Day 363: Direction: The Next Step

Psalm 25:4-5

Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

Psalm 31:3

Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me.

With New Years quickly approaching, and this year currently ending, this the time that people decide to make changes int heir lives. Everything from New Years Resolutions to deciding where to move or stay, many of us are entering a new chapter in our lives and closing the previous chapter. There's nothing more refreshing than starting New Year, to start with new goals, or continue those goals that you set for yourself this year. Many times we look at the New Year as another chance a new opportunity, to maybe get something right that we didn't before, to get rid of toxic habits or just vow ourselves to be better people. Whatever it may be we must seek God for direction. We are taking another step in our lives and we need to seek God so that He can guide us where we need to go.

Life is about progression, we move forward as time continues to move forward. As we walk as we continue to move forward we must make sure that we are following Christ in every way possible. The further we go the narrower the road might get or the harder it make be to make the decision to take the step that God has been preparing us to take. I feel like God prepares us for what He is about to do in our lives. He is taking us step by step to where He wants us to be. If you know that God is preparing you for something and you know that He leading you and guiding you to a certain place, please do not be afraid to step with Him. Do not be afraid to walk with Him. I don't know what your next step is but God does and that's good enough. For some of us taking the next step in our lives can be scary and intimidating, but what if God has been preparing you all year for this? What if we take a chance and believe that the dreams we have aren't just figments of our imaginations but they are tangible and God is taking us to meet them? What I'm saying is, take the next step of your life with Christ, don't try to do it without Him. Take the next step not just to follow your dreams but to grow closer to our Lord and Savior. To be more than we were before. To have a chance to grow in our faith and therefore grow in every other area of our lives. Take a step with Christ so that everything will fall into place, we are not going into this next year worried about the same things that worried us this year. So that we can start a new chapter in our lives with more faith in God, and a deeper understanding of who He is. But most importantly take a step with Christ because we love Him, because we don't want to walk through this life or any other life without Him. The next step includes growing closer to God, and whatever He has planned for you. Trust Him, and trust that where He is taking you is exactly where you are meant to be, because it is. 

All this to say, take a step with Christ, even if you don't know where your foot is going to land. Put the fear aside and push towards the destiny that God has set before you?

Reflection

1. What is your next step?

2. What is stopping you from taking that step?

3. If there is anything stopping you from taking a step with Christ, put it aside and know that God is taking you where you are meant to be. 

Prayer Time

Allow your answers to the above questions guide your prayers. Take the time to talk to God about direction and ask Him for guidance as to where you are going and where He wants you to be. 

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 364!

Day 327: Ride it Out!

Hebrews 10:32-36

32 Think back on those early days when you first learned about Christ. Remember how you remained faithful even though it meant terrible suffering. 33 Sometimes you were exposed to public ridicule and were beaten, and sometimes you helped others who were suffering the same things. 34 You suffered along with those who were thrown into jail, and when all you owned was taken from you, you accepted it with joy. You knew there were better things waiting for you that will last forever. 35 So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you! 36 Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.

Sometimes walking with Christ can feel like trying to swim or surf through a storm. It can feel like all you want is to stay afloat and not drown. I’m talking about those moments in life when the waves are crashing down on you and the winds blowing you all over the place, and you seem to have lost all control. Sometimes that’s what life feels like. It can be rough and sometimes because we walk with Christ things are a bit harder. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned was from swimming lessons. I grew up very afraid of water and whenever someone tried to teach me how to swim I would freak out when it was time to go into the deep end, even when my dad was holding me in his arms, telling me it was going to be okay, that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me. They would always tell me to stay calm. When I finally agreed to go to swimming lessons, my teacher would hold me up unto a certain point and then she let me go and told me to stay calm as I began to be afraid. She said, the more afraid you are the harder it is to learn. Freaking out wasn’t helping me in fact it was hurting, it made me sink faster. When I was too afraid to do things she wouldn’t let me get out of the pool, because she knew what I was capable of and she knew that I could handle it. I tell this story because sometimes this life is scary, sometimes those waves are bigger than we thought, but even in those moments of fear we have to ride them out. God knows what we can take and we cannot just walk away because we are afraid, but we must endure, we must endure because we know what’s on the other side, we know what it will all be worth in the end.

Verses thirty five through thirty six encapsulates everything that I want say, ”So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.” God has brought us this far, even when the storms are throwing us every which way, He was the one that made sure that the storm never overtook us. I thrive off of faith in the Lord, not abandoning that trust because it has gotten me to where I am at this moment in my life.

