A God Sandwich Every Day Makes Life OK!

Consider what God says in Psalm 27:14 “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.”

Even though this is just a short verse it gives us insight on how to make the most of each and every day. Everyone is looking for encouragement and the strength to face the situations of life and get through the day. So when we are given the way why don’t we do it? Well, in this world of “hurry up and go faster” the idea of waiting for anything seems foreign. Yet if we want to experience God’s encouragement and strength for each day we must learn to take time to wait for God.

Consider when we are encouraged to wait for God. This verse starts and ends with waiting on God, and I believe that this would be a great pattern for us to begin and end each day with God. It would be a pattern that makes our days go better and our nights more peaceful and restful. Starting our day with God is always a great practice. It gives us a fresh perspective to start the day. It gives us the strength we will need to deal with the expected and the peace required to adjust to the unexpected. It also shows God what we want our day to be directed by Him.

Even though many Christians don’t think of this, ending the day with God is equally important. It gives us a chance to refocus, unwind and commit the events of the day back into God’s care. It allows us to set the burdens of life that we have picked up during the day into our Lord and Savior’s care. Doing this will give us what God promised, “Peace that passes all understanding.”

Imagine the difference this will make as everything we do will be surrounded by or sandwiched in God.

Only Settle for the Best

Have you ever wanted the best of something, not wanting to settle for what is OK or good? Well God does as well. He wants what is best for us and He tells us in Philippians 1:9-11how we can achieve it and what it will result in, in our lives.  And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
 
First, how do get what is best: well it all starts with prayer. We must be asking for the best from God for our lives and we must be willing to let go of everything else. The willingness to let go is tied directly to what we love. The things we love the most we will not want to let go of and we need to determine that we will only love the correct or godly things. Once we have set our hearts on what to love we must not be satisfied with the how of our love. You see, we can all learn to love better or more completely. Every time, we make the decision to love it is based on partial knowledge at best. Often, when we learn more, our love diminishes. Yet here we are challenged to allow our love to grow in knowledge. So the more we learn the more we love. The more we actually love, the better we should learn how to love. That is letting our love abound in knowledge and depth of insight. This is what will lead to what is best for us.
 
Moving toward and achieving what is best will also produce results in our lives. The first result is, we will become pure and blameless. How? Well if we are loving with the growing love of God it will change our thoughts, words and actions resulting in our becoming pure and blameless. We will also notice other things being produced in our lives, the side effects of living in right standing with God. The list of what these are can be quite long but let me mention just one. Peace! When we are in right standing with God there is a peace that guards and guides our hearts and actions. This is the peace of knowing that we are living and loving like God wants us to and it is one of the first fruits to develop in a our lives. Are we living in that peace today? If not we may need to work on achieving what is best…experiencing and passing on the love of God.

Becoming God's Confidant

Have you ever wished that people would open their heart and confide in you? When this happens we feel appreciated, trusted and that we have worth. Now imagine that the one who is confiding to you is important and powerful, how much more would we feel valued? Scripture tell us in Psalm 25:14 that God, the creator of all, wants to and promises to confide in us.

That’s right; God wants to confide in you and me. He wants us to know the details and depths of His promises or covenant with us. Imagine, God wants to teach us the immensity and details of His promises to mankind. This is more than just knowing what the promises are, but includes understanding them intimately and in a life altering way. God wants us to know that these promises are based on His Word to each of us. It was a legally binding promise that can only be broken by God. He will never break it so we can have eternal confidence in it. What we must do is believe and take God at His word, accepting what He has promises.

Now you may be thinking that there has to be a catch and you would be kind of right. You see it’s not so much a catch but a condition to having God confide in us. We must first live a life of ‘fearing’ the Lord. This is a continual growth process and the more we learn to fear God the more He will confide in us. So, what does it mean to ‘fear the Lord?’ This concept is referred to more than 280 times throughout Scripture so understanding it is important to our Christian life. The ‘fear’ being talked about is not to be afraid of the wrath or judgment of God. Fearing diving punishment. The ‘fear’ we should have is that of disappointing God. Much like a small child wants to do their very best to hear their dad say how proud they are. We should be living in such a way that we are worried if God will be disappointed in us and this should motivate us to always do better. When we live like this, God will want to share His plans with us so that we can live according to His expectations. What an awesome opportunity we all have to become God’s confidants as we learn to fear our loving heavenly Father.

