Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Thanksgiving Every Day

Every day is a day to be thankful.  Every prayer is an opportunity to thank the Lord for who He is and all that He has done.  Thank Him today for His goodness.  Look around you, at your life, and take notice of His bountiful goodness to you.  He is good and he does good.  He withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly.  He is good even to unkind and ungrateful men.  Every good thing given comes from Him. 

When we think of good, the Lord should be the first we think about.  Don't fall into the trap of taking your life and the goodness intrinisic in it for granted.  Look at it with eyes of faith, the eyes of a grateful heart.  Look intentionally for all the goodness He has done for you; and then Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.  Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the Lord is good;  His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations. Psalm 100:4-5

Thursday, November 05, 2009

God of the Possible and Impossible

...with God all things are possible.  Matthew 19:26

For nothing will be impossible with God.  Luke 1:37

With Him all things are possible, and with Him nothing is impossible.  Pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?   In these two verses God has covered the fact that He can do anything and everything, and there is nothing He can't do.  The thing is, do we really believe it?  Is our faith too short when God hasn't answered our prayer or a situation is taking longer than we think it should to play out or resolve itself.  Because if the verses above are true, and they are, then the issue is our faith in God, and not God's ability. So, instead of throwing rocks at God, maybe the rock needs to be self-directed.

The Bible is filled with examples of God's ability, God's power.  In fact, we are told that no purpose of His can be thwarted (Job 42:2).  So why do we tend to sell Him short and have our faith fall short?  Let's give consideration to a few reasons.

1. God's timetable does not meet our own, and we have to wait longer, sometimes much longer than we think we should.

2. The situation is not resolving like we want it, or our expectations are not being met.

3. We have presupposed that our will or desire is His will.

4. We have confused our will or desire as His will. 

5. We try to impose our will on the situation.

6. We bow to the pressure of others or the situation.

7. We forget that God uses times like these to test our faith.

8. We forget that God uses times like these to strengthen our faith.

9. We forget that with God there is never a plan B, but it always has been and always will be plan A. In other words, God never has a contingency plan, because He never needs one.

10. We forget that God works at the speed of life, and at the pace of people, yet He is never slow.

11. We forget the real issue is never with Him, but always with us, as these situations usually highlight.

12. We really don't believe that God is who He claims to be, and can do what He has said He can do.

13. We don't want to deal with our sin that stands in the way.

I am certain this list is not exhaustive, but this is enough for us to think about.  How about you, my friend, did you find yourself on this list?  The real issue facing us in believing God, is surrendering our will to His.  So many times the issue in trusting God is trusting Him with the outcome, even if it is not what we want.  Let us bow our hearts in submission to His will and trust Him to do the impossible, for all things are possible with Him.