Tag Archives: trusting God

October 23, 2017 · 5:57 AM

The Burden Of The Unknown


If you are like me, worry has a tendency to creep in from time to time. I look at the future, and my mind begins to play scenario after scenario of what might happen. Usually, it’s always the worst case scenarios. I begin to stress and then get worried to the point that it keeps me up and dominates my thoughts. My worry comes from not knowing what the future holds. I like to plan and prepare, and when I can’t do that, stress takes over. 

Worry also comes from a lack of trust in God. When I get overly anxious, it means that I don’t trust God with my future. Sometimes we are good at giving Him our past and our present, but struggle to give Him our future. God knows what your future holds, and He’s even planned it out. He is not going to be surprised by what happens in your life or how each situation will unfold. That’s why we’ve got to learn to trust Him when it comes to our future. 

1 Peter 5:7 says, “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you” (NLT). It’s not God’s responsibility to relieve you of your worry. It’s your responsibility to trust Him with your future, and to give it to Him. It’s quite a release to hand the burden of the unknown off to Him. I can tell you that I’d rather give up my stress than my sleep. I found a way to do that by learning to trust God with the unknown. 

Releasing the burden of the unknown takes you praying, “God, i don’t know what the future holds, but you do. I’m going to trust that your plan for my life is better than my plan. I give you my future. I release it to you. I don’t want to carry this burden anymore. Please take it and help me to trust you more.” When I prayed that prayer and meant it, my worry left. When it tried to come back, I told it to talk to God because my future was in His hands. Doing that repeatedly, until it was ingrained in my mind, is how I was released from the worry and stress of the burden of the unknown. 

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 18, 2017 · 5:35 AM

Staying On Course


When I was a teenager, I was very involved in a camping program through my church. One of the badges I had to earn was for orienteering. I had to learn how to use a compass, read a map and plot courses on a map. I also had to go on a several mile hike through a dense forest using my compass. They handed me a topographical map of the area, gave me several coordinates and told me where to start. 

I took my first coordinate, set my compass and started walking. I had to measure my steps because my next turn was two hundred yards in. The deeper I got into the woods, the harder it was to find the markers I was looking for. It was also more difficult to look ahead several hundred yards. I had to go to a tree in my path, walk around it and reset my path. If I was barely off at all, I could be twenty yards or so from the hidden marker in the woods that I needed to write down.

I made it through the course and earned my badge. As I think back on that experience, it reminds me of what it’s like to follow God’s plan for my life. There’s no real trail, I just know the direction I’m supposed to go and I’m not sure where the markers are hidden. There have been many obstacles in my way that have tried to knock me off course, but I’ve kept at it. I’m sure you’ve experienced the same thing in your life.

Psalm 119:1-2 says, “You’re blessed when you stay on course, walking steadily on the road revealed by GOD. You’re blessed when you follow his directions, doing your best to find him” (MSG). God has set a course for each one of us to run. He’s given us the compass of His Word to help us navigate, and the Holy Spirit to help us measure our steps. It’s up to each one of us to utilize the tools He’s given us to do what He’s called us to do. If you’re off course right now or stuck, go back to the Bible and seek the Holy Spirit’s help. You can get back on course and finish your race well. 

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 10, 2017 · 5:40 AM

Unfazed And Unafraid


This year, I’ve had both a family member and a coworker get diagnosed with breast cancer. Their stories of sitting in the doctor’s office and hearing the news were very similar. They described getting tunnel vision. Sound seemed to go away. Fear immediately brought tears as it showed them a world where their child would grow up motherless. Then both immediately asked for prayer from those who know God.

One shared with me how after prayer they had clarity of how to fight, and they were no longer reeling from the news. The other shared with me about the peace that came over her. She said, “After people started praying, I haven’t been able to shed a tear. This peace won’t let me.” Both received news that no one ever wants to get, but both knew where to turn when they got it. While they still have treatments to go through, knowing God is in control has made the difference. 

In Psalm 112, the writer discusses the blessings of the man (or woman) who fears the Lord with reverence and worships Him with obedience. Each verse pronounces blessings or discusses the outcome for such people. In verses 7-8, it says, “They do not fear bad news; they confidently trust the Lord to care for them. They are confident and fearless and can face their foes triumphantly” (NLT). This verse perfectly describes what both of these women shared with me.

This verse doesn’t just apply to cancer though. It applies to any bad news that may come your way. You don’t have to fear the outcome when you get it. Just like these ladies, you can give the news to God through prayer, and His peace, which passes all understanding, will guard your thoughts. Fear does not come from God, but peace does. Whatever you’re facing today, you can face it with confidence because you are a child of the King of Kings. He is in control, and will work out His plan for you.

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 2, 2017 · 5:14 AM

Joy Returns


Lamentations 4 and 5 are two of the saddest chapters in the Bible. Jeremiah was so descriptive of what life was like living under the control of their enemy. The people who were once wealthy were digging through the trash to find food. The kids were forced to do manual labor that was too hard for them. Anyone caught looking for food outside the city walls was killed. Confidence was replaced with desperation, and joy was replaced with a deep depression. 

