Trusting God Day by Day: 365 Daily Devotions (27 page)

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fter God created Adam and Eve, He gave them some very simple dining instructions. “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden,” He said in Genesis 2:16.

Did He say, “You may freely eat of every Krispy Kreme on the street”? No. Did He say, “You may freely eat of every chip in the bag”? No. He did not tell them to freely eat fast food, frozen pizza, or even low-fat cookies.

God told Adam and Eve to eat from the garden, and we’d do well to stick to His advice. We’ve been inundated with an overwhelming amount of bad diet information from past decades that has clouded the very simple truths of healthy eating: eat the foods that come from God, in as close a state as possible to how God made them, and you can’t go wrong.

Learn to do everything for God’s glory, including eating. Look at your dinner plate and ask if what you are about to eat is mostly what God created for you. Don’t view eating as a secular event that has nothing to do with your relationship with God. Don’t forget that God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and told them what they could eat. If eating had nothing to do with their walk with Him, He probably would not have mentioned food.

This advice isn’t a diet I am recommending—it’s simply godly wisdom to live a balanced life. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a treat in moderation. Each time you choose good, healthy foods, you are choosing life, which is God’s gift to you. He wants you to look great and feel great. Keep in mind that your body is the temple of God, and the fuel you put into it determines how it will operate and for how long.
Make sure that you are not hurting yourself by eating junk food excessively. Remember, good choices will reap good benefits.

I
have learned that one of the secrets to my own personal peace is letting people be who God made them to be, rather than trying to make them be who I would like them to be. I do my best to enjoy their strengths and be merciful toward their weaknesses because I have plenty of my own. I don’t need to try to take the speck out of their eye while I have a telephone pole in my own.

A woman I know was widowed not long ago, and she was telling me about her relationship with her husband. This woman is pretty strong-willed and likes things to go her way. She told me that when she was first married, she noticed a lot of things about her husband that annoyed her. Like any good wife, she told her husband about his annoying traits and habits so he could change.

Gradually it dawned on her that although she was very good about telling her husband all the things about him that needed to change, he never returned the favor! As she wondered why, she realized that somewhere
along the line her husband had made a decision not to look at—or for—her flaws. He knew she had plenty! But he wasn’t going to focus on them. It occurred to her that she could continue to point out all his annoying traits—or she could choose not to, just as her husband had done.

At the end of our conversation, she told me that in the twelve years they were married, her husband never said an unkind word to her. I think we can all take a lesson from that.

W
hen you need comfort and encouragement, whom do you go to? Have you ever had the experience of going to a friend or family member for encouragement and went away disappointed because they didn’t seem to understand your need? I think we have all had that experience, but there is a better way. Learn to go to God first because He is the God of all comfort. When we go to God first He is honored, but when we run to people and leave Him out it can be offensive to Him. Remember: when we go to God, He quite often uses people to comfort or encourage us, but He chooses who to use and when to use them.

I wasted a lot of time and emotional energy over the years getting angry at Dave and other people because they didn’t understand some
of my emotional needs, and finally I learned that I needed to go to God first. Sometimes God uses someone we don’t even know and sometimes it is someone we would have never thought to go to. But, quite often He divinely comforts us Himself.

I recall a time when my father really made me feel rejected by something he said. There were people with us, but most of them wouldn’t have even understood or been able to make me feel better, so while still in my father’s presence, I quietly asked God to comfort me and heal my feelings. I continued to pray for a while and soon felt better. He helped me realize that my father was not a sensitive man and didn’t even realize what he had done, and I was able to let it go.

Another thing we do at times is run to food, shopping, or some other substance for comfort and we create other problems in our lives. God desires to comfort us, but we must go to Him. If you need comfort or encouragement, take some time right now and ask God specifically to minister to you in that area.

O
beying this Scripture is a bit more difficult for some of us than others. Because I care about most things in life and want them to go a certain way, my care can easily turn into worry if I am not careful.

For example, I really can’t do anything about what people think of me, so being overly concerned about it is a total waste of time and energy, but that has not always stopped me from worrying. My husband
certainly does not care what people think of him. On occasion when I have asked him how he feels about some negative thing someone has said about us, he tells me he doesn’t feel anything, but instead he just trusts God to take care of it. I have gotten very upset at times when unkind articles have been written about me in the newspapers or we have been judged unfairly, but Dave just says,
“Cast your care.”