All this to say, life vn feel like you're riding the roughest wave. But even if you can barely stand, ride it out. God’s got you, you’re going to make it out just fine, trust Him and know that He is holding you up.

Reflection

1. Have you gone through or are you going through a time in your life where you feel like the storm of life is throwing you all over the place?
2. What have you noticed about submitting to God as opposed to submitting to fear?

Prayer Time

Allow your answers to the above questions guide your prayer, have a conversation with God about what we discussed. Whatever you feel led to pray about today, pour your heart out to Him.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 328!

Day 323: All in a Day's Work

2 Peter 3:8

But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.

I remember when I first heard and read this scripture I was so discouraged. I was discouraged because what I took from it was, that I would be waiting all my life to receive a blessing from God. I thought that I would have to wait until I was nearly dead. However that is not the case, yes we have to patiently wait for God and trust in His timing and sometimes that means waiting longer than expected. One thing we must know is that God’s plan and timing are perfect.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I grasps true clarity of this scripture.  When I took my eyes off myself and put them on Christ I gained an understanding that wa beyond me. God does so much in a day that it’s like a thousand years. That’s mind blowing when you think of it. God does so much in a day that it can be spread out over the span of a thousand years. Crazy! The saying, “God is working or God is busy.” has a new meaning. He is literally always working and doing things, He’s keeping the earth in it’s place. To start things off there’s approximately seven billion people on the Earth, 7,000,000,000. That’s a big number, He wakes us all up every morning. God wakes approximately seven billion people up every morning. Different regions, continents, time zones. It’s mind blowing! Let’s think about this, how many battles has God defeated before they even got to us. How many times has He spared us and we didn’t even know. Stopped attacks from reaching us that we never even knew about. God is fighting battles for us that we never see. His walking before us and defeating enemies we didn’t even know we had, and that’s just the supernatural.

God is constantly moving in our lives and we see that everyday, He is answering our prayers, listening to them, and blessing us all at the same time. He always has His eyes on us, God is always watching out for us.  He knows every move we will make before we make it. He knows where each of us are going at every moment.  

This is one of the most humbling scriptures I have ever read. Sometimes we can get so busy and so tired and exhausted and start to complain. Yes we are human and the more stress we put on ourselves and our bodies, the more exhausted we will be. Sometimes we have to just thank God for everything He’s done. Even in our exhaustion and even in our times of stress, we cannot automatically fall into this world of complaints because God is so much greater than it all. We also get to points in our lives when we are so proud and excited for the things that we do for ourselves that we tend to forget that it’s really God doing and the doing. It’s really God that’s giving us the means to take care of ourselves. We have to set ourselves aside to see and understand how the glory of God is constantly being played out in our lives. All of this goes to show just how great God is. We will never understand the magnitude of His greatness. We can never completely wrap our minds around His glory.

All of this to say, God does so much for us, more than we can ever imagine and it’s all explained to us in this small verse. God is great.

Response/Prayer Time

Take the time to respond to what we discussed today. Rest with this scripture, meditate on it and just take the time to thank God for who He is and all He’s done, is doing, and will continue to do in our lives.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening!  Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 324!

Day 311: Guard Your Heart, Don't Block It

Proverbs 4:23

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.

Ezekiel 36:26

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Block- to obstruct

Guard- To keep safe from harm or danger , protect

I’m sure many of us have lived by Proverbs 4:23, as we should. We have set our sights on protecting our hearts. So we will not get hurt, or so that it will not be abused. Sometimes we’re trying to protect ourselves from the wrong things. What I mean is that we sometimes have our hearts so guarded that we forget how to let those guards down. Guarding our hearts becomes building walls around it so that nothing and no one can come in. Our generation is so afraid of being hurt that we would rather be numb. We would rather not feel anything. I understand that heartbreak happens, at this age many of us have had our hearts broken at least once, but we’re still here. God put our hearts back together and shows us everyday how we should be loved.

We have so many walls built, from hurt, disappointment, betrayal, abandonment, the list can go on and on. It like every time something happens to us we build a new wall and eventually our hearts become unreachable. We forget how to feel, we don’t know how to love or be loved because we are so guarded. We are so blocked off from everything that we don’t even let God in.

