling? Are you afraid of where you will spend eternity?

There are many things going on in our culture today that can generate fear in us. Watching the news can fill us with fear. Our bosses can instill fear in us. Sometimes we are in relationships where one party or the other dominates through fear. Often, we are afraid of failure.

With all these reasons to fear, how can we overcome them? It is not as easy as it sounds, but the answer is to turn to God and trust Him. Satan will do all he can to keep us from doing that. He wants us to live in fear. He wants us to follow his lead in fear with false hopes of things getting better. He shows us a new shiny object or answer that promises to end our fear and then disappoints badly. Then we reach out and grasp for the next shiny object or answer, only to be disappointed again.

Fear can completely immobilize us. It can cause us to go into hiding. It can cause us to lose the abundant life that Jesus promised to us (John 10:10). Yet Jesus also promises us that He will take away our fear, if we will trust Him. (John 14:11).

There is a line in the Newsboys’ song No Longer Slaves that says, “I’m no longer a slave to fear, I am a child of God.” When we finally believe that line with all our hearts and truly realize we are a child of God with no reason to fear, fear will no longer have a hold on us. It’s not simply an intellectual decision, though that’s certainly a part of it, but it is also very much a heart thing. We must believe it with our heads and our hearts, with no doubts.

It is terrible to be controlled by fear. Yet there is a pathway to leave that control and kick fear out of our lives. It is not easy. It takes work and study and prayer and coming to full belief in God. We all need to step out of living in fear and live as a child of God.

I pray each of us will come to believe that God has us in His loving arms. I pray we all overcome fear by trusting in God. I pray we do the work to build our belief and faith in God. Conquer fear. Trust God, trust Jesus. Turn your life over to God. Believe He is in control.

Luke 12:4-5 “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.”

Possessiveness

Are you possessive? Do you hold on to everything? Do you dislike it when someone else wants to use your things? Are you unwilling to share with others? Do you realize that God is the One who has blessed you and expects you to share His blessings with others?

We live in a culture where it is typical for people to want to hold on to their possessions. True, there are many who are willing to donate money to a cause. Yet, it is often those same people who are angry if someone were to ask to borrow a shirt.

Even though we are going through a tough time in our country at the moment, we are still the richest country in the world. Despite the unemployment numbers, our workers make far more than any others in the world. True, our cost of living is higher as well, but not high enough to overcome the compensation disparity.

In all our richness, we have become people of possessions. The more toys we can accumulate, the higher we climb the status ladder. Unfortunately, that status ladder is a mirage. It’s false. Our true status is accounted for by God.

There are multiple parables spoken by Jesus that teach us about using what God has blessed us with to create a greater return to Him and bless others. We find that Jesus is more about community and less about self. He is more about serving God and serving others than serving ourselves.

Do we understand that through His teaching on such subjects that He is implying that we should be of the same mind? If we are striving to be more like Him, shouldn’t we also be more about sharing, giving, and serving?

We see in today’s passage from Scripture that Jesus made no bones about what He meant. If we are given much, much is expected. In other words, if we are blessed by God with a lot, we are to share those blessings with others. This is our struggle. We want to hold on to what we have, and God wants us to give it away.

I remember a woman I went to church with a number of years ago saying, “You can’t out give God. The more you give, the more He gives.” Such a true statement. This doesn’t mean just giving to a charity, but also giving and sharing with those we see every day.

I pray we all decide to share. I pray we all become more about community and less about self. I pray each of us will choose to follow Jesus’ teaching to share God’s blessings. Share what you have. Give to others. Trust God to give to you in return. Follow Jesus.

Luke 12:48 “But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has beenentrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

Guilty or Convicted?

Are you guilty? Are you convicted? Do you believe with all your heart that Jesus is the Son of God? Is He your Lord and Savior? Are you willing to stand convicted when others accuse you of this? Even if it costs you everything?

We see people’s beliefs change with the wind today. They follow whatever today’s fad is until tomorrow comes with a new one. It doesn’t matter if it’s clothing, entertainment, complaining about the boss, or any number of other things.

Jesus calls us to believe in Him, to follow Him, and to stop worrying about this world. He didn’t say we were to stop living in this world, but to understand that it will pass away and a permanent home for us is waiting. One that will not pass away.

I pray we all come to realize just how little this world really means and how much Jesus means. I pray we all are willing to stand convicted of being His followers in all we do. Be convicted in Christ.

Hebrews 3:14 We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.

Hope Through Character, Perseverance, and Suffering

Are you suffering? Are you persevering? Do you understand what real suffering is? Or do you consider having niceties taken away is suffering? Do you understand what it means to persevere? Do you have hope?

Notice how today’s Scripture builds on itself like a set of stairs. We may look at it and discard it as garbage. If we do so, it’s because we don’t want to believe it. Our culture not only wants hope right now, it also wants to have its wants satisfied right now. We don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to persevere. We don’t want to build character. We want to jump right to the end and have it all right now.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in the real world the way we want. The very nature of how our world operates on this staircase of logic. We can deny it all we want, but it won’t change the truth of the Scripture.