So Let Us Learn from Our Children

Christmas reminds me how much we can act like kids. Most kids don't understand the importance of the saying, “Care for what you wish for!” Kids of all ages and sizes are wishing for many wonderful gifts. Some that my kids have wished for include: A cow for fresh milk and a horse. Unfortunately they don’t understand the responsibility and work that would go with these gifts, they have only looked at the positives.



Doesn’t that sound like most of the rest of us? We think we know what we want. It sounds like a good idea. As adults we pursue it and get it without thinking through the ramifications and responsibilities. Then, when the reality of what we have gotten hits us, we wonder what happened and complain. Yet we have just received what we asked for.


It is always better for us to slow down, think and most importantly pray before we start stating what we want. When we do this we can avoid asking for silly things. However, when we do this, many times God will say “No” or “Not right now.” He does this because He loves us and knows what will be best. We must be willing to trust Him and wait on His timing. When we do this our Heavenly Father will give us what is good, pleasing and according to His will.


So let us learn from our children and “Care for what we wish for.”

Being a Christian Sponge

Over the past week I have been thinking a lot about a few points from this past Sunday’s sermon. Our study from the last part of Philippians 4 reminded us that we need to be completely saturated with the presence of God. Like a sponge that has been dunked into a bucket of water that can not be moved without spreading a bit of that water everywhere it goes, we also should be so saturated with God that no matter where we are or what is happening we should be spreading the blessing of God’s presence to everyone who comes into contact with us.


Oh, how much would life be different if we lived like this? I believe the early disciples had discovered the key to living like this and that is why they were know as “those who have turned the world upside-down.” One of the things that we learned about that helps us in living like this is to stay focused on God and God alone. If we just keep our eyes on “the author and perfecter of our faith” then we would see Him working in every aspect of our lives.

However, to live with our focus on only God is a commitment we must make every day. After making the commitment we must then work constantly at living it out. This effort is a constant battle because so many things are trying to distract us and steal our attentions. These things can be either good or bad in and of themselves but once they cause us to lose focus of God, then they become bad.

May we daily do our best to stay focused on God and God alone and as we do may we become completely saturated with His wonderful presence. Once saturated we will not be able to do anything but spread that presence to all those around us.

Do You Hear Him Calling?

Have you ever stopped to consider how important our hearing is? Often we take this ability for granted until we try to communicate with someone who is deaf or we temporarily loose part of our hearing. In our spiritual life hearing is also crucial, yet many people go through life voluntarily choosing to be deaf spiritually.


Our spiritual hearing started when we responded to God’s call for us to receive salvation but we must remember that this was just the start of spiritual hearing. We must stay attentive every moment of every day to hear what God is saying. One thing He is always calling us to is to serve Him. We were created to serve by walking in Jesus' footsteps and bringing His life to everything we touch.

Serving God is not reserved for preachers, missionaries, and those in so-called "full-time Christian service." Everyone who claims to be a follower of God is called to live every moment of every day in Christian service right where we are living and working! He has equipped each of us with special gifts that are perfectly suited to His plans for our life and the impact He wants us to have on others.

Just as Jesus' life was characterized by serving others, we must also be servants. Why then, do so many Christians prefer to be served than to serve? Genuine servanthood begins with a heart saying: "God, You own me, and everything I have is Yours. You're my Lord and my God, and worthy of all I can give. Whatever You want me to do, no matter how big or small, the answer is yes. You've promised to equip and anoint me with Your Spirit to enable me to do whatever You've called me to do, so here I am as Your servant."
Do you hear God calling to you today? If you do the next questions must be, How are you going to serve Him in your daily life? Remember to be quick to listen to all that God is saying as you travel on in this New Odyssey we call life with God.

The Keys to Improving Your Journey

Have you ever wanted to find something that would guarentee that your day and week would get better? In Proverbs 3:3-4 God gives us two elements that are crucial to improving our journey. As we look at these we need to realize that we can’t have one without the other. They are like the two sides of the same coin. Love, true love, always entails the strongest kind of faithfulness. Also, real faithfulness inevitably leads to true love. How do you ‘bind them around your neck and write and write them on the tablet of your heart?’ The specifics of how we do this are not as important as doing it on a regular basis. Once we start doing this, it is a continual process and will change us so what will your life look like? How will it change you? For it must surely change you!



We do know some of the outward effects of doing this and they hint at what in us might be affected. The two things mentioned are ‘favor’ and ‘a good name’. Both of these deal with our character and reputation. Realize that it is first God’s perspective of you that will change. This is because He sees the changes as they happen from the inside out. Then as the changes work their way out, people perspectives of us will change.