"Put your trust in the LORD your God, and you will stand your ground. Believe what his prophets tell you, and you will succeed” (2 Chronicles 20:20 GNT).
When you focus on your problems instead of trusting God, you’re going to end up exhausted. And you’re going to be defeated because God didn’t design you to fight your battles alone. You don’t have the power you need to face every problem in your own strength. You need God’s power. You can’t focus on your problems and focus on God at the same time. You’ve got to shift your focus to who God is and what he’s promised to do for you. Life is full of experiences that test you, drain you, and wipe you out. When you are worn out, that’s when you’re ready to say to God, “I’m sorry. I can’t handle this situation, and I’ve tried everything. I need to give it to you because it’s bigger than me.” So, what should you do when you are overwhelmed? You stand strong. Standing strong is an attitude of quiet confidence in the character of God. You will be successful when you put your trust in what he says to you through his Word and the Holy Spirit. When you get with God, you’ll never have to give up ground because you are standing strong. When the burden is overwhelming, you may be tempted to cave in under the pressure. God doesn’t want you to back down from difficult situations. He doesn’t want you to sacrifice your integrity. God wants you to trust him through the challenges and learn from them. If you run, you’ll miss out on learning from God. And chances are, you’ll need to repeat that lesson. God is committed to your success. But you need to focus on him and trust him and his Word if you want to stand your ground. “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV).
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“I trust the LORD God to save me, and I will wait for him to answer my prayer” (Micah 7:7 CEV).
The Bible is clear that we go through seasons in life, and one of the seasons that God talks about again and again is the season of waiting. While you’re waiting, God is working. Don’t think that a season of waiting means that God has stopped working. He’s just taking you through that season because he’s using the time to work in your circumstances for your good. You’re going to spend a lot of life waiting. If you don’t figure out how to trust God while you’re waiting, you’ll spend a lot of your life not trusting God. God is never in a hurry. He’s eternal! He is watching. He is working. He is seeing how and when you will trust him as you’re waiting. You’re saying, “When, Lord? When is it going to happen?” And God’s saying, “You can trust me with this.” The problem with waiting is that our human nature and our society say, “Don’t wait! Get things as quickly as you can.” That’s the way our culture is wired, but it goes against God’s blessing in our lives, because God’s blessing comes through these times of waiting. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says God “has set the right time for everything” (GNT). Are you in a time of waiting? Maybe it’s for school to end. Maybe it’s for the “right person” to come into your life. Maybe it’s for a marriage to happen or a baby to come or a new job opportunity to arrive. And you may be frustrated with how slowly things are happening. We’ve all been there. There’s a promise in the Bible that tells you not only that God is working but also how God is working, and you need to claim it while you’re in your time of waiting: “I am the Lord, and when it is time, I will make these things happen quickly” (Isaiah 60:22 NCV). That’s how God worked when he sent Jesus into this world. The world waited thousands of years for Jesus to come the first time. And he came at just the right moment. We’ve been waiting 2,000 years now for Jesus to come again. When will that happen? At just the right time—God’s time. That’s when he’s going to return. You can apply this to your time of waiting and remember that a delay is not a denial. When you think God is saying no, he may just be saying, “Not yet. Will you keep trusting me through this?” Micah 7:7 says, “I trust the Lord God to save me, and I will wait for him to answer my prayer” (CEV). That is the kind of faith that God blesses. “A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful” (Proverbs 28:13 TLB).
We usually think of failure as something negative. But wise people know how to take advantage of it. They learn from it. They use it as an education. Failure is one of the primary tools that God uses in your life to make you what he wants you to be. How can failure be good? God uses failure to educate us. Mistakes are simply learning experiences. Some lessons can only be learned through failure. The Bible says, “A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful” (Proverbs 28:13 TLB). If you’re not making any mistakes, you’re not growing or learning. If you’re not taking any risks, you’re not growing. The freedom from the fear of failure is the freedom to grow. God uses failure to motivate us. “Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways” (Proverbs 20:30 GNT). Often we change when we feel the heat, not when we see the light. When you fail, God may be trying to get your attention to move you into a new direction. God uses failure to build our character. “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us—they help us learn to be patient. And patience develops strength of character” (Romans 5:3-4 TLB). Failure has a way of softening our hearts. It helps us grow up and become mature. It makes us more sensitive to others. It makes us less judgmental and helps us be a little more sympathetic to people around us who are hurting. Failure doesn’t automatically grow your character. Failure just makes some people bitter. But failure builds your character when you respond to it correctly and learn from it. “When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? . . . O LORD, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!” (Psalm 8:3-4, 9 NLT).
We’ve all heard the phrase “Things are looking up!” But what does it mean? It means the situation is improving. Your problems are decreasing, and your opportunities are increasing. Here's an important truth: Things will start to look up for you when you start looking up. In other words, your circumstances will improve when you stop looking at them and start looking at God. Over and over in the Bible, we see this phrase: “Lift up your eyes.” It’s another way to say, “Look up. Get your eyes off yourself and onto God.” God said it to Moses. He said it Abraham. Jesus said it to his followers. There’s an old rhyme that says, “Two men looked out from prison bars. One saw mud, the other saw stars.” In other words, one inmate looked down in despair, but the other one looked up in hope. You have that same choice, and I hope that you choose to see the stars. God created every one of them. And those stars are the exact same ones that were shining on the night of Jesus’ birth 2,000 years ago—and King David saw the same stars 1,000 years before that, when he wrote these words: “When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? . . . O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!” (Psalm 8:3-4, 9 NLT). When we look up and see how big God is, it shrinks the size of our problems. Our problems never seem as big or as overwhelming when compared to the greatness of God. “As the time drew near for his return to heaven, he moved steadily onward toward Jerusalem with an iron will” (Luke 9:51 TLB).
Let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up” (Galatians 6:9 NLT). There are many things that work to keep us from completing our life missions. Over the years, one might debate whether the worst enemy is procrastination or discouragement. If Satan can’t get us to put off our life missions, then he’ll try to get us to quit altogether. The apostle Paul teaches that we need to resist discouragement: “Let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up” (Galatians 6:9 NLT). Do you ever get tired of doing what’s right? Maybe we all do. Sometimes it seems easier to do the wrong thing than the right thing. When we’re discouraged, we become ineffective. When we’re discouraged, we work against our own faith. When we’re discouraged, we’re saying, “It can’t be done.” That’s the exact opposite of saying, “I know God can do it because of what he said.” Ask yourself these questions: · How do I handle failure? · When things don’t go my way, do I get grumpy? · When things don’t go my way, do I get frustrated? · When things don’t go my way, do I start complaining? · Do I finish what I start? · How would I rate on persistence? If you’re discouraged, don’t give up without a fight. Nothing worthwhile ever happens without endurance and energy. When an artist creates a sculpture, he has to keep chipping away. He doesn’t hit the chisel with the hammer once, and suddenly all the excess stone falls away, revealing a beautiful masterpiece. He keeps hitting it and hitting it, chipping away at the stone. And that’s true of life, too. Nothing really worthwhile ever comes easy in life. You keep hitting it and going after it, and little by little your life becomes a masterpiece of God’s grace. The fact is that great people are really just ordinary people with an extraordinary amount of determination. Great people don’t know how to quit. |
AuthorTaken from Daily Hope by Rick Warren. Categories
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