We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance.
Romans 5:3
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Tag Archives: problems
God’s Handiwork
The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship.
Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
Psalm 19:1-2 (NLT)
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There Is A Purpose
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)
3 We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. 5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.
Romans 5:3-5 (NLT)
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Child’s Play
I used to watch my son play with a toy similar to the one pictured. He would try to fit the shapes in the holes, but often got them wrong. He would get frustrated and try to force them in. He would even bang the pieces in the wood somehow hoping to make it go in where there wasn’t a hole. When he was ready to give up, he would just take his hand, move it back and forth over the pieces and make a bigger mess.
I used to show him the shapes one by one and point to the right hole. Even though I showed him which one, he would still struggle to make it work sometimes. I would show him and say, “Triangle” then point to the triangle on the box. “Triangle.” For him, it was too complicated and hard. When he couldn’t master it easily, he wanted to give up. For me, it was easy. I could do it with my eyes closed.
You and I face complicated problems every day. We try to fit all the pieces together, but they just won’t fit. We try to force them to and they won’t work right. It gets frustrating to us. We can’t see the answer to the problem and we know there has to be an easy solution. Often in our frustration we make a mess. We scatter the pieces that were supposed to come together and give up. We cry out to God for help and he just points and gives us one word answers. We end up wanting to quit in the process because it’s so difficult.
God looks down at our problems and situations like you and I look at that puzzle for my son. To Him, it’s easy. Jeremiah 32:27 says, “I am The Lord, the God of all the peoples of the world. Is anything too hard for me?” There is no situation that you or I face that isn’t child’s play to our God. There’s no problem so complicated He can’t figure it out. While you and I stare at it, fight against it and struggle to figure it out, God looks at it and sees the easy solution. He knows just what to do.
Just like my son used to do, we need to hand the pieces of our problems to God and ask Him to put the puzzle together. There’s no sense in struggling with problems we can’t figure out when we are children of the one who knows all things. There’s no shame in admitting to Him that we need help. In fact, in II Corinthians 12:9 God tells us that His strength is made perfect in our weakness. When we are able to take our problems to Him and admit we are weak, His grace become sufficient for our problems and His strength becomes our strength. Take your problems to Him today.
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Rental Gear
My nephew is into Airsoft wars and invited me to go to one with him. If you’re not sure Airsoft is, it’s a lot like paintball only the guns look real and they shoot plastic BB’s at you. At this Airsoft war, we arrived early. I rented a gun, mask and vest. It wasn’t long before lots of other people started to arrive. Most were dressed in full U.S. Military fatigues or camouflage while I was in blue jeans and tennis shoes. As we were standing there waiting to start, a guy in his 20’s walked up and asked about my nephew’s gun. After talking about it, he started talking about his AK-47 and the history of how they were designed and manufactured. He spoke of how much his Airsoft designed AK-47 mimicked the real one.
As he spoke, I watched other people arrive with Sniper rifles, cargo boxes full of gear, grenades and smoke bombs. I began to look at my rental gear and realize I was out gunned. When the guy finished talking about his gun, I jokingly said, “I’ve got this standard rental issue so look out.” He didn’t think it was funny. Instead he said, “That’s an M4.” He then told me all about my gun. It didn’t make me feel better about my chances in the upcoming battles. I realized I had a gun that had been overused, a mask that had been worn a hundred times before by a hundred different people and no idea of what was coming.
I wonder if that’s how David felt when he went to meet his brothers on the battle front. Did he look around and see everyone in their military gear and then look at his everyday clothes? Did he look at their weapons for war and compare them to his sling? He didn’t go there to fight. We just wanted to deliver some food for his brothers. When he did decide he was going to fight, the others for sure looked at his clothes and sling as insufficient. Saul gave him rental gear to fight in. We all know it didn’t fit and would have hindered his ability in the battle. David gave up the rental gear for spiritual gear.
He realized that the battle in front of him was more than a physical one. It was a spiritual one. He knew that his physical gear wouldn’t help him in a spiritual battle so he gave back the rental gear. He was out gunned on the physical front, but had all the fire power he needed on the spiritual front. His victory wasn’t due to his slingshot or the stones he picked out at the creek. His victory was due to his ability to recognize when he was in a spiritual battle. He knew that when God is on your side, victory is assured. He knew that physical attributes don’t guarantee spiritual victories.
Are you in a spiritual battle today that is masked as a physical one? Have you felt out gunned as you’ve approached the situation? Don’t get caught up in the physical impossibilities of the situation. Don’t get lost in what the other side has versus what you don’t have. When we look at the physical side of a spiritual battle, it’s easy to give up or to be afraid. When we look at the spiritual side, it’s easy to be brave because if God is for us, who can be against us? We have all the fire power and tactical advantage we need. Give up the rental gear, God has given you all you need to win.
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Fear and Faith
Gideon has always been one of my favorite people in the Bible. He was able to do so many great things, but he was a lot like you and me. He dealt with fear and doubt constantly. He never wanted to act on something unless he was sure it was from God. He didn’t think of himself as a person who could do great things, but because he was willing to be used, God was able to do mighty acts through him. I see a lot of parallels between who he was and who many of us are.
When the angel of God first visited him, he was hiding in a wine press threshing grain. He was afraid the Midianites would see him, so he did his work out of sight. Even though he was out of sight of his enemies, he wasn’t out of God’s sight. He knew right where to find him and met him there. God does the same for us. He knows we deal with fear and try to run and hide from the things that overwhelm us. He sees us where we are and will come meet us in that place.
