Trusting God Day by Day: 365 Daily Devotions (24 page)

Feelings are fickle; they change frequently and without notification. Since feelings are unreliable, we must not direct our lives according to how we feel. You can be aware of your feelings and acknowledge their legitimacy without necessarily acting on them. God has given us wisdom, and we should walk in it, not our emotions.

Healthy emotions are very important. They help us recognize how we truly feel and what we value. Good emotional health is vital for a good life. But a good life also means being able to manage our emotions and not be managed by them. Negative emotions such as anger, unforgiveness, worry, anxiety, fear, resentment, and bitterness cause many physical illnesses by raising our stress levels.

It seems to me that most people in our society today are mad, and the ones who aren’t are sad. Thank God we no longer have to be like
“most people
.” God doesn’t want anyone to be a slave to their feelings. To manage your emotions and your life, you need to ask God for His wisdom instead of trusting your feelings.

The more stable our emotions are, the healthier we will be, and we all want to enjoy good health. I strongly encourage you to trust God to help you learn to manage your emotions so they don’t manage you.

W
e can quickly ruin a day with wrong thinking. Friendships are destroyed because of wrong thinking. Business deals go wrong. Marriages fail. It’s so easy to concentrate on everything that is wrong with your spouse instead of what is right, and soon you want to get away from the person you are married to, when what you really want to escape is your own negative mind.

Replace suspicion and fear with trust. Trust breeds trust. Trusting others, and especially trusting God, helps keep us healthy. When we trust, we are relaxed and at rest.

This is good-old common sense. Consider the following case: You are walking down an unfamiliar street and a man comes out of his house with his pit bull growling on a leash and mutters,
“What are you doing in my yard?”
You think,
Who is this nutcase?
and act angry and suspicious right back. His unfriendliness boomerangs back to him (and probably makes him unfriendlier still). On the other hand, if you are somehow able to look beyond his suspiciousness (maybe he was recently robbed?) and act extremely friendly and relaxed toward him, more often than not he will relax, too, and you’ll have a friendly interaction that improves his day and yours.

Call this the “boomerang effect.” Or follow the Bible and call it “reaping what you sow.” Whatever you call it, the saying is true: you get what you give.

W
e must live on the resurrection side of the cross. Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead so that we might no longer be stuck in sin, living miserable lives. Many people wear a necklace called a crucifix, which is an emblem of Jesus hanging on the cross. Often we see a crucifix in a church with Jesus hanging on it. I know it is done to remember and honor Him and I am not against it, but the truth is that He is not on the cross any longer. The Romans crucified thousands of people, but only One rose again from the dead. Now He is seated in heavenly places with His Father and has also lifted us above the low level of thinking and living sinful, worldly.

The apostle Paul said he was determined to know Jesus and the power of His resurrection that lifted Him out from among the dead (see Phil. 3:10). Jesus came to lift us out of the ordinary, out of negative thinking, guilt, shame, and condemnation. He came to take our sins to the cross and defeat them. Sin has no power over us any longer because we are forgiven and the penalty has been paid.

Which side of the cross are you living on: the crucifixion side or the resurrection side? It is good and respectful to remember that Jesus suffered a terrible death for us on the cross, but we need to also realize that He rose from the dead and made a new life available to us. There is a popular song titled “Because He Lives,” and it is about how Jesus’
death and resurrection give us the power and privilege to live life in victory today. Because He lives, we can love ourselves in an unselfish way. A way that enables us to be all we can be for God’s glory. The only way I know to say it is: get a new attitude about yourself! Stop thinking that your failures and mistakes are too much for God. He isn’t looking at them, and you need to stop looking at them, too. Deal with them in Christ and go on!

H
ave you ever gone out to breakfast with somebody whose meal cost them $8.00 and watched them torture themselves over the tip? They pay with a 10-dollar bill and have 2 one-dollar bills in change. The customary tip would be 20 percent, which would amount to $1.60. What will they do? Will they be generous and leave the whole $2.00 as the tip? Not on your life! That would be too much. Instead, they’ll waste 10 minutes of their life getting change on that second dollar so they can leave $1.60 tip and save themselves $.40 rather than leave an “exceptionally generous” tip of $2.00.

But what would happen if they left the full $2.00? They’d save some valuable time—time undoubtedly worth more to them than $.40. And they’d bless the server. Not that the actual $.40 means much to her, either, but the message that goes along with that $.40 means the world! It says
“thanks,”
and it says what she does has value. Maybe this
message gets lost—she may just sweep up the tip without counting—but the generous person will always be blessed. He will know instinctively that he has done the better thing. What an opportunity… we can increase the happiness of others and ourselves for mere pocket change!

