Trusting God with your Today

“If only the Lord had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned. “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought us into this wilderness to starve us all to death.” Exodus 16:3

The thing I feared most had just happened. After working for two and a half years at one company, the economy took a bad turn and my company began downsizing, and my job was one that was cut.

The following three months included the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and lots of job searching. It was the hardest situation that I had to face in my working life. I had landed that job right at the end of my senior year of high school, and although I had some problems and complaints about my situation at the time, I was not ready to start over somewhere else. Suddenly, the things I had been unhappy about didn’t seem all that bad, and all of the "if only..." statements began dancing around in my head. Even after I had started my new job, I still found myself missing my co-workers and my old job.

Previous situations always seem more desirable when you’re facing the unknown future, and struggling on your way to it. Past struggles seem to dim in intensity once you’re facing something you’re not sure you will be able to get through.

It doesn’t mean the old challenges were any easier. It’s simply the fact that the old is familiar, and you’re not facing it now.

Whatever your current struggles and challenges are, they are an invitation to trust God more. Just ask Him to show you how you can trust Him in your current season. God’s command in Exodus 16:4 required the Israelites to trust Him daily by gathering just enough bread for the current day.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Look, I’m going to rain down food from heaven for you. Each day the people can go out and pick up as much food as they need for that day. I will test them in this to see whether or not they will follow my instructions.”

God calls us to trust Him with our today. Each “today” brings us to the next place God wants us to be.

I eventually returned to the original company I worked for, but it was not until I gave my life over to God and allowed Him to begin changing me. When I returned, I was a very different person from who I was when I left. This is what God desires for you: continuous growth in Him, to become more like Jesus, and in turn, reach out to others who are facing a tough season of their life.

What previous seasons or situations seem easier compared to what you are dealing with now?

What challenge are you facing right now that God is asking you to trust Him with?

How can you step forward to trust God with your “today”?

Movement and Success

Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets." Luke 5:5

We all want to be successful at something. Whether it's raising a family, having a strong marriage, playing a sport, or developing a career, success is what we strive for.

However, we as Christians are called to more than just worldly success.

Take this story from the beginning of Jesus' ministry.  Although Simon is who we hear from, there is actually a group of fishermen near where Jesus is speaking. First, Jesus borrows Simon's boat, while he and the other fishermen are cleaning their nets. One Jesus is done speaking to the crowd, He tells Simon to go out to where the water is deeper and let down the nets.

Simon tells Jesus that they had been working all night, and failed to catch anything...but then he agrees to give it one more try, because "Jesus said so."

This act of obedience leads to the biggest catch the fishermen had ever experienced. "When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break."

Listening to Jesus' guidance resulted in success. But that is not where these men stopped.

Then Jesus said to Simon, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will fish for people." So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him. Luke 5:10-11

After the biggest success they ever had, they left everything behind and followed Jesus.

I felt God speak two things into my heart through these verses:

• Even if we experience success while folliwng Jesus, He may ask us to move on to something greater. Just because your career is successful, it does not mean God will never call you to something else. For example, in our church leadership, we have a former personal trainer, banker, and school teacher, just to name a few. Imagine what they would have missed out on if they had decided to stay where they were, verses following God's invitation.
• We are not called to stand still. We are called to follow Jesus. If we stay where we are just because it's always worked, we will miss the greater things God wanted us to experience.We may be lead to go somewhere new, or stay where we are but go deeper into the connections that we have.  As God calls us to move, we should move to keep growing in Christ.

No matter what we do in life, we have a call to reach out to people.

Hospitality

I am currently reading A Life that Says Welcome by Karen Ehman, and I actually bought this book while yelling, "Help! I have no idea how to do this!"

This was brought on because of a verse that has convicted me for a while, and it just so happens to come right after my life verse. Here they are:

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality." Romans 12:12-13.