The next thing that happen shows just who God is. The angel seeing him hiding calls out to him in Judges 6:12, “The Lord is with you, mighty man of fearless courage (AMP).” Ha! Here’s a guy hiding from his problems and God doesn’t call him out on it. Instead He calls out what is inside. In other versions, the angel calls him “mighty hero” (NLT), “mighty warrior” (NCV) and “mighty man of valor” (KJV). God calls out what is on the inside, not what can be seen on the outside.
God knows that you and I are weak in our own strength. We are timid and afraid when circumstances roar like a lion and try to devour us. We hide from our problems, drown our problems and keep quiet about them. I’ve tried all three to get rid of them, but none of them worked. It took God calling out who He created me to be to come out, face them and to fight them. He did the same with Gideon.
After the angel visited Gideon, the Midianites moved closer to him and threatened him. In verse 34, it says, “The Spirit of The Lord clothed Gideon with Himself. (AMP)” God took off the clothing of fear and wrapped him in Himself. Suddenly Gideon was no longer afraid because he now knew who he was in God. He had boldness to go out and fight. He blew a trumpet and gathered an army together. Even then, he had doubt. God came and assured him that He was with him. He won an impossible battle because he trusted God.
Don’t be defined by your fear today. Be defined by who God sees in you. Let Him wrap you up in Himself and give you the courage to be the hero and mighty warrior that you need to be in order to face whatever your enemy is. God isn’t asking you to face it or fight it in your own strength. He’s asking if you’re willing to step on the battlefield and to allow Him to fight for you. Don’t be held captive by fear and allow it to keep you in hiding. Trust who God says you are, stand up and face that enemy. God will do the rest.
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The Unforced Rhythms of Grace
I heard a scripture a couple of weeks ago and I’m still chewing on it. I’m going over it in my mind over and over. I’m still not sure everything that it means, so I’ll keep chewing on it, breaking it down, thinking it through and pondering how it applies to my life. This simple phrase from matthew 11:28-30 keeps rolling around in my mind. Jesus said, “Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”
Jesus says it after asking some good questions. He asked, “Are you tired? Worn out?” Then He offers for us to go to Him, get away with Him and to recover our life. He will show us how to take a real rest by walking with Him and working with Him. He says, “Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” It reminds me of a father teaching His child how to do something.
Watch me. Learn from me. I’ll show you how to do it. Do what I do. That’s a father’s heart. He wants to show us the rhythm of life. Real life, not this life we’re living that is inundated with emails, phone calls and traffic. Life that is unforced and natural. A spiritual life that loves others, does what is right and follows in His steps. He promised right after that, “I won’t lay anything heavy or Ill-fitting on you.” He’s not a burdensome God. His desire is simp,y to spend time with us.
The longer that I’m a father, the more I realize His love for us and His desire to just spend time with us. Our lives are to bring Him joy. We were designed to walk with Him and to spend time with Him. We weren’t meant to carry heavy burdens. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. In I Peter 5:7 It says, “Give ALL your worries and cares to God, for He cares for you.”
I think giving them over to Him is the first step to learning those unforced rhythms of grace. We can’t move well when we are bogged down with things that we can’t do anything about. Release them to Him and find rest. I know it’s easier said than done. It takes a shift in your thinking. Once you come to the realization that worrying about your problems won’t solve it, you have the ability to release it to God and find rest. The Amplified version describes that rest as “relief, ease, refreshment, recreation and blessed quiet.”
Maybe that’s where you are today. You need to learn those rhythms of grace, but you have to let go of the burdens of the past first. You can’t let the worry of the unknown interfere with those rhythms either. Your life is precious and our Father wants you to learn His ways and to find rest in Him. He wants to refresh your soul today if you’ll just let Him. Don’t hold onto the things that keep you from walking forward with Him.
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Move Forward
There’s a commercial out right now for the 2013 Lexus GS that caught my eye. It starts off with a Zack Morris phone on its side. All of a sudden it starts to vibrate on the ground and then it gets sucked backwards. It’s quickly followed by a Sony Walkman and then a record player. The announcer starts off and then says, “Anything not moving forward is moving backward.” Other things you recognize from years past go flying by as the camera moves forward to the car. It starts to get sucked backwards, but it peels out and moves forward.
It’s a great example of our spiritual walk. We are constantly being pulled backwards. We are being drawn to our old lives and the things we’ve left behind. While we’ve had successes in the past, we cannot rely on them to keep us moving forward. We must constantly be finding ways to move forward in our walk with Christ. Paul said in Philippians 3:14, “I press on toward the goal.” He knew it wasn’t so etching easy. It was something you have to strive for.
If anyone could have rested on their past successes, it was Paul. A couple of verses before he said that, he said, “I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have reached perfection.” He knew there was more to do. He has not yet attained so he needed to keep pressing on. We all need to make sure that we don’t rest in our walk with Christ. We have not attained where he wants us. There’s always room for growth.
Just like the commercial said, “Anything not moving forward is moving backward.” So are we in our walk with God. The gravity of our old life, of this world is pulling us backward. We must break the bonds of the things that pull us back so we can move forward. Hebrews 12:1 tells us to strip off every weight that slows us down so we can run with endurance and not get tripped up. Those weights slow you down to the point that it’s easier to move backwards than forwards.
Pray today and ask God what weights are holding you back. You probably already know what they are. Whatever it is that is holding you back from moving forward with God, must be cast aside. Your spiritual life is more important than your physical comfort. Free yourself of the things that hold you back so you can embrace the future God has for you. Keep moving forward and drawing close to Him each day. He will not only draw close to you, but you will no longer miss the things that once weighed you down.
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Devotions by Chris Hendrix 