Trusting God Day by Day: 365 Daily Devotions (21 page)

T
oo much activity and no rest definitely is the culprit behind most stress, but no activity is also a problem. I am sure you have heard that exercise is a great stress reliever, and it is very true. I would rather be physically tired from exercise and movement than tired in my soul from doing nothing and being bored.

Work is good for all of us. As a matter of fact, God said we should work six days and rest one. That shows how important work and activity are in God’s eyes. God has created us to work, not to sit idly by and do nothing. There are several good stories in the Bible about people who had serious problems and when they asked Jesus for help He told them to
“Get up!”

In the fifth chapter of John we see one example. A man was crippled, and he lay by the pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years waiting for his miracle. When Jesus came to the man and asked him how long he had been in that condition, the man gave the length of time and then continued to tell Jesus how he had nobody to put him into the pool at the right time and how others always got ahead of him. Jesus told the man to
“get up! pick up your bed… and walk!”
(John 5:8).

Get up
and start doing whatever you can do to clean up the messes in your life. If they are marriage messes, then do your part. Don’t worry about what your spouse is not doing; just do your part and God will reward you. If you have a financial mess, then stop spending and start paying off your debts. Get an extra job for a period of time if you need to. If you are not able to do that, then ask God to show you what you can do. Remember, “If you do what you can do, then God will do what you cannot do.”

W
hen you focus excessively on the negative elements of a certain situation and overlook the good aspects, you are “filtering out” the positive and exaggerating the negative. Very few situations are 100 percent negative; most of the time, you can find something good in every circumstance, even if you have to be really diligent about it.

Let’s say you are a mom with young children. Your four-year-old colors on the walls, cuts holes in his new pants, kicks his sister, and spills grape juice all over your freshly cleaned carpet. Let’s also say he finally apologizes to his sister without being reminded, confesses to cutting his pants instead of saying, “The dog did it,” makes an attempt to clean his room, and says you are the best mom in the whole world. To say he was absolutely horrible all day long and forget about his good moments would be filtering out the good, and it would leave your mind with nothing but negative thoughts. Though there certainly would have been some negatives about that day, it had its positive experiences, too.

I can’t emphasize too strongly how important it is that you resist the temptation to characterize something as totally negative or to focus excessively on negative aspects of a situation. Look at the situation as a whole and find something positive about it.

When you’re constantly focusing on the negative, you’ll find it very difficult to trust that things will get better. But when you choose to find
the positive things in even your worst challenges, you’ll never run out of hope or the ability to put your trust in God.

I
f you are stressed out all the time, something will have to change in order for the stress to be relieved. It will not just go away as long as you keep doing the same thing. We cannot expect to keep doing the same thing over and over and get a different result. If you want different results, you have to change what you are doing.

Take some bold steps of faith and change anything the Lord leads you to change. If what you are doing with your time is not bearing good fruit, then make a change. If you are not getting enough rest, make a change. If you are not disciplining your children and their behavior is causing you a lot of stress, then make a change. If you are not taking care of yourself, then make a change. If you are bored, make a change. If your friends are taking advantage of you, then make a change! Are you getting the point? Stress can be relieved if you’re not afraid to make changes.

You may be afraid of change, but it is also possible that even if you find the courage to make the necessary changes, other people in your life won’t like the changes you make. Don’t be afraid of them, either.
You will get used to the changes, and so will they. If you don’t take action now, you will still be complaining about the same things a year from now, and a year after that, and ten years after that, and there will be no end to your misery. The time is
now
! Boldness takes action, but fear breeds inactivity and procrastination. The choice is yours!

W
e must learn to wait for God’s plans to develop. He perfects everything that concerns us. True boldness moves in God’s timing; it moves at the right time.

During the three years of Jesus’ earthly ministry, people thought He was crazy. His own brothers were embarrassed by Him, and in an effort to save their reputation, they told Him He needed to go somewhere else and do His works. If He was unwilling to do that, they had another option for Him. They told Him to take action and stop doing His works in secret. They tried to convince Him it was time to show Himself and His works to the world. In other words, they wanted Jesus to impress the people with what He could do.

He responded to them by saying, “My time (opportunity) has not come yet…” (John 7:6).

