Juggling … not in my job description

I Chronicles 29:11

Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.  Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.  NIV

God made everything.

Such a simple statement, and yet, so profound.

I started college as a chemistry major.  I simply loved the concept of the periodic table, and how the addition of just one proton, one neutron and one electron to an atom made the thing a completely different substance.  As I got to study subatomic chemistry, I was even more amazed.  Each day, I felt I got to peep behind the curtain at God’s workroom and the building blocks that He had used to form the universe.

Today, I’m not a chemist.  But, I’ve not forgotten the lessons that I learned:  Everything in heaven and in earth is His.  He made it all.  He is the Master Craftsman, the Owner, the Creator and the Ruler of the Universe.

If I am to keep my life here in balance, I must keep Him squarely at the center.  He is the axis on which everything else turns.  When I acknowledge that, when I keep that perspective, my life works.  When I try to put something else in the center, when I exalt something else above God, even unconsciously, my life gets out of kilter and things begin to spin out of control, and then I start to worry about keeping all the balls in the air.

Keeping the balls in the air is NOT MY JOB.  I didn’t create the balls, and I didn’t create the gravity that pulls them earthward.  My job is to do God’s work here.  To love others and to show God’s love to them.

Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.

That’s what I’ll think about today.

He is.

I Chronicles 29:10b

Praise be to you, O LORD, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. NIV

God, our God, has always been.  And, He always will be.  Revelation 22:13 says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” NIV

David acknowledges that here in Chronicles, when he praises God “from everlasting to everlasting.”

There has not been a moment in my life when God was not there … there never, ever will be.  God is trustworthy.  God is permanent. God is … God.

That’s what I’ll think about today.

How do you live?

Hebrews 2:13a

And again, “I will put my trust in him.” NIV

The Message, I think, puts this best.  Beginning in verse 11 it says, “Since the One who saves and those who are saved have a common origin, Jesus doesn’t hesitate to treat them as family, saying, ‘I’ll tell my good friends, my brothers and sisters, all I know about you; I’ll join them in worship and praise to you.’  Again, he puts himself in the same family circle when he says, ‘Even I live by placing my trust in God.’” MSG

I live by placing my trust in God.

I love that.

I don’t live by worrying, or achieving, or waiting, or hoping.  I live by placing my trust in God.

That’s what I’ll think about today.

Can you prove it?

I Corinthians 4: 1-2

So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God.  Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.  NIV

… those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

I have been given a trust.  I am a child of God.  I have accepted Christ as my savior.  I am inhabited by the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, I must prove faithful.

It’s easy to say, “I won’t sin.”  In my case, “I won’t worry.”

It’s much harder to follow through on that commitment … to prove it.

But, if I am to prove faithful, I must do my level best, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment to prove faithful, to trust God and not myself for my future.

As I work my way through the last month of this project, I feel like a little kid started out the door to school.

“Do you have your lunch?  Your flute?  Your homework?”  In short, are you prepared for what lies outside the door?

Am I prepared?

That’s what I’ll think about today.

Need a little encouragement?

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  NIV

Wow!

As I read these words this morning, they were such an encouragement to me.  Paul was an encourager!  I love that.

I am blessed in my life to know several great encouragers.  They are the ones that I call when things are going poorly, and I absolutely LOVE it  when the phone rings and one of them is on the other end of the line.

Without fail, you feel better when you spend time with an encourager.  They always know just the right thing to say, and, I believe God uses them to say things to me that I need to hear.  They don’t always say good things … but, pretty much without fail, they are right on point.

Once, we were blessed to have one of my dear friends stay with us for almost a week.  It was not the easiest of times for me, and I poured out my heart to my friend.  She left while I was at work, and when I came home, there was a big sign propped in the window of my kitchen.  It’s a wooden sign, maybe 10 inches by 30 inches, beautifully painted.  Needless to say, I couldn’t miss it.  It still sits there today.  It says, “Write it on your heart that the ones you love are life’s most precious gifts.”  It was a perspective I was missing at the time.  It was a message I needed to hear.  I ponder it as I make coffee in the mornings, as I wash dishes … I think about it often, and I am thankful for the wisdom and the encouragement of my friend.