Why are we so afraid to let love in? In the sense that God is love, no one can love us the way God will, but sometimes we can be so guarded that we can’t even knock down the walls to let Him in. The amazing thing about God is, He will knock those walls down and pursue our hearts. God wants our hearts, He loves us so much, but we sometimes turn away from that love. We turn away because we view God’s love through natural eyes, not seeing  that His love is supernatural. We don’t realize that God will love us more than the people who broke our hearts, He will not break our hearts, He will not stop loving us. Sometimes we allow our experiences to influence of perception of who God is. When the truth is, our experience with God should change how we perceive the world, ourselves, and other people. We cannot learn to love properly if our heart is caged by walks we’ve built to try to protect it. When we do that we distance ourselves from God and His people.

With that being said we must not assume that everyone is out to get us.

I remember a point in my life where I was so guarded that I wouldn’t allow anyone to love me, or get close to me because everyone that said they loved me turned on me and walked out of my life in an instant. After that I assumed that everyone was the same way, I thought everyone was just going to break my heart. I made it very hard for people to love me, as well as for me to love people because I could not bare the pain of having my heart shattered again. It was like anyone new I met would have to go through a trial run before I would let them completely in, just to make sure they weren’t going to hurt me. I closed myself off because up unto that point in my life had found that love hurts. Then God showed me, love should not hurt in this way. He showed me how I should be loved, by sent people, good, genuine people into my life that would not be there to use me, or hurt me, but people who would wholeheartedly love me. It threw me, because I was expecting them to walk out of my life, and treat me the same the others did. But they didn’t, God sent them to show me what true love looks like.

-Dyamond

A lot of what we go through when it comes to this is, we cannot trust people, we refuse to trust people or we find it very hard to trust people. Also the inability to completely trust and give our hearts to Christ. The first thing we must do is trust God with our hearts. He made the human heart, He tends to every need. If anyone knows how to love us, it’s God. We have to trust that God will not allow us to hurt beyond what we can handle. And yes sometimes we will go through heartbreak, it’s a part of life, trusting God with our heart doesn’t mean we’ll never hurt again, it means that in those moments we trust God to put us back together, and so much better than before. We trust Him to love us through the pain and aches.

All this to say, we cannot allow what has happened to us in the past influence how we love people in the present and the future. Guard your heart, and protect but don’t block it and lock it away. God wants our hearts but we have to be willing to trust Him with it.

Reflection

1. Have you ever had your heartbroken?
2. Did it cause you to close yourself off?
3. Have you ever found yourself guarding your heart from God?
4. Why do think it is so hard for us to trust God and people with our hearts?
5. Discuss this.

Prayer Time

Allow your answers to the above questions guide your prayer, have a conversation with God about what we discussed today. Search yourself and see if you are blocking your heart and let God in.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 312!

Day 310: Proving Your Faithfulness

James 5:12

And since you know that he cares, let your language show it. Don’t add words like “I swear to God” to your own words. Don’t show your impatience by concocting oaths to hurry up God. Just say yes or no. Just say what is true. That way, your language can’t be used against you.

1 Samuel 15:22

And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.

Proverbs 21:3

To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.

Have you ever felt the need to prove yourself to God? Prove your faithfulness. I feel like sometimes we try too hard to prove how faithful we are that we forget to actually be faithful. We have talked about how we are sometimes so concerned with how we look to other people that we forget to live. We are more concerned with looking like a Christian in front of others that we forget that being a christian and living the lifestyle of a christian is far more important. Have you noticed that sometimes we treat God the same way. We do extra stuff, we do more good deed, just to prove that we are good Christians. We spend our time making vows, and timing our prayers so they’re exactly an hour, trying to prove to God that we are good Christians. Now some will say that all this stuff is just a way to be in a relationship with God. But do we do these things because we love God with all our heart, mind, and soul? Or are we doing it because we want to look good in front of God. We can make a million vows to Him, and swear by His name all day but in our heart is not in it, it means nothing. If everything we do is not to bring glory to God, why are we doing it? Let's not be like the Pharisee's who worshipped God with their mouths but their hearts were far from Him. (Mark 7:6).

Why do we waste our time trying to prove ourselves to God, when He already knows us. He knows our heart, He knows who we are. He know what we struggle with, what our strengths are, He knows everything there is to know about us because He created us. Why not spend our time being in a relationship with the living God. Walking through life with Him. Let’s spend our time getting to know Him and diving into our word and loving Him with everything we have. See when we love God with all our heart, mind, body. And soul everything we do will be bred from our love for God, not our need our want to prove our devotion to Him.