How many of us could show that type of self-control? If you could do the miracles that He could do and were being made fun of and
challenged to show your stuff, what would you do? Would you wait until you absolutely knew that it was the right time, or would you take action that was not sanctioned by God?

It is good to have plans, and I believe we should plan boldly and aggressively, but we must be wise enough to know that our plans will ultimately fail without God. God’s Word says, “Except the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it…” (Ps. 127:1). We can build without God as our foundation, but like any building without a strong foundation, we will eventually fall.

G
od did not send the power of His Spirit into our lives so we could be weak-willed, wimpy, or the type of person who gives up when the going gets tough. God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind (see 2 Tim. 1:7).

In the beginning of my ministry, God gave me a dream. In the dream, I was driving down a highway and I noticed cars pulling off. Some were parking, and others were turning around to go back where they came from. I assumed there must be trouble up ahead but could not see what it was. As I boldly continued to drive forward, I saw a bridge with water from the river below starting to flow across it. I realized that the people in the cars were afraid they might get hurt or get
somewhere and not be able to get back. My dream ended with me sitting in my car looking first at the water-covered bridge, back where I had been, and to the side of the road, trying to decide if I should park, retreat, or keep moving forward. Then I woke up.

God used that dream to show me that there will always be opposition when pressing toward a goal. There will always be opportunity to park and go no farther or turn around and give up. It was up to me to decide each time if I would give up or go on. That dream has helped me many times to press on when difficulties came and I was tempted to quit. I have decided that even though I sometimes make mistakes, and I may not always get the result that I hope for, I will never quit! Determination will get you a lot further than talent. So if you feel you lack in talent, take heart. All you need to win in life is a determination to never give up and keep pressing forward.

R
esponding to a heated debate over whether or not Christians in the early Church should eat meat that had been offered to idols, Paul indicates in Romans 14:14 his strong belief that thoughts are very powerful. Paul did not believe meat offered to idols could be tainted, because
he knew idols were nothing but wood or stone. However, many people did not see things as Paul did, and he understood that. So his advice to them was not to eat the meat if they
thought
it was unclean. He knew that once they believed the meat was unclean in their conscience, it didn’t matter if it was unclean or not. Their thoughts would condemn them.

The more I ponder Romans 14:14, the more amazed I am by the depth of Paul’s insight. The principle he understood was true when applied to meat offered to idols in ancient times, and it is still true today in any area of life. For example, if you think, “
I will never get a good job
,” you aren’t likely to get one. If your thoughts have convinced you that you can never do anything right, you’ll tend to make more mistakes than normal and have a high rate of failure.

Also, for many people, whatever “they” say becomes truth—and “they” may be the news media, a celebrity, a group of friends, or others who enjoy sharing opinions but may or may not really have any idea what is true. When you and I believe lies, our minds can actually limit us and even keep us from doing what God created us to do.

But if we will contend for the truth, embrace the truth, and build our lives upon the truth, we will succeed in every endeavor.

T
his Scripture has stabilized my emotions many times when I was in a hurry to get somewhere and found myself at a standstill in traffic on the highway. Initially, I get a sinking feeling, then I get aggravated, and then I say, “Well, since my steps are ordered by the Lord, I will calm down and thank God that I am right where He wants me.” I also remind myself that God may be saving me from an accident farther down the road by keeping me where I am. Trusting God is absolutely wonderful because it soothes our wild thoughts and emotions when things don’t go the way we had planned.

I learned long ago that with God on our side, even though we will experience disappointments in life, we can always get “reappointed.” If you or I have a doctor’s appointment and he has an emergency and has to cancel, we simply make another appointment. Life can be that way, too. Trusting that God has a good plan for us, and that our steps are ordered by Him, is the key to preventing disappointment from turning into despair.

How do you react when you get disappointed? How long does it take for you to make a transition and get reappointed? Are you acting on the Word of God or merely reacting emotionally to the circumstance? Are you controlled by what is around you, or by Jesus, Who lives inside you?

Trusting God completely and believing that His plan for you is right is infinitely better than trusting your own plan. It is impossible to be mad at someone you really believe has your best interest in mind. And God is always for us, never against us. He is the only One Who can help you and truly comfort you; therefore, it is much better to run to Him in your disappointment than away from Him.