Practice hospitality. How exactly do I do that? I pictured having a huge meal, with appetizers and nice music playing in the background, and having every inch of the house clean, all of the time. I always thought that entertaining and hospitality were the same thing. Since I was raised in a home where people hardly ever came over, you can imagine how the thought of having people come into our home overwhelms me. I was always the one going over to other friends' houses growing up, and when their parents would apologize for the mess, I would look around thinking, what mess?

The lesson that God taught Karen that she shared in her book is that there is a difference between "entertaining" and offering hospitality. As she says, "Entertaining puts the emphasis on you and how you can impress others. Offering hospitality puts the emphasis on others and strives to meet their physical and spiritual needs so that they feel refreshed, not impressed, when they leave your home."

Quite often, planning parties and preparing to have people in our home that aren't used to cat hair everywhere and bread crumbs on the counters sends me into a frantic cleaning spree. I feel like there are many times when I miss something that is out of place, and I notice it after people have already arrived.

So, you can imagine how relieved I felt when I read this particular quote in Karen's book:

...offering hospitality is much more about the condition of your heart than the condition of your home.

Everything doesn't have to be perfect. What matters more is how I embrace the people who enter my home. If I practice Biblical hospitality, when they leave my home they won't be thinking about the misplaced sock that was under the coffee table, or that there was a light bulb out in our ceiling light. What they will remember is the feeling of community, the feeling that someone has invested in them spiritually and emotionally, and they will be encouraged to share Christ's love with others.

Circumstances and Perspectives

I am on week four of the Unglued Online Bible study, and the first couple weeks were quite uneventful as far as facing moment where I would become unglued. I was thinking that I had this managing emotions stuff under control. Then week three happened.

It started with a sick cat and a trip to the vet on Monday…

…then it lead to a discovery of some unwelcome flea guests, of which we managed to clean up round one on Tuesday…

…then a busy and rough workday for both me and my husband, on the same exact day as our church small group on Thursday…

…then on my way home from my other small group the very next day, my check engine light came on, and the repair would not be covered under my maintenance plan at the dealership I bought it from because they are not a Mazda dealership…

…and finally, 11 p.m. on Saturday night, we had a mouse running around in our closet. Which, might I add, had piles of stuff on the floor that the mouse was able to hide in until just the right moment to run out at our feet.

Needless to say, I had reached my limit by Saturday night, and I became quite unglued when the mouse actually ran over my foot.

That is why these words in Chapter 7 stood out to me:

“…if only I were more in the habit of having a thankful heart full of praises instead of a grumbling heart consumed with circumstances.”

It’s a matter of making the habit of being thankful. Putting circumstances in God’s perspective, instead of just my own.  Praising God even if nothing seems to be going right…after all, the world is still turning, and I’m still breathing.

So last week in review with a new perspective:

I have two pets who entertain me, are companions (sometimes, anyway), and are normally healthy…fleas aren’t so fun, but we got free medication, which helps us a lot financially, and we caught them early so there weren’t that many of them…both of us have jobs and we have a great group that meets in our house every week…we both have cars, that are in good condition other than a couple minor things that need to be fixed…and finally , the mouse was tossed outside the same night, and I got a great laugh at my husband as he was chasing the mouse across our backyard yelling “go little mouse, go, go!!!”

Lysa also says, "...how powerful it is to shift from an attitude to gratitude and to praise our God in the midst of it all. When I do this, my circumstances may not instantly change, but the way I look at those circumstances certainly does.” By looking at the above circumstances with a new perspective, I believe it has opened the door to me being able to look at other circumstances with a new perspective as they come.

Today, I was allowing myself to get all worked up about a situation that hasn’t even happened yet. On my lunch break, I chose to sit and read my Bible. I looked up verses on being anxious, and 30 minutes later, I had a much better perspective and I went back to work with the reminder that I should “give all [my] worries and cares to God, for He cares about [me].” I was reminded to take each day as it comes.

God wants to take our worries. He wants to help us not be controlled by our emotions. If we waste time worrying, or being upset over something, or stuffing our emotions, we become ineffective in what God has given us to do in this very moment.

