Unfortunately, we are not privy to God’s exact timeline and I know it can be frustrating when we experience setback after setback. I know some of you are at the point where you believe that you’re overdue for a win because you have taken enough losses. If I am speaking to you through this message, the good news is your greatest blessings are always in front of you and your time is indeed coming!
I get it, waiting for God’s blessings to manifest is not for the faint at heart. Usually it requires a lot grit and in the book of Acts we can certainly learn how to stay in the game by gleaning from Paul and Silas reactions to their pain and suffering. Both of them demonstrated how shifting their focus from pain to hope will usher in God’s perfectly grafted and choreographed blessings.
When they were stripped, beaten, chained, and jailed, they did not cry out to God, but instead rejoiced, worshiped, and sang. They celebrated the ‘in due season’ knowledge that God’s promises to them would be fulfilled despite their current situation.
This supernatural response demonstrated their unwavering faith in God and trust in His word as they anticipated His blessings that were yet to come.
My word of encouragement for you is to stop recoiling during seasons of adversity and start anticipating that God’s promises will manifest and be fulfilled by praising Him for what is yet to come and by remembering these words: “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary” Isaiah 40:31.
Today, make a conscientious effort to turn your right now blues into tomorrow’s blessings by falling into the arms of the God that knows, sees, and cares!!
“All that’s required is that you really believe and do not doubt in your heart” Mark 11:23.
Bestselling author and national speaker Jim George said, “It’s not how you start that’s important, it’s how you finish.” Do you remember the fable about the tortoise and the hare? If so, you know that the hare started the race with an extra measure of confidence and so midway of the race he decided to take a nap. When the hare awoke from his mid-race slumber, he found the tortoise, slowly crawling but steadily, across to the finish line, thus winning the competition.
Let me ask you this, “Are you the over-confident hare or the slow and steady tortoise?”
You know at the beginning of the race it didn’t look too good for the tortoise but the one thing the tortoise didn’t do is quit! With that said, too many people today believe that if it starts bad, it will most likely end bad and they foster this ideology that undoubtedly contradicts scripture. Hebrews 12:1-3 says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles us. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
When bad things happen, we really need to stop saying, ‘Welp, that’s the end of my story’! God is the One that authored our story (read Psalm 139) and because He penned every detail of our life including the times we’ve messed up and if His indelible grace and undeserved mercy covered us in those times, they will always cover us no matter how bad life gets!
All of this is made possible through the finished work of the cross. We should have posses confidence like the hare, but the work ethic like the tortoise because through Christ we will all end victoriously. Yes, the story of your life has many chapters and guess what—one bad chapter doesn’t mean it’s the end of your story!!
The enemy wants nothing more than for you to think that you’re defeated and you know what—he is a big ole liar. Satan speaks nothing more than partial truths and a partial truth is the worst lie ever told because it’s a mixture of fiction and non-fiction!
So if you are taking a mid-race sabbatical, the whistle is blowing signaling you to get moving! If you’re working slow and steady, but you’re beginning to loose heart think about what Jesus endured and then think about how his story ended or let me say, ‘ascended’. Jesus’ ascension reminds us where our race is headed. Make note that we are not running a horizontal race, our race is vertical!!
When we think of all that Jesus had accomplished, and all that He and the Holy Spirit are doing in us right now we are given a kind of “spiritual second wind” to keep going, in the Lord’s strength.
Looking back at our fable, isn’t it acutely ironic that both of the caricatures in the story exhibited confidence?! However, the hare’s confidence led him to take a mid-race siesta, whereas the tortoise’s confidence slowly but eventually led him to a celebratory fiesta! At the end of the day, both of them cross the finished line. Therefore, it’s doesn’t matter what happens between the start and the finish line. All that matters is that you cross both!
Pray with me: Father God, we praise You for the finished work of the cross, assuring and securing us salvation. By your Spirit, we are encouraged, empowered, an equipped to confidently keep living and serving until the day You call us home. We thank you O’ God for perfecting the good work You started in us and for helping, guiding, and spurring us towards the finish line of Your perfect reflection!! In Jesus’ name we pray, amen and amen!
Waiting. I’ve never been a fan. But it seems I have a PhD in the art. Waiting for the results of infertility treatments, waiting for an offer for a job, waiting for a change in a relationship, waiting for a change in life.
And recently, waiting for test results that could mean cancer or mean nothing. Once again, I was in the waiting place, and while there, I wrote this:
I find myself here again, in this waiting place. The place where I know God is sovereign. I know He holds my life in His hands. I know He is there. I know He cares. I know the very hairs on my head are numbered… as are my days.
And yet there is a knot in my stomach and my eyes flicker to the phone. Again. And again. It does not ring. Not yet. Of course, not yet.
But I watch anyway. I swallow. And remind myself of all the things I already know.
Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? (Matthew 6:27, Luke 12:25)
When we’re feeling stuck in the waiting place, our culture says, “Get out of that rut! Life’s too short. Stop the excuses. Do something.” You’ll be told to smile more, care less, be happy, and think good thoughts.
Good advice, but sometimes change is outside our control. Sometimes we’re not in charge. Sometimes we’re stuck, just like Abram and Sarai were in Haran. On their way to the promised land, Genesis 11:31 tells us, “Terah took his son Abram… and his son Abram’s wife, Sarai…and arriving at Haran, they settled there.” Haran wasn’t the promised land. But because of Terah, they got stuck there anyway, and Sarai didn’t have the power to choose to continue the journey. God had to remove a barrier before she could move forward. In their case, Terah himself had to die.
If you’re in a waiting place, know you are not alone. God is right there with you. Let’s pray to Him now.
In good times, God is worthy. In bad times, God is worthy. When we are under attack, God is worthy. If we never do another thing, God will always be worthy of our worship.
What’s the literary motif in the above paragraph? You got it, worship! I don’t know if you fully understand that something happens when you worship God with a pure heart. David new the importance of this critical attribute in true worship hence the reason he penned these words in Psalm 51:10-11, “Create in me a clean [pure] heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.”
Undoubtedly, a pure heart of worship is a heart, delighting in God and expressing praise to Him for the true things the Scriptures teach us about who He is and what He has accomplished for us through the irrevocable work of the Cross. It is, then, “all about” Jesus, not us. It involves us, but we’re at the periphery. Jesus is at the center. He’s the focus. It’s his commands we consider first, not our own preferences.
I’ve heard it said, “The attitude of our hearts becomes the heartbeat of our worship.” I don’t know what this statement means to you but for me, it means that when I worship, I would rather my heart be without words than my words be without heart.
My point of encouragement is for you not to allow your heart to be filled with all the negativity circulating in our world today! Don’t let Covid-19, Election 2020, or Pandemic 2020 keep you from doing what God created you to do. Without the inward attitude of a pure heart, you cannot worship God the way you should. All the art forms—singing, dancing, playing of musical instruments, etc.—cannot express the attitude of a pure heart, but they can be used to help in the expression of your truth in worship.
So just be genuine in your attitude of worship! God is looking for genuine people, willing to give their heart, mind and soul, to Him freely, authentically, and consistently! A pure heart is nothing more than being real with God, and not pretending to honor and adore Him.
Praying according to God’s will is not as difficult as we oftentimes believe. Before the opening of the world wide web and google, in order to download information we had to walk or drive to the library and use the Dewey Decimal Classification System to locate the information we needed.
This numerical system is still used today to mark and arrange various non-fictional books. It is an essential tool for students or seekers to understand why books are numbered and how to find the numbers on the shelves, so they can use the library effectively and in a timely manner.
The Bible is somewhat set up like the Dewey system in that it’s divided into books and each passage of text are numbered and grouped by chapters and verses. So if there is something specific you need to refer to or study it makes it that much easier to find.
With that said, the will of God is found in the word of God. The Bible tells us that when we pray to God “if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14). For many Believers who feel in the dark about God’s will, those words send them into doubt and insecurity.
Well, if that’s you I would like to help you first identify what it is that you want God to do and then how to apply the appropriate scripture to that request in prayer.
So, the first thing to do is to differentiate what you’re praying for is it a need, an opportunity, or a desire. Understanding what you asking will help you determine which passage(s) of text line up with your request and if it lines up with the text it will always line up with God’s will.
For example: if you are praying for a need to be meant, Philippians 4:19 confirms, “Philippians 4:19, “And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.”
If it’s an opportunity that you are pondering, I John 4:1 advises, ”Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
If it’s a desire you need filled, Psalm 37:4 instructs us to, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
These are only a few suggestions that if coupled with prayer will help to bring peace in the in-between. In others words, while you are waiting on God to respond to your prayer request(s). Please recognize that the right scripture for you and your situation may not be what’s cited above, but always trust that (a) Holy Spirit will always lead you to the right passage(s) and (b) He will always send confirmation.
Furthermore, the Bible speaks about the will of God in three categories: (1) God’s sovereign will (Ephesians 1:11; Acts 4:28). (2) God’s moral will (Exodus 20:1-17). (3) God’s permissive will (Acts 14:16). In full disclosure make note that category 1 is not relevant to 1 John 5:14 since we are not privy to the secret counsel of God. But either or both categories #2 or #3 could play a part in what it means to pray according to God’s will.
Let’s be clear, God’s can not be compromised or manipulated. However, the good news for us is that God promises to show us how to pray His will for every situation we face. All we have to do is differentiate what it is that we are requesting, line His word up with that request, pray about it, faithfully wait for His response, and trust Him to do whatever needs to be done according to His will, plan, and purpose!