I wish I had another sign … one with these words of Paul on it.

May the God of hope … all my hope is in Him.

fill you with all joy … all joy, I love that … I love that it could mean “all kinds of joy,” or “all the joy in the world,” or “only joy.”

and peace as you trust in him … trust in Him is the only source of true peace.

so that you may overflow with hope … so that there will be so much hope in you that you cannot contain it … it will spill out of you like water and be completely evident to all around you.

by the power of the Holy Spirit … let’s keep this in perspective … this hope is NOT a feeling, it is a manifestation of the power of the One True God.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

That’s what I’ll think about today.

Give it back

Acts 14:23

Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust.  NIV

Paul and Barnabas trusted God.

The Message says, “...they presented these new leaders to the Master to whom they had entrusted their lives.” MSG

The Master to whom they had entrusted their lives …

I look up the words “trust,” and “entrust.”  “Trust” means to have faith or to hope.  “Entrust” is to hand over, commend, delegate or assign.

Paul and Barnabas had great faith in God that prompted them to hand over their lives to Him.

God is trustworthy.  I trust him with my past, my future, and my present.

I trust God to guide the steps of my life to achieve His purposes.

It was He who gave me life … I give it back to Him, trusting that He will be faithful in all things.

That’s what I’ll think about today.

A peace is missing …

John 14:1

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God; trust also in me.” NIV

Seems simple, doesn’t it.

Don’t be troubled … you already trust God, trust His Son, too.

Sometime over the last year, I read a beautifully articulated theory of something that I have believed for some time.  The author (and I am racking my brain to remember who it was, because he — or she — expressed it eloquently) spoke of his (or her) belief that God creates us, each of us, with an incompleteness, a yearning for Him.

I have always thought and spoken of it as a “God-sized hole.”  I think everyone has a God-sized hole in the center of their life.  If we recognize the magnitude of it, and seek God to fill it … to take His rightful place in the center of our life … we have some hope of peace here.

God has left clues literally everywhere in our world that point to His majesty and to His dominion.  And, if we aren’t astute enough to pick up on the obvious visuals, He has a backup plan.  He instills each recipient of His Spirit with an insatiable desire to pass on the gift of hope in Him.

Still, there are those who refuse to listen.  They are doomed to a life of attempting to fill the hole with ill-fitting pieces.

When you’re stuffing substitutes for God into the hole, whether it’s money, or food, or cars, or worry, or whatever … your heart is troubled.  These false things can’t bring you peace.  They serve only to whet your appetite for more money, or food, or cars, or worry … or whatever.

Trust in God, and in His Son Jesus Christ is the only remedy.  If you will accept that, believe it, and trust it with your whole heart, you will receive the Gift of the Holy Spirit … the missing puzzle piece that will seamlessly fill the hole and allow you to be complete.

I love that!  Without the missing “piece,” we can have no “peace.”

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God; trust also in me.”

That’s what I’ll think about today.

The darkest dark cannot put out the smallest light

John 12: 35-36a

Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer.  Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you.  The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going.  Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light.” NIV

The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going.

I am flooded by thoughts about that phrase.

Those who are lost, who believe that this life is all there is, are walking in the dark.  They don’t know where they are going.

Many years ago, a pastor said from the pulpit, “The darkest dark cannot put out the smallest light.”

It was Fall.  My sister and I had carved pumpkins with our parents and we had put candles inside.  Just the night before, as I had watched how the candle in my pumpkin completely lit my bedroom, I had been amazed by the power of such a small thing.

When the pastor said, “The darkest dark cannot put out the smallest light,” I was so struck by the truth of that statement that I wrote it in the front of my Bible.  It was the first time I had ever written anything in or on a Bible.  As the years have gone by, I’ve had a few different Bibles.  Now I write in all of them.  I take notes, I underline verses, I dog-ear the pages.  But, I’ve always copied that phrase from one Bible into the next.

The man who walks in the dark doesn’t know where he is going … The darkest dark cannot put out the smallest light … put your trust in the light … so that you may become sons of light.

Christ calls us to put our trust in Him, so that we may become sons of light.

