Just DO It

Psalm 108:13 With God’s help we will do mighty things, for he will trample down our foes.

What might you do if you really believed that God was here to help you? What would you attempt for His kingdom if you truly believed that God’s own Spirit lived within you to empower you? … Silly questions? No. The majority of daily readers of Truth in the Morning are confessing Christians, many of long standing. I can hear them now, “Of course I believe God is here to help me and I know His spirit lives in me!” Step back and take a breath, people, no one is saying you don’t.

Psalm 108:13 affirms, “With God’s help we will do mighty things.” The Hebrew reads more literally, “With God we will do mightiness” or “In God we will do strength.” When we are in relationship with the living God, when God’s own Spirit dwells within us, then we will be able to do far more than we might ever have imagined.

Did you notice the two keys in those phrases? The first key is, of course, “With God” and “In God”. It is not about our skills, talents or plans. It begins and ends with God. Key number two is a powerful combination of three little words… “we will do”. You know how I love those action verbs! So I ask again, what might you do if you really believed that God was here to help you? What would you attempt for His kingdom if you truly believed that God’s own Spirit lived within you to empower you?

You are, no doubt, familiar with the term ‘armchair quarterbacks’. In the Christian culture there are a lot of armchair Christian warriors and servants. They know all the plays that should have been made, critique the efforts of the movers and the shakers and yet, they never leave the comfort of their armchairs. “With God we will do mightiness” and “In God we will do strength.” There is a visible disconnect between what they claim to believe and what they actually DO for God’s kingdom.

My challenge to you is to give this some serious thought and prayer. Ask God for direction and guidance. Then get out of the proverbial armchair and DO. Psalm 108:13 With God’s help we will do mighty things, for he will trample down our foes.

Thoughts from a Traveler

Psalm 84:5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage.

When we think of the word pilgrimage, often the thought of travel to the ancient lands comes to mind. Every year at Easter we hear talk of the thousands of Christians making pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. Biblically speaking, however, the word is used to describe man’s journey through life on earth as he awaits his eternal homecoming with the Lord as referenced in the Psalms above.

Genesis 47:7-9 And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How many are the days of the years of thy life? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years: few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers’ in the days of their pilgrimage.

Here we have Jacob saying his one hundred thirty years are few and nothing compared the longevity of his forefathers. Me, I think I’ve doing good when I get to the end of each day! Some days it seems like night will never come so I can count the day as past and put it behind me. Not all days, just those particularly hard one, no emails of chastisement, please.

I like knowing life is a pilgrimage or journey on my way to eternity. I like to travel, so this is travel with a supreme purpose! Makes those harder days I mentioned worthwhile.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” (Lao-tzu, Chinese philosopher 604 BC - 531 BC) Although this is the popular form of this quotation, a more correct translation from the original Chinese would be "The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one's feet."

Either way, the point is our pilgrimage has a humble beginning of one step and starts exactly where you are. Without the first step, the earth beneath your feet remains the same. I don’t want to be here just to be here. I love that my life, my pilgrimage has a purpose. God knows the roads I will walk in my pilgrimage, the hardships I will encounter, the valleys to cross, and the mountains I must climb.

I don’t know how long my pilgrimage will last and it’s probably wise that I don’t. God gives me strength enough for each day at a time. Max Lucado wrote: ‘Days are the bite-sized portions of life, the God-designed segments of life management.’ Amen, to that!

“This is the day the Lord has made!  Rejoice and be glad in it!” Happy traveling, Friends.

Rest Stop on the Highway of Life

Matt. 10:42 “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward."

A cup of cold water doesn’t sound like much unless you are the thirsty one. In this scripture Jesus was talking to His disciples. As vivid as my imagination is, I struggle with what it really was like to have to walk on dirt roads everywhere you needed to go. We think nothing of hopping in the car and driving, in my case, the 36+ miles into San Antonio. I know I would give it much more thought if I had to walk there! I couldn’t carry enough water with me to make that journey; the weight would be prohibitive and cumbersome. I like to think along the way I would run into caring folks offering a cup of cold water…but would I?

I remember a scorching summer’s day many years ago, sixteen to be exact, when my car broke down on IH-35 between Waco and Georgetown. I was traveling with my then two year old grandson, Douglas. This was before everyone had a cell phone & I had to walk quite a distance to get to a phone to call for help. I had to carry Douglas on my shoulders as I walked along the side of the interstate during weekend traffic. It was horrible! Traffic buzzing by at high rates of speed, relentless heat, no water, no shade and a very hot and cranky two year old on my aching shoulders. No one, not one person stopped and offered help of any kind. Not even a cup of water.