I remember when I went to school for theology, a lot of it was to prove to people how good of a Christian I was, and also to show God how faithful I was. At no point in my life did I ever want to stop acting, but in order to prove myself to God I gave up doing the thing that He put me on this earth to do in order to “serve” in His kingdom. I gave up theatre school for bible school, and it made me feel like a great Christian. But that only lasted so long and before I knew it I am back in theatre school,graduating in a semester after dropping out of bible school. Now some might say this is backwards, but I know that I am exactly where God wants me to be. What I had to learn was, God is more concerned with my heart than my sacrifice. He wants me more than He wants my sacrifice, and I had to want my relationship with God more than I wanted the image of christianity plastered on my life. I’m not saying that any of this, going to bible school, was a mistake. What I’m saying is that I was too busy trying to prove my faithfulness to God that I never took the chance to look up and see what He was really doing in my life.

-Dyamond

All this to say, having a relationship with God is so much better than having on a mask of Christianity. Don’t try to prove yourself to God with clever promises vows, instead love Him with everything. Instead dive into Him, and trust in who He is, knowing that He care for you. He loves you. Knowing that God cares more about our hearts than He does about the things we try to do to prove our devotion. If we want to give anything to God to prove our devotion, we should consider giving Him our hearts. Surrendering our lives, and walking like Christ.

Reflection

1. Have you ever found yourself trying to prove your devotion to God?
2. How has that worked out for you?

Prayer Time

Take the time to pray about what we discussed today, ask god for clarity, and allow Him to speak to your heart.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening. Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 311!

Day 306: Lose Control

Proverbs 19:21

You can make many plans, but the Lord’s purpose will prevail.

Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Isaiah 55:9

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts”

You ever felt like you were navigating through life but not really getting anywhere? You have a plan, you know what you want and you're going after it but it doesn’t seem to be working out the way you planned. Everything thing is out of control and falling apart. It’s like we’re losing a grip on everything. What if we’re think about it the wrong way. What if we have it all wrong, what if everything is out of control because no matter how hard we try life is too hard to navigate alone. Sometimes we think losing control of our life is the worst thing possible. Not knowing where we’re going and feeling lost is the bane of our existence. But, what if it’s not, what if it’s the start of something beautiful. When we’re in these positions we tend to open ourselves up to direction, when we’re losing control we try to find a way to get a hold of life again. It is in these moments when we find ourselves submitting to God. It’s in these moments that we realize how big He is and small we are. Sometimes we have to lose control to know that we never had it anyway. Sometimes we have to be lost to understand that only in Christ can we be found.

What I’m saying is we cannot walk around with our planners, our schedules, or six month plans and completely cross God out of the picture. There is nothing wrong with plans, goals, and following our dreams but we must keep a loose grip on them because we never know what God is going to do. If anything we hold tightly to God and His plan because it is better and greater than anything we could ever imagine. We have to learn to let go of our control over our lives and give it God. It sounds crazy but it’s not. Only when we completely surrender to God will we see how His hand has always been on us. We will see how His plan for our lives has been, is being, and will continue to be played out in our lives. When we constantly feel the need to be in control we are in a constant state of anxiety when things do not go as we planned them to go. But God is like, “I got this, don’t worry, I got this.”

All this to say, lose control. Submit to God and know that He is always in control. Don’t fight against it.

Reflection

1. Are you the type of person that needs to constantly be in control?
2. Do you really believe that God’s got this (your life in His hands)?
3. Why do you think it is so hard to fully submit to God?

Prayer Time

Allow your answers to the above questions guide your prayer today. Have a conversation with God about giving up the need to be in control to Him. Talk to Him about submitting completely to Him and trusting in His plan.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 307!

Day 305: Trust In the Power of Prayer

James 5:13-18

Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. 14 Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord.15 Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven.16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. 17 Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! 18 Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.

I think sometimes we underestimate the power of prayer, or we doubt while praying. Why do we turn to prayer as a last resort, and why do we still worry or why do we doubt if we pray. When we pray we are having faith that God will answer us, that He hears us and that He is going to answer our prayer. Sometimes we allow what we see to make us doubt what God can do.

I love that the answer to all the questions in the above scripture is prayer. Whatever is going on in our lives we should pray. If we’re sick, upset, happy, in and out of season we should constantly be in prayer, Sometimes we allow our situation to dictate our prayers lives. I think all of us have been there. When we are in trouble, when things are falling apart we are in constant prayer. But when things are going good for us, when life is treating us right, why is our prayer lives reduced to close to nothing? Our situation changes the way we pray and what we pray for but it should not affect our prayer life at all. The truth is it’s sometimes easier to pray when things in our lives are out of control because we need God to fix them. We need God to deliver us and bring us out of the hard times. But what about the good times. When things are going good, praise God. There’s nothing like taking the time to thank and praise God for what He has done, for who He is and how He has moved in our lives.