What is HOPE? According to Webster dictionary, it simply means to cherish a desire with an expectation of fulfillment. One acronym I recently read truly struck the nail on the proverbial head: H.old O.n P.ain E.nds! I don’t know what that just did for you, but when I read it—it sharply confirmed my contextual understanding of the faith chapter found in the book of Hebrews (11).
Adding to the above definition above, hope is a confident anticipation of good. It is not just wishful thinking or thinking positive. It is not the same as saying, “Well, I hope so.” Hope is as solid as a helmet, but no helmet will protect you from danger if you have laid it aside. When we lose hope we lose the battle.
Speaking of battles, when the spirt of the Lord fell upon Jahaziel son on Zechariah he said in 2 Chronicles 20:15, “He boldly said to the assembly, “Listen, all you people of Judah and Jerusalem! Listen, King Jehoshaphat! This is what the LORD says: Do not be afraid! Don’t be discouraged by this mighty army, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.”
Essentially, hope recognizes who the battle belongs to and it doesn’t matter if all hell is wreaking havoc in your life or in the worl around you—God said the battle is mine!! No matter how big or small the giant your facing—nothing and I do mean nothing is more powerful than the God we serve! I John 4:4 confirms, “….greater is He (God) that is in you than he (Satan) who is in the world.”
I encourage you to stop thinking about the storm(s) and start speaking to your storm by simply saying, “Something good is about to happen.” I get it, I’ve been there and quite frankly oftentimes you really don’t feel like saying anything. In most cases, you may feel abandoned or lost because you have no clue if you’ll make it through the mess or succumb to it! However, despite the ambiguities you will to have muster up enough strength to personally reach the depths of God’s power, because no one person has enough reserves of their own to keep moving forward without it!
My brothers and sisters in Christ, in order to fully learn to hope again, you must go back to the ABCs—the foundation of hope. There are three foundational pillars that I believe structural support our hope in God: (1)God is good all the time; (2) “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28); and (3) God never ends on a negative, “what the enemy meant for evil God meant it for good (Gen 50:20).
You know what’s equally amazing? If you earnestly place your hope in the Author and Anchor of hope, He will take you on a journey to a place hope is no longer deferred but where fulfilled desire becomes a tree of life (Psalm 1:3). So, even if your going through hell right now, run and run quickly into the arms of God’s redemptive love, comfort, strength, and peace because only in God can all things be made new. Revelation 21:5 says, “And He who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I Am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
The year 2020 will go down in the history books as the year of the ‘twilight zone’. I recently read a couple tweets that said, “I think we should put 2020 in rice” and “I’d like to leave now, please and thank you!”
There is no doubt, you will find a plethora of memes, tweets, and post that humorously attempts to sum up the year 2020. However, it’s difficult to capsulate a year that has brought so much pain and devastation to so many people across the globe.
With that said, humor is one way we cope with pain, but these catastrophic and historic events shouldn’t drive us to complain, rather these unprecedented events should cause us to drop to our knees!
In Numbers 11:1 we learn the not so good fate of some of the people soon after they began to complain about their hardships. As some of you may know, complaining was second nature for Israel during the wilderness years. In context to the passage of text mentioned above, Israel was only three days into their wilderness journey when they started to complain. They complained about their hardships and the wilderness food. They wanted something different from the manna they had to eat, day in and day out. The food they had eaten in Egypt seemed so much better.
It’s acutely difficult for people to see the good because of all the bad, but we have to force ourselves to think and live positively because when we complain, we fall into the devil’s trap. When we complain, we tend to glamorize what we don’t have because we forget to recognize what we do have. Ask yourselves: Did Israel really have it better in Egypt? Unfortunately, somehow the children of Israel completely forgot the hardships they had endured there as slaves and the 10 plagues the Lord sent down from heaven that led to their exoneration them out of the heartless hands of the Pharoah.
My brothers and sisters, I get it! It’s easy to complain and in some cases it feels liberating when we do. However, when we complain, we tend to see life in a distorted way. Grumbling flows from people who think they deserve something better and Paul encouraged us in Philippians 2:14, “to do everything without grumbling or arguing.”
Contentment doesn’t come from people, money, or possessions. Contentment comes only from knowing God and delighting in His Fatherly care despite the opposition, consequence, or circumstance!
Perhaps, the events in 2020 may be one of God’s way to admonition the world to change their ways before it’s too late! Think about it, how else could one explain a health and a social pandemic? The collapse of economies? Environmental degradation that has led to dramatic heat waves and other disasters across the planet? Wildfires decimating our western forests? Powerful storms and floods?
This present day twilight zone maybe God’s way to highlight the need for us to truly embrace 2 Chronicles 7:14, “Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.”