And, if I am a son of light, can I not light the path for others who are stumbling in the dark?  I can do so by sharing the truth with them, by reflecting God’s love to them in my actions, my words and my ways.

Yesterday, I spent some time with a large family.  As I looked at each of them, three generations, I was struck by their similarities.  Four of them had the same nose, three of them the same eyes, two sounded almost identical.  Their relationship was unmistakeable.

I want that.  I want my relationship to God to be unmistakeable.  I want to reflect His love.  I want to serve as His hands and His feet here.  I want to turn myself and my focus outward, where I can be of good … not inward, where a focus on my own circumstances will cause me to worry.

I put my trust in the light.

That’s what I’ll think about today.

God is trustworthy

Luke 16: 10-12

Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.  So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?  And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own? NIV

Jesus is speaking here.  My word search on “trust” has finally brought me to the new testament.

Jesus is speaking and the pharisees are listening.  These words come at the end of a parable, “The parable of the shrewd manager.”

Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.

These words ring so true to me.  As my faith has grown, so my trust in God has grown.  And, God has been completely faithful … wholly trustworthy.

I trusted Him with merely a little of myself, and, as I’ve given over more and more of me to Him, I’ve learned that He can be trusted.

In fact, He MUST be trusted with all of it — my hopes, my dreams, my fears and my worries.

God is trustworthy.

That’s what I’ll think about today.

 

He can solve the unsolvable

Zephaniah 3: 12-13

But I will leave within you the meek and humble, who trust in the name of the LORD.  The remnant of Israel will do no wrong; they will speak no lies, nor will deceit be found in their mouths.  They will eat and lie down and no one will make them afraid.  NIV

No one will make them afraid.  I love that.

The Message paraphrases that last part, “Content with who they are and where they are, unanxious, they’ll live at peace.” MSG

My last semester in college, I lived in my first apartment.  A friend from my dorm and I had signed the lease before we went home for the summer.  We would live in this little apartment from August through December, I thought, and then I would graduate and my life would begin.

But, over the summer, my roommate flunked out.

That left me responsible for the full lease, when I had planned on only paying half.  I was frugal, but, I vividly remember the last three days of my lease.

Classes were over, I was finishing finals, my family was packing to come for graduation.  The country was in the midst of a terrible recession and I and many of my friends did not have jobs waiting for us after we walked across the stage.  Instead of starting my new life as I had planned, I was on my way home to move back in with my parents.

To say that I was disappointed, was an understatement.

Then, the electric bill came.  As I wrote the check and deducted the amount from my balance, I realized I had about $30.

I cried out to God.  I poured out to Him how hard I had worked, how I had tithed every penny of my earnings, how I had been faithful and now, here I was, having spent all of my savings, three days from graduation with no job and $30.  I remember saying, “God, you have GOT to do something!”

Now, if I were God, I probably would have ignored me.  I wasn’t hurt in any way.  I had more than enough money to keep me until my parents arrived, and I was blessed that they were willing to take me back home with them.  I was in no real danger.  My pride was merely hurt, and I had not gotten what I wanted, what I thought I deserved.

But, that’s not how God worked in that situation.

Literally five minutes after I finished my prayer, if that’s what you could call it … it was more of a desperate demand … my phone rang.  A woman I had interned for was on the phone.   She had never called me before, so I was pretty surprised.  Almost immediately she asked me, “Do you have a job?”  I told her that I didn’t.  She said, “Well, I have a job and I think you would be perfect for it.”  She asked when I would be home and we agreed on a start date and a salary amount and, well, problem solved.

Needless to say, I was pretty thankful.  The world looked a whole lot brighter than it had just minutes before.  Bright enough that I could walk down to the center of campus, where I checked my campus mailbox.  In it, was a graduation card from my grandmother, with a check for $300.

In less than an hour, God had solved both my problems.  I was awestruck.

Trusting in God means that we rely on Him to solve the unsolvable.  Trusting in God means that we can be content with who we are and where we are and that we can live in peace … without anxiety.

I knew this years and years ago … but somehow, that knowledge had slipped away.  It’s taken me nearly a year to relearn this bedrock lesson.

Trust God.  He has your best interest at heart, and has power at His disposal that is beyond your comprehension.

That’s what I’ll think about today.