This is just one tiny example of the many ways in which the small things we do have surprisingly powerful repercussions. Small things set the tone for our days. Going the extra mile for people, whether it’s a slightly larger tip, an unexpected compliment or gift, or even holding a door for them, costs you very little and gives you a lot. Make a decision to be the type of person who always goes the extra mile and does more than enough!

O
ne of the biggest problems in society today is that people don’t want to take responsibility for their lives. They want quick fixes. Society has trained them to believe that if they have problems, somebody else is responsible. Their parents are responsible. Their spouses are responsible. Their schools or employers are responsible. Taking responsibility for our actions and choices is often hard to do, but it is vitally necessary if we want to enjoy the good life Jesus wants us to have.

I’m not saying you are responsible for the current state of your life. Lots of uncontrollable events occur in our lives. Sometimes we get poor training in childhood. Sometimes we have bad people in our lives who
hurt us. The situation you find yourself in may or may not be your fault. But it is your fault if you take it lying down! You do not have to stay in that bad situation. You get to make a choice—and that choice is 100 percent yours.

No matter how you got to where you find yourself today, don’t let it be an excuse to stay there. I had many excuses and reasons for my poor health, bad attitude, and unbalanced life. As long as I offered excuses, I never made progress. Taking responsibility for where we are is a must in making progress. Perhaps you did not get a good start in life, but you can have a good finish. If you have a bad habit of making excuses instead of taking responsibility, today is the best day to change!

I
don’t think it’s dangerous to have a good opinion of yourself in Christ, but I do think it is dangerous not to. The truth is that you cannot rise above what you think. We are all limited by our own thinking. If we think small, we will live small. And if we think big, we will live big. God wants us to realize how big He is, and He wants us to be bold enough to think big thoughts. God did not chastise David because he thought he could kill Goliath—He was proud of him! David knew that his victory was in God and not in himself, but he was confident and courageous and refused to live small.

What your life amounts to is directly connected to what you think
of yourself. We need to learn to think like God thinks. Some identify with the problems they have had in life and call themselves by that name. They say,
“I am divorced. I am bankrupt. I am an abuse victim. I am an alcoholic.”
They should say,
“I was divorced, but now I am a new creature in Christ. I was a victim of abuse, but now I have a new life and a new identity. I was an alcoholic, but now I am free and I have discipline and self-control.”
He has a good plan for each of us, but we must have our minds renewed (learn to think differently) if we ever hope to experience what Jesus purchased with His death and resurrection.

There is no doubt that we are way less than perfect, that we have faults and weaknesses. We make mistakes and bad choices, and often lack wisdom, but God is God and He views us the way He knows we can be. He doesn’t love us more when we do well—but He knows we’ll enjoy our lives more. God sees us as a finished project
while
we are making the journey. He sees the end from the beginning and is able to help us overcome whatever mistakes we make in between. God believes in you; you should, too!

W
e all have days when we feel more emotional than usual, and there may be many reasons why. Perhaps you didn’t sleep well the night before, or you ate something that lowered your blood sugar or that you were allergic to. The occasional emotional day is something we don’t
have to be too concerned about. If my husband has a day like that, he never tries to figure it out. He simply says,
“This too shall pass.”

There are also times we have emotional issues that need to be resolved and dealt with. We are often guilty of stuffing things down inside us rather than dealing with them. If you are a person who avoids confrontation, you can have a soul full of unresolved issues that need closure before emotional wholeness will come. I remember a night when I was unable to sleep, which is unusual for me. Finally, around five in the morning, I asked God what was wrong with me. Immediately I recalled a situation from the day before. I had been rude to someone and instead of apologizing to them and asking God to forgive me, I rushed through the situation and went on to the next thing I needed to do. Obviously, my wrong conduct was irritating my spirit, even though my conscious mind had buried it. As soon as I asked God to forgive me and made a decision to apologize to the person, I was able to go to sleep.

If you feel unusually sad or as if you are carrying a heavy burden you don’t understand, ask God what is wrong before you start assuming things. It is amazing what we can learn by simply asking God for an answer and being willing to face any truth He might reveal about us or our behavior. Sometimes we feel emotional because of something someone has done to us or an unpleasant circumstance in our lives. But at other times we feel that way because of something we did wrong and ignored.

S
adly, the world is filled with injustices. One of my uncles spent twenty years in prison for a crime he did not commit. His wife committed the crime and finally confessed right before she died. When he was finally released, his tuberculosis—contracted while he was in prison—had gotten so bad that he lived only a few more years. I remember my uncle was always a very kind man and seemed to have no bitterness at all about that great injustice.