 

 

Unglued - Labels

I am on the second week of the Unglued Bible study on Melissa Taylor's blog, and it is amazing how aware I am becoming on the moments where my emotions get the best of me. The biggest thing that I have noticed in the past couple weeks is how in the heat of the moment where emotions are going haywire, it is very hard to reign them in and deny them control over my actions.

In chapter 3, Lysa says a very simple sentence that hit me in a HUGE way: "Labels only stick if I let them."

I have lived my entire life with the "quiet person" label. I don't speak up very often in big groups, and I have a soft voice. It was while reading this very quote that I finally realized how much control that label has over my life.

What I have realized is that by having my "quietness" pointed out in group settings, it actually made me believe the lie that I am a quiet person, and I do not have much to say in big groups. It shook my confidence.

And I have been living this label for years.

This label has hindered me from believing that I can really do what God has called me to do. As Lysa states, "Those labels start out as little threads of self dissatisfaction but ultimately weave together into a straitjacket of self condemnaton."

The "quiet person" label has me tempted to believe that I'm not going to be successful at my job...that I'll never be able to impact someone's life because I don't know what to say to some people...that I'll always be intimidated by the people that are outgoing and always talking to everyone about everything, never seeming uncomfortable in any situation.

Ephesians 2:10 says, "For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago."

Masterpiece...We have all been created by God, exactly as He meant for us to be.

Created anew...When we trust Jesus for salvation and eternal life, we are a new creation. God has given us a new life, and we do not have to be the "same old" people we always were.

...the good things he planned for us long ago." God already knows what we will be able to do in our lives. We just need to step up to them.

The truth is this: I do not have to be controlled by the quiet person label. I do not have to be afraid to speak up in a group setting because of the fear of not being heard. I do not have to go into every conversation with a stranger with the worry that I won't know what to say next. I do not have to be intimidated by outgoing people but instead, observe how they keep conversations going with complete strangers and learn from them.

What is a label that you need to shake off?

Fight Against Doubt

Am I really ready to take on this responsibility?

Do I really know enough to be able to be any help at all in this situation?

How can I be sure I am on the right path?

These are the questions I have asked myself over the past few years. Doubt can hold us back from what God wants to do in and through our lives. Doubt does not come from God...it is a tool the enemy uses to derail us from what God wants to through through us.

2 Timothy 1:7 says "For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline." (NLT)

I remind myself of this verse whenever I am faced with feelings of doubt and insecurity. When my flesh says, "You're too quiet for this role, too young for this responsibility..." I remember what God said in Jeremiah 1:7-8 "Don't say 'I'm too young' for you must go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you. And don't be afraid of the people, for I will be with you and will protect you."
The first thing Satan said in the Bible was this question: "Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?" He did not even specifically mention the only tree that Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from. Satan simply asked a broad question that contained a statement that he knew was inacurrate, and by asking that one question, he caused Eve to doubt the motive behind God's first command.

How many times do we start on a path that we feel God is leading us down, and then as time goes on we let doubt in and begin questioning if we heard God correcty regarding our decisions? How many times do we let the things we can see with our limited vision let doubt begin growing in our minds?

Any time we are doing something that God has led us to do, let us recognize doubt for what it is...the enemy's attack to deter us from God's will.

Prayer: God, guide me to replace feelings of doubt, fear, and timidity with feelings of power, love, and self-discipline.

Unlimited

Who knows of any single person on this earth that can meet with us anywhere, anytime we need them?

Who in your life will always show up where you are, no matter if you're walking down a road, sitting behind locked doors, or sitting beside the ocean?

I'm talking about 24/7, unlimited, nonstop availability.