The first place of refuge I came to was a La Quinta Inn. The desk clerk refused to let me use the desk phone, telling me there was a payphone at the gas station up the road. Can you picture what we must have looked like? A little blond boy red as a beet from the heat and sweat pouring off both of us and the clerk said we had to go further up the road to use a phone as I was standing in a place with a phone in every room. It irked the desk clerk to no end but I took the baby into the rest room to get wet paper towels to cool him off. I was beyond caring about her preferences at this point. My pleas fell on deaf ears, her opinion cease to matter to me. I cupped my hands to hold water for him to drink from the bathroom faucet. I didn’t have any money on me to even buy a coke or bottle of water.

Jesus made a point they could all relate to when He said “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these…” I believe the ‘cup of cold water’ is compassion, care, help, assistance, serving a need, and help in times of trouble…all the things He does for us.

Sometimes people literally need a cup of cold water. Sometimes is it the spiritual Living Water they need most of all. Regardless of the need, are we as Christians ready to help meet the need? Or do we buzz by in our hurried lives too busy to care or notice? I believe we like to think we would help but when the rubber meets the road, do we? I know I have been guilty of wanting to help, telling myself I would but my life got in the way more or less. My needs had to be met, too, after all. Didn’t they? My schedule was hectic and crazy, maybe I can help later. Maybe I’ll call to check on them; maybe I won’t get around to it. My intentions were good but my follow through fell through instead. “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these…”

Let’s ask the Lord to help us be the water bearers in life, sharing the Living Water first and foremost and offering a cup of cold water to those around us in need.

Have a Great Day

Psalm 90:14 Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy, That we may rejoice and be glad all our days!

Have you ever had one of those days where you just know it’s going to be trying and you dread getting ready to face the world? I’m sure we all have. It is difficult to get excited about facing the dragons we anticipate. It is in times like this we need to remind ourselves, and one another, that God’s mercies are new and fresh every morning.

What if we made a decision to set aside our dread and intimidation of upcoming unpleasantness and difficulties and lean on the strength of God’s fresh mercy and favor? We can’t control much of what comes our way regardless; why not decide upfront that we will determine to be positive and trusting instead. What have we got to lose? Nothing but anxiety, grumbling, and bad attitudes. You will certainly have more energy to cope with issues when you do not drain it away with negative thoughts. You might find at the end of the day it wasn’t nearly as bad as you anticipated. Looking back at all God has brought us through revives us and our faith. The next morning, make that decision again. Day after day of trusting God’s mercies for your life builds a strong foundation on which to stand when the real tragedies hit.  

This is the day the Lord has made!  Rejoice and be glad in it! Have a great day—every day!

Trusting God

Psalm 104:27-28 All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things.

‘Things’ have been the source of much thought, talk and frustration in the lives of many I know lately, including myself. We load our lives with too many ‘things’. The scripture above talks about God’s provisions. I think somewhere along the way humankind has gotten off the path of trusting God for provisions so we squirrel away things just to make sure we have enough …whatever that means. I think ‘enough’ has a lot to do with that ‘need vs. wants’ issue, too.

I ran across an article Max Lucado wrote titled Trust Him – Not Stuff. I used the scripture above. This is what Max had to say:

If there were no God—“stuff” trusting would be the appropriate response to an uncertain future.  But there IS a God!

And God does not want us to trust money.  Jesus said, “Do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink, or have an anxious mind.” 

Scrooge didn’t create the world.  God did!

Psalm 104 celebrates this lavish creation with 23-verses of itemized blessings; the heavens and the earth, the waters and streams and trees and birds and goats, and wine and oil and bread, and people and lions.  God is the source of living things both small and great!

God is the great giver.  The great provider.  The fount of every blessing.

Absolutely generous and utterly dependable.

The resounding and recurring message of Scripture is clear: 

God owns it all. God shares it all. Trust Him—not “stuff!”

We all know to trust God, we all say we trust God and yet we accumulate and put away more stuff than is reasonable and sane. You have no idea the battle I waged with myself yesterday over some curtains I purchased 20 years ago and have had stashed away. The Practical Me wanted to add them the growing mountain of things to donate. The Emotional Me wanted to keep them because I love them, they were expensive, I might wish I had them one day. Let me just say I have had these stored away for 18 of the 20 years. For 18 years I have moved and stored these silly things just in case I have the perfect room to use them again. Gee whiz! No one has seen them much less enjoyed them, not even me.

I have two hands, most of us do. Yet, I have seven spatulas (egg turners). Seven! The most I could use at one time would be two. Yet I am hard pressed to get rid of any and could make an argument for keeping the seven. If I trust God to provide my food why is it I can’t trust enough to believe it will get turned over without hoarding seven spatulas?! This, my friends, is just the tip of the iceberg. I bet you can look around your house and find a treasure trove of ‘stuff’ you have held on to as well. My cousin recently told me that she calculated the amount of money her father spent on commercial storage buildings over the years to house pure junk and it came to a whopping $65K. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? 

Where is our trust, faith and belief that God will provide all we need? It’s not in the attic, or the garage, or the storage building. Something to ponder.