Many times we feel ourselves praying to God for the same things over and over again, as if we want to make sure that He hears us, or has heard us. There’s nothing wrong with constantly praying for something, but at what point is that constant prayer bred from doubt. What I mean is, when we pray do we really believe that God can do it. Are we praying just to pray or are we praying in faith? Some things takes a lot of prayer, and sometimes we are doubting God. There is no use of us praying if we are going to doubt and worry anyway. This is something God has taught me, don’t pray and worry, don’t pray and doubt. It defeats the purpose of prayer. We must pray in faith and trust in the power of prayer, and that means trusting that God hears us and He is going to answer us. This does not mean that we will always get the answer we want. It means that we are trusting God and His plans.

When talking about Elijah Peter says before anything, “Elijah was as human as we are…” I think that is meant to encourage us, yes we are human, so was Jesus, and Paul, and John, and Peter, and Timothy, and all the Apostles, but when they prayed God moved. That is because they prayed in faith knowing that it was not by human hands or human power but it was through the divine power of God that these things were done. Yes, we are mere humans but we serve an almighty God who can do anything! The scripture goes on to talk about how Elijah prayed that it would not rain, and it didn’t rain for three and half years, exclamation point! Then when he prayed for rain it rained! This is the power of prayer, something that seems so simple yet so hard for many people is one of our most powerful weapons. Prayer changes things, God moves when His people earnestly pray to Him, having faith that He will answer. Elijah did not talk about how it should stop raining or how it needs to rain again, no He went straight to God in prayer and asked. That’s what we as the body of Christ must learn to do, we must learn to talk less, pray more, and watch what God does.

All this to say, do not doubt the power of prayer and what God can do. Do not pray and worry but trust in Him.

Response/Prayer Time

Take the time to respond in whatever way you feel led, and pray. Pray about whatever is on your heart, allow the Holy Spirit to fill you, and just pray.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 306!

Day 284:When Every Else Leaves

2 Timothy 4:16-18

The first time I was brought before the judge, no one came with me. Everyone abandoned me. May it not be counted against them. But the Lord stood with me and gave me strength so that I might preach the Good News in its entirety for all the Gentiles to hear. And he rescued me from certain death. Yes, and the Lord will deliver me from every evil attack and will bring me safely into his heavenly Kingdom. All glory to God forever and ever! Amen.

Have you ever had a moment in your life when you felt all alone, when you felt like no one was there, and even in your hardest and darkest moments you were fighting alone? I’m sure we can all point out moments in our lives when we have felt abandoned by everyone, even felt like God abandoned us. We all know what it’s like to fight alone, and the pain and struggle of not having anyone there to help you fight through whatever it is you are going through. Sometimes no matter how much we want someone to be there, they can’t. Sometimes people will walk away from us at the worst times in our lives. It’s like having someone walk out on you when you need them the most. One of the things I love that Paul says is, “May it not be counted against them.” He is not blaming them because he knows who is there for Him and will stand with him no matter what. Paul opens our eyes a bit to see that we are never alone. Even when everyone leaves and deserts us, God is standing right there with us.

We may not be able to depend on people but one things for sure is that we can depend on God. We may have moments where we feel like we are doing it alone, when we feel like we are fighting alone. The true sign that we are not fighting alone is that we get through it. We cannot get through anything, nevertheless go through life alone. As long as we have breath in our body God is right there with us. Fighting for us. He is right there with us, holding us up, giving us strength. We are never alone. God will never leave or desert us. Our very existence depends on Him.

All this to say, God loves us way too much to leave us. He will never leave us to live life on our own or fight by ourselves. Every second of every hour of every day He is right there with us. God never leaves us or walks away from us, we walk away from Him, and even then He is still protecting us and giving us life.

Reflection

1. Have you had a moment when you felt like everyone walked out on you?
2. Have you ever felt like Go abandoned you?
3. What was the sign that showed you that God never left?

Prayer Time

Allow your answers to the above questions guide your prayer today, have a conversation with God about what we discussed today. If you feel alone and feel like God has abandoned you, I want to let you know that God is always there. He will never leave nor forsake you. He’s right there, trust in Him and His plan. God might be silent but He has not abandoned you. He loves you.