When we suffer through hard times, we learn to persevere. There is only one other choice and that is to give up. If we don’t quit, perseverance will be ours. We may get by with a little of our own intestinal fortitude, but it becomes a more pleasant experience if we lean on God.

Notice that perseverance builds character. Have you ever known someone who has a wonderful character? Someone who perseveres through whatever is thrown at them, even if the end result is not what they wanted. Do you admire that person? Do you want to be like them? To build that type of character we must suffer and persevere. We must learn to trust God in all circumstances, especially those that we have no control over.

Once our character is built, we become hopeful. Don’t mistake the word hope for wish. We often wish for something with no real hope of getting it. Hope is trusting that what we hope for will come to pass. Hope is having an assurance that God will provide. Hope is knowing we are following God’s will and He is in control. Hope is far more than simple wishes.

Finally, notice that all of this is provided by the outpouring of God’s love for us through the Holy Spirit. What does that mean to us? It means we must invite the Holy Spirit to occupy our lives and guide us. It means we must trust God. It means we have to get out of the way, release our personal preferences and wishes, and allow the Holy Spirit to fill us with God’s will.

I pray we all decide to allow the Holy Spirit to fill us. I pray we listen for His guidance in our lives. I pray each of us will decide to get out of God’s way and allow Him to take control of our lives. Trust God. Accept His love. Suffer, persevere, build character, and find true hope. It is given freely to you, if only you will accept it.

Romans 5:3-5 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Lean On God

Do you wonder why things don’t go your way? Do you sometimes think everything goes wrong? Do you feel as though you can’t get on the right track no matter what you do? Have you thought that perhaps you are trusting in the wrong person?

It is true that we sometimes go through rough stretches of happenings. Perhaps a relationship has failed, you’ve lost a job, you’ve had family or friends who have died, or you have experienced a severe illness. We have even heard some people say these types of significant negative events happen in threes.

Some of those things will happen no matter what we do. Yet much of what happens to us is a result of our choices. We tell ourselves we are doing the best we can, and it may be true from a human perspective. We receive information, process it, and make a choice. Often, we do so in split second reaction.

What if there was a way to train ourselves to change the how we react, how we process the information? There is. We can train our thought processes. In fact, our thought processes are learned. As we experience the results of making a choice, our brain files it away, and our next decision in the same type of situation is based on what we learned.

If we want to train ourselves to make better decisions, decisions that will lead to better results, we need to learn from God. Much like learning calculus, it’s not a simple nor short process. We must spend time reading God’s Word and in prayer. Over time, our decisions will be decisions based on God’s plan.

We can’t say we trust God and not learn from Him. If we do, we are not really trusting God. We are saying what we think is right, yet living our lives as we want, doing what we want. When we truly trust God, we want to learn more from Him and about Him.

Learning from God is very exciting. It is even more exciting to see how our lives change as we put into action what we have learned. We make positive decisions. We see things working out in our favor. We do the right thing more often than the wrong thing. We say the right things rather than the wrong things. All because we have decided to bring God into our hearts and our minds. It doesn’t mean we won’t experience rough patches in this life, but we handle them much better than we would without God.

I pray we all decide to trust God with our whole heart. I pray each of us decide to lean on God for answers. I pray we experience God working in our lives to make positive changes. Trust God. Lean on Him. Learn from and about God. He will straighten your paths in life.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him,

and he will make your paths straight.

Sing A New Song

Do you sing along with songs on the radio? What genre do you prefer? Do you have favorite artists? Do you go through the day with a favorite song in your head? Or maybe the last song you heard on the radio? Do you have a new song to sing to God?

Music is a big part of our lives for many of us. We know songs that touched us deeply, perhaps they are related to specific events. Music can sooth the soul when we are troubled or angry. Music can pick us up out of the dumps. Music can make us want to dance. Music can be a great healer during times of sorrow.

Some of us love to go to concerts to see our favorite bands. Some of us like to go no matter who the band is, we simply love live music. We may pay an exorbitant price to go to those concerts, but we love music enough to do so. We usually leave the concert on an emotional high. We talk about the concert for days, weeks, months, and perhaps even years.

Since we have heard so many songs, we have quite a lot of lyrics running around in our heads. Can we create new lyrics for God? I’m sure we can. Think about all the things God has done for us. He has granted us another day. He has provided us a place to live. He has provided us with jobs, education, clothing, family, friends, beautiful flowers and trees, amazing wildlife, and painted pictures in the sky.

Not only do we have numerous lyrics running around in our head, we have tons of tunes in there as well. Think how creative we can be by combining bits and pieces of tunes and lyrics combined with the wonderful blessings God has given us. We can create a new song to sing to God, even if it is only between God and us.

God would be so happy to hear that song. He would be like the proud parent of the kindergartner who comes home with a newly colored picture to show off. He would love to hear our new song, knowing that it came from our hearts. Just think about how happy we can make God!

I pray each of us will find the creativity and joy in our hearts to sing a new song to God. I pray we recognize what He has done for us and we are thankful. I pray we all bring a new song from our hearts to God. Sing praise to God. Sing a new song to God. Lift up your thankfulness in song. Make God happy.

Psalm 98:1

Sing to the Lord a new song,

for he has done marvelous things;

his right hand and his holy arm

have worked salvation for him.