We have had a lot of arguments in the past over that statement. I want him to share my feelings, but he really can’t because he simply isn’t bothered by the things that bother me. I know he is right when he tells me to
“cast my care,”
but since I am already in the midst of caring, that is not the answer I want. Thankfully, God has helped me and continues to do so, and Dave has been a good example to me.

If you are a more emotional person, I’m sure the less emotional people in your life have frustrated you at times. Nothing seems to bother them and lots of things bother you. I get it! I have been there and I do know how you feel, but I have also lived long enough to realize that living by feelings is a big mistake. It is true that the best way to live is to learn to cast your care and let God care for you.

G
od views conviction, correction, and discipline as something to be celebrated rather than something to make us sad or frustrated. Why should we celebrate when God shows us that something is wrong with us? Enthusiasm sounds like a strange response, but the fact that we can see something that we were once blind to is good news. For many years of my life I was able to be rude, insensitive, and selfish and not even know it. I had a master’s degree in manipulation, but actually had myself convinced that I was only trying to help people do what was right. Of course I did not see the pride I had that caused me to think my way was always the right way. I was greedy, envious, and jealous, but I did not see any of it. That is a sad condition to be in, but people who have no relationship with Jesus and who do not study God’s Word are blind and deaf in the spiritual sense.

My heart was hard from years of being hurt by people, harboring bitterness, and doing things my own way. When our heart is hard we are not sensitive to the touch of God. When He convicts us, we don’t feel it. Therefore, when we make enough progress in our relationship with God that we begin to sense when we are doing something wrong, that is good news. It is a sign of progress and should be celebrated joyfully. The longer we serve God and study His ways, the more sensitive we become. We eventually grow to the place where we know immediately when we are saying or doing something that is not pleasing to God and we have the option of repenting and making a fresh start.

How do you respond when the Holy Spirit convicts you that you’re doing something wrong? Do you feel bad and guilty, or do you realize that the very fact that you can feel God’s conviction is good news? It means that you are alive to God and growing spiritually.

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thorough study of the Bible shows us that the men and women God used in mighty ways always had the attitude of celebrating what God had done. They did not take His goodness for granted, but they openly showed appreciation for little things as well as big ones.

Have you ever had a time when you felt that your back was against the wall: you had a big problem and no solution, and then suddenly God did something amazing and enabled you to escape safely from your problem? Most of us can think of a time like that. When the Israelites were being led out of Egypt by God working through Moses, their backs were against the wall. The Red Sea was in front of them and the Egyptian army was behind them. They had no place to go; they were trapped! God had promised their deliverance, and what He did was amazing indeed. He actually parted the Red Sea, and the Israelites walked across on dry ground, but as the Egyptian army followed, the sea closed up over them and they drowned.

When the Israelites reached the other side, the first thing they did was start to celebrate. They sang a song that came straight from their hearts, recorded in nineteen verses in the Bible (see Exod. 15:1–19). After the song, two of the women took out a type of tambourine, and all the women followed them with their tambourines and they danced and sang some more. The entire song talked of what God had done, how great He was, how He had redeemed them and dealt with their enemies. We would probably experience more victory in life if we would take time to celebrate the ones we have already had. Once again, it
is about operating on the principle of being grateful for what we have instead of taking an inventory of what we do not have yet.

I
f we become what we think about, as this Scripture attests, it’s no wonder that the Bible teaches us we must learn how to meditate on the Word of God—to roll it over and over in our mind until it becomes a part of us. Meditation takes information and turns it into revelation. One of the problems I think we can have as Christians is that there is so much information available to us today that we can get stuck at
information
and never really study any one thing long enough for it to become
revelation
. It’s not information that sets you free. It’s revelation. It’s not what somebody else knows that’s going to help you; it’s what
you
know. It’s not even what you know; it’s what you
know
that you
know
that you
know
that you
know
—it is that kind of deep-rooted revelation knowledge that Satan cannot steal from you with his lies.

Romans 12:2 says not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Fear, guilt, insecurity, and worry can be let in or kept out by right or wrong thoughts. You can open your mind to fear and let it in, or you can close your mind to fear and not let it in. The mind is like a doorway. When the enemy tries to sneak in with a thought that is going to be detrimental to us or against the Word of God, we need to learn how to close our minds against that and say,
“no.”
No is a great word for Christians to learn.