Deuteronomy 31:6

Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”

I love and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! BE sure to sha this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 285!

Day 270: Why Worry?

Philippians 4:6-7

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Let’s talk about worrying.  This is all too familiar to many of us. Why do we worry so much? There’s so much stuff for us to be anxious about, so much to be worried about. So many things to get us in a frenzy. Especially in our twenties, we’re graduating from college and figuring out what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives. We’re still figuring out who we are, and we’re constantly changing. Or maybe we’re making life changing decisions, coming into life changing responsibilities. Things are constantly changing around us. We’re just trying to stay afloat (life is so much more than just staying afloat, but that’s another topic for another day). We’re trying to live a normal life, working, going to school, paying bills, keeping in contact with family and friends, marriages, kids, and for those of us who are single, trying to have some type of love life. Maybe we’re trying to find the one (they’re always at church or coffee shops lol). On a serious note, there is so much for us to be worried about, so much for us to be anxious about, and losing our minds about. Many of us find ourselves in these places. But the passage of above tells us not to worry about anything but pray about everything. Really? All of my problems can be solved with prayer? Yes they can! It’s that simple, I’m not sure why we as humans like to complicate things (But that’s also another subject for another day). The next line goes on to say, ‘tell God what you need’. Remember when Jesus came and said, come to Him so He can give us rest?

Matthew 11:28

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

He doesn’t want us carrying those worries around. It’s a heavy burden, He says let me give you rest, put that burden down and take mine, it’s light. When Jesus was nailed to the cross He took all of our burden with Him. We don’t have to carry them.  Pray about it and leave it with Him, trust me He can handle it better than we can. We worry so much and that often takes the place of prayer in our lives. But God is like, ‘no, tell me what you need. I got you. Don’t worry about it, talk to me about it and let me handle it.’ Instead of worrying, I’ve learned to thank God in advance, thanking Him for the things that He has done and the things He is going to. Putting all my faith in Him, because He sees far beyond what my eyes could ever see or imagine.

Sometimes we’re focused on what’s right in front of us that we kind of forget who God is.  We have to sometimes look at the grand scheme of things, the bigger picture.  We begin to worry because we cannot see past our situation, that thing staring us right in the face. But the thing about faith is that is gives us the opportunity to see through the situation and see God.  We get so caught up in what’s in front of us that we cannot see beyond that to see that God has it all under control.  I think of it this way, why worry when God already has it figured out. I can worry about what I’m going to do with my life, but I know that God already has a wonderful plan for me, and even though I don’t know what that plan is, I’m going to trust Him to lead me. I may not know exactly where I’m going but I know that where I am isn’t the end. I know He has gotten me thus far, so I’m going to continue to put my faith in Him. We worry when things don’t go as planned. Even in those moments we must realize that God is moving. This is why we must keep a loose grip on our plans, because even in our greatest dreams, God is always doing something greater and bigger. If we truly believe that God’s plan is far greater than ours, why are we worrying about the little things that we think we have control over? Why worry when God does far beyond what we can ever think, ask, or imagine? I have come to the conclusion that with this understanding I have nothing to worry about, God has already gotten it figured out and it took me a while to finally get it.

There’s something about being worry free that makes life so much easier. We enjoy life more when we’re not in a constant state of anxiety and worry. It’s a beautiful feeling. We see the beauty of life when we begin to understand that God is completely in control. He has it all figured out and He’s guided us through it all. There’s comfort and peace in that.  We may not know or understand what God is doing in that moment, but there is beauty in it all, even in the unknown. The mystery of it all keeps us following Him. Just as the scripture says, “...Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.”

Well how do i just pray and not worry? Faith. Take a chance on God, leap and the net will appear. All it takes is a little faith to step out. Just take a chance and I promise He won’t let you down. Our faith cannot grow if it’s not tested, Our faith is tested most when we are going through hell on earth. It’s the moments when we feel like there’s no reason to pray or trust God. In those moment just trust Him, give Him a chance, jump, He will catch you. Trust me, He won’t let you fall.  

All this to say, have faith in God. Don’t worry about anything, instead, pray about everything.

Reflection

1. Are you a worrier?
2. Do you sometimes focus on the situation at hand as opposed to God’s plan?
3. Are you willing to take a chance on Him?

Prayer Time

Allow your answers to the above questions guide your prayer. Talk to God about what we discussed today. Have a honest conversation with Him. Lay down all your worries at His feet and leave them there. Take a chance on God today.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for day 271!