The only person that is capable of this kind of guaranteed communication is Jesus. After his resurrection, he met with the disciples on a road (Luke 24:35), behind locked doors (John 20:19), and beside the sea (John 21:1)

So why, when we are faced with struggles or annoyances, do we sometimes turn to people that have limited availability? We text a friend, walk down the hall to vent to a co-worker, or call someone that we think will be there to listen to us. Don't get me wrong, these people are great and necessary to have in life...but we shouldn't depend on them to be our first choice when it comes to dealing with problems. Jesus will meet us wherever we are, so why don't we call on Him first?

Exchange

I found this quote on a blog from Nicki Koziarz a few days ago:

"What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it."

This quote has brought up so many thoughts over the past couple of days that I am still trying to sort through all of them. The one immediate thing that this quote did was challenge me to ask myself this question: "Is what I am doing/have done today meaningful?" It has challenged me to look beyond myself and what I'm doing in the moment, and think about the level of importance I am putting on any given activity.

It's given me a new sense of purpose at work...I'm exchanging a day of my life, five days a week, to make a difference in my workplace and the lives of the people I work with. The days I'm discontent at work are the days I'm focusing on what I'd rather be doing at home verses what I could be doing at work.

It's the reason I make sure that I am encouraging to my husband, and I do and say silly things to make him crack a smile. I make it a priority to ask him about his day and go "out on the town" with him, even if it's only to Target. I am exchanging days of my life to show the strongest, purest love humanly possible and to strive to become the kind of wife that Proverbs 31 describes.

It's the reason I make sure that I spend time with my mom, taking her shopping and out to eat and playing Parcheesi at her house. I've already lost my dad, without really having a chance to bond with him as an adult since he had been too sick and weak over the past couple of years. I won't have my mom forever, so I want to do what I can while I can. I am exchanging days of my life to make a difference in my mom's life, to break through the monotony and loneliness she is struggling through and give her encouragment as God works through me.

It's the reason I desire to be a better friend. I want to learn how to listen, really listen to what people are saying. I am exchanging days of my life to encourage the friends I have around me, and be like Jesus to them, not judging them but instead, supporting them as they realize the things they want to do in life.

At the end of the day, no matter how tired I am or how annoyed I get at the cats over their mischief, I'm thankful for the opportunity to rescue both of them, one through a rescue group and the second by just picking him up and fostering/adopting him myself. Their sweetest moments are worth every opened cabinet and torn trash bag that I find. I am exchanging days of my life to care for animals that God created. If He didn't have a purpose for them, they would not exist.

I want to make sure that I make a difference in each day. Even if it is in the smallest way, like picking up one piece of trash or wiping down a counter at work...I want to make sure that what is truly important to me is visible in my daily life.

Strength

I started writing this blog post last Tuesday. More specifically, I was writing it after work, but before we went to visit my dad in the hospital. God's timing is amazing. Just that morning, in my quiet time I was reading Nehemiah 8, and the verse below stood out to me:

"Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!" Nehemiah 8:10.

I have been faced with some new, exciting opportunities lately, as well as some challenges, and I keep reading about how God tells us to be strong (Ezra 10:4, Isaiah 35:4, 1 Corinthians 16:13, 2 Timothy 2:1 just to name a few). I keep thinking, 'well, that's great advice, but how exactly am I supposed to be strong? I honestly don't know how.' It was no accident that I discovered that verse that morning, nor was it coincidence that I could not get that verse out of my head all day.

I wasn't able to finish the blog post before it was time to leave, so I saved the draft with the intention of finishing up that night. I had no idea just how much that verse would mean to me until we got to the hospital, and we received the news that I have been half dreading, half expecting for a while...my dad had passed away.

In that moment, I had multiple reactions; sadness, numbness, and thankfulness. It felt strange to me that I could be feeling all three of those things within a matter of 30 seconds, but in the days that followed, this verse stuck with me, and my strongest moments were when I was looking towards God.

I am thankful for two things: one, my dad is no longer suffering, and two: just a couple weeks before he passed away, Bishop T.D. Jakes preached a powerful sermon on forgiveness at our church, and I was finally able to let go of a lot of past hurts from my childhood and teen years that were caused by my dad's health.