When I was a teenager, I vividly remember riding the Texas Cyclone at Astroworld. For the millennials reading this message, the Texas Cyclone was a wooden roller coaster at the defunct Six Flags AstroWorld in H-Town. This roller coaster stood approximately 93’ tall and its drop was a jaw-dropping 80’. Hands down, it was one of the most frightening rides on the park back-in-the day!!
Although it was a dreadfully scary roller coaster, the one thing that’s common about all thrill coasters despite their shape and size is they’re all designed to travel in a crazy circle!
Metaphorically our lives are very similar to a roller coaster. We go up, we go down. The higher we rise the further we seem to fall down. It becomes such a reliable pattern that people often learn to dread when things are going really well, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the fall.
The emotional falls do not even have to be based on actual falls, like being broken up with, suffering from a catastrophic illness, suddenly finding yourself unemployed, or facing some other impossibly scary and grief-filled situation. Even when the outside facts support that things are going well, we seem to still feel these stomach-churning, heart-breaking, life turned upside-down emotional lows after each big win in our lives.
I don’t know if you understand what I am trying to convey here, but as a son and daughter of God you should be so confident about God’s plan that you don’t even get upset anymore when things don’t go your way.
Life has taught me that God never ends on a negative and according to Philippians 1:6, “God, who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”
My brothers and sisters, we need to trust God in ALL circumstances and abandon the idea that we can control it, or that we need to… maybe even that we would want to, even if we could. Because, as it turns out, screaming in terror and gripping tightly to the bar in front of you doesn’t actually change the trajectory of the ride.
Thankfully, God’s plan for our lives were victoriously pre-written before we were conceived in our mother’s womb (Jeremiah 1:5) and by now we should know that everything that God did and does is good, so even when things aren’t good, it’s just a matter of time before God will cause the ‘bad’ to work for our good because, He will never end on a negative!
The Lord is good and His mercy endures forever (Psalm 100:5), Hallelujah!! That’s our unstoppable God!! He is unquestionably awesome and nothing or no one will ever stop the will of God from manifesting greatest in our lives!!
Fear can be crippling, debilitating, and enfeebling. Fear by definition is an unpleasant feeling triggered by the perception of danger, real or imagined. How many times have you allowed this false emotion stop you from pursuing your dreams, hopes, and aspirations?
Let’s be honest, we’ve all had to face some fears in our lives and although we may not be proud to admit it; unfortunately we’ve allowed those false emotions to impede our progression in one way or another!
In God’s omniscience, He knew that fear would be one of the greatest challenges we would have to overcome; this is why one of the most oft-repeated commands in the Bible is ‘do not be afraid’. Of course, the Bible does more than issue the command; it gives us good reasons why we do not need to live in fear!
The more you focus your time and energy on fear, the bigger it becomes. Unbeknownst to most, fear grows when you give it too much attention. If you keep thinking on your fears, they will grow out of proportion and take over your life, since whatever you focus on grows, including your fears.
In lieu of focusing your attention on the various kinds of fears aka phobias (unknown, failure, death, etc), the Bible teaches us to fix or center our thoughts on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. We “think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8, NLT). As Jairus the synagogue ruler was bringing Jesus home to save his daughter, he received news that his daughter had died (Mark 5:35). Immediately, Jesus told Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe” (verse 36). In other words, Jairus must forgo the natural focus on the tragedy and fear and focus instead on faith and the Lord’s nearness. In choosing to not be afraid, we remember that “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
Faith and praise is the antidote to fear, and gratitude negates worry. Habakkuk the prophet was fearful of the invasion of his country, and he described his fear vividly: “I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled” (Habakkuk 3:16). But in the following verses, the prophet handles his fear in a godly manner: he “waited patiently” to see the Lord’s intervention (verse 16). He acknowledged that difficult times could be on the way (verse 17). He purposed to praise the Lord (verse 18). And he focused on the Lord’s power and promises (verse 19). In that focus, Habakkuk learned to not be afraid. And that’s how he ended his book, on a note of praise to the Lord.
Look at it this way, when David came against Goliath, he didn’t stand for hours starring at the giant wondering how to win the battle. The Bible says that he ran quickly (faithfully) to the battle line, all the time talking about the greatness of God and declaring his victory ahead of time (praise). David didn’t run away from his giant— he courageously ran toward him because he knew that the God in him was greater than the fear (giant) that wanted to consume him!
My brothers and sister, I don’t know who I am talking to today but I’m here to tell you that if you continue listening to your fears, you will leave this earth never fulfilling all that God had purposed for you to accomplish!
You might be wandering did David feel any fear as he approached Goliath? Well, David was 100% man so I would say of course he did. However, in David’s writings he never claimed to be free from the feelings of fear, but he chose to fight anyway, and God honored his faithful obedience! The battle between he and Goliath propelled David to a level of greatness he would have never accomplished had he not overcome his fear with faith and praise!!
4GIVEN 