One of my favorite things that Elevation has taught is this (from the Joy Genome series): My joy is not determined by what happens to me, but by what Christ is doing in me and through me.

In John 12:27, Jesus says this, "Now my soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, 'Father, save me from this hour?' But this is the very reason I came! Father, bring glory to your name."

We have the opportunity, in everything we do and go through in life, to bring glory to God. God is my strength...my dad is no longer suffering, and I am thankful for that...and I am blessed that my mom is still living and I have opportunities to grow closer to her and my sister during this difficult time.  I am praying for my faith to grow even stronger and bolder, and that God touches and speaks to other people through me.

Peace

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Most of the time, when I read this verse, I acknowledge that yes, I will have troubles to face, and I know that if I lean on God for strength, I will make it through whatever life throws at me...even if I feel like at the end I am barely hanging on by a thread. However, I usually just think of the big things: health problems, car expenses that I can’t afford, job challenges, and major arguments with people that I’m close to. While reading the Amplified version of this verse, I noticed something:

The Amplified Bible states it this way, “In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer [take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted]! For I have overcome the world. [I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you.]

I always think about going to God to help me overcome the seemingly larger things…but what about the smaller day-to-day frustrations? Hitting every red light when I’m already late to where I’m going, forgetting something at home when I’m on my way to work, having to clean up extra messes that are made by being in a hurry…Christ overcame the world, and that includes the small things. Therefore, when we are feeling stressed out by the little things, we can turn to Jesus for patience and peace.

Another thing I think is amazing in this version of the text is the bit at the end. Jesus has deprived the world of power to harm us. This world only has as much power over us as we allow it to. If we turn to Jesus when we are having a weak moment and focus our eyes on Him, we will not be overcome by the worldly challenge that is facing us, no matter how small it may seem in our eyes.

Seek, Grow, Trust

Every time we experience tough situations in our lives, we can rejoice in the fact that God will always use it for His glory and our good. It’s in the hard times that we learn and grow the most, which is something that I am very grateful for.

Looking back, I see that so many of the moments in my life that have seemed unbearable were the moments God used to mold me into the person that I am. It is now almost an automatic response to ask God what His purpose is behind every challenge I face (although…I’ll be honest…some times my tone is angrier than others). My dad’s job loss when I was in middle school wasn’t easy on our family, but it gave me a year to spend time with him where he wasn’t tired from working all day. My dad becoming disabled right before I began high school was one of the most traumatizing events for my family, but the disability income benefits that followed was the income for my family all throughout my high school years. I also developed an attitude of respect and consideration for those who are handicapped.

Going through the first semester of community college was hard, because I was working 40 hours in addition to taking two courses. My day started at 7:30 a.m. and ended at 6:30 p.m. However, by taking the classes I developed a friendship with the girl that gave me my first bible. That bible was what I turned to during the year that I was out of church. Leaving my parents church was the biggest argument I ever faced with my mother, but it ultimately opened the door to an amazing church that has been where I got saved and have grown and met some wonderful people. I was laid off from my first job just a few months after I started going to Elevation Church, and that caused me to lean on God a bit more than I had before. Finally, dealing with conflict in my life brought me to truly see and experience the love of Jesus, which changed my entire life and gave me a fresh image of what love is.

This year my vision for my life is this: Seek, grow, trust.  I desire to seek God more this year…I want to grow in my walk with Christ…and I want to learn to trust both God and the people around me more. Experiences in life have caused me to not trust people as easily as I once did, and I face the same struggle when trusting that God will really provide for us when the numbers look scary. I struggle with trusting that things will ever change for the better for my dad’s health and my mom’s stamina to handle everything.  

Below is my life verse (Romans 12:12), followed by the two verses that I will memorize and focus on this year.

Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying. Romans 12:12

Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. Hebrews 11:1

God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. – Pslam 46:1

Even when we cannot see what is up ahead, God is a constant in our lives, and He is there through every moment of every day. He already knows what is coming, and He is preparing us now.