People no longer gathered to talk. No one sang any songs. The population was dwindling down because people were dying of starvation. It was a very dark period in Israel’s history. Jeremiah knew they were living under the enemy’s control because they had turned their back on God. He cried out in repentance and asked God how long would they suffer. Then he remembered that suffering is temporary, but God is eternal.

You may be going through a dark time in your life right now as well. It may feel like God has abandoned you and that you are living under the enemy’s control. I know what it’s like to live through that. I know what it feels like to lose everything and wonder if you should still try to keep going. I can let you know that the suffering is only temporary. It does end and the sun comes out again. God has not abandoned you no matter how alone you feel.

I pray Jeremiah’s prayer in Lamentations 5:21 over you today. It says, “Restore us, O Lord, and bring us back to you again! Give us back the joys we once had!” (GNT) I’m living proof that God restores what the enemy stole, and that joy returns. When God restores you, He will rebuild everything better than it was. When He gives your joy back, it will be greater than before. What feels like forever is only a season. Restoration is coming. 

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 28, 2017 · 5:00 AM

Flawed Failure

Throwback Thursday is a new feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other writing ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.


If you are perfect, then you don’t have to read this today. If you are a flawed failure like me, you can keep reading. The good news is that you are just who God is looking for to use. He rarely picks anyone perfect to carry out His plan. If you look at the list of people God has used to do great things through, it’s full of flawed failures. It’s full of people who you probably wouldn’t want to work with. 

Moses knew his own flaws and tried to use them as an excuse to not do what God was asking him to do. He stuttered. He murdered. He ran away from his responsibilities. He was orphaned as a baby. He had excuses, but God sees our excuses as opportunities to connect with others. He sees our flaws as ways to build dependence on Him. He’s ok with you not measuring up to what you think He wants. You actually already have what He wants. That’s why He chose you to do His will.

Each of us have a purpose to fulfill. God has a desire to use you despite your flaws and excuses. He has a purpose for your life that only you can fulfill. God is not concerned with your past if you’ve gone to Him for forgiveness. He’s taken your past into account when He planned your future. He knew the struggles you were going to face. He knew where and how you were going to fail and still planned to use you. It’s hard for us to understand because what disqualifies us humanly somehow qualifies us spiritually.

God’s ways are higher than our ways. What we consider wise is foolishness to Him. When we point to the scars, disappointment, failures and sin, He points to the cross. It’s in our weakness that He can truly work. If we rely on our strengths and abilities, we get in His way. When we think we can’t or shouldn’t be used by Him, we are ready to be used by Him. If we had the ability to do it on our own, we wouldn’t rely on Him.

God can and will use our strengths, but He’s really interested in our flaws and failures. He uses those to bring healing to others and to show them that He can use them too. Be open about your past. Tell others about your scars. Your story (testimony) brings hope and healing to others. When you hide who you were, you hide the grace that God bestowed on you. Others need to see that God can forgive a past that’s dark and full of sin. Others need to see that God can and still uses someone as flawed as us.

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 27, 2017 · 5:03 AM

Creating A King


When I was a kid, there was a Richard Pryor movie called “Brewster’s Millions”. The plot of the movie was that Pryor’s character Brewster was down on his luck when he found out his great uncle died and left him 300 million dollars. The catch was that he had to spend $30 million in 30 days and have no assets to show for it or he got nothing. His uncle was testing him to make him to make sure he didn’t waste the full $300 million when he inherited it. 

When Joseph was a young man, he had a dream that his brothers would bow down to him. They hated him when he told them the dream. He then had another dream showing not only his brothers bowing to him, but also his father and mother. His brothers were so angry they wanted to kill him. Instead, they threw him into a pit, sold him as a slave, he was then falsely accused of raping his master’s wife, and he was thrown in prison. It was nearly 14 years between his dream and the time he left prison to become second in command of Egypt.

When David was a teenager, he was anointed as the next king of Israel. It was then that he faced Goliath, was banished by Saul, hid in the desert, lived on the run, forced out of the nation, and fought many battles. It was nearly 15 years between the time that he was anointed king and actually became king. He was tested, just like Joseph, so that God could convert him from a shepherd into a king. This pattern is found all throughout the Bible, and I believe God still does it today.

Psalm 105:19 says, “Until the time came to fulfill his dreams, the Lord tested Joseph’s character” (NLT). When God puts a dream in our hearts, we undergo testing. The greater the dream, the greater the test. God uses those tests to prove our character to make sure we don’t waste the dream. He knows we aren’t ready to handle the fulfillment, so He tests us to help us become the person who will steward the dream well. If God has given you a dream, be prepared to be tested and to wait for the fulfillment of it. There is a king (or queen) inside of you waiting to come out, but it will take some perseverance to make that happen. 

32 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 26, 2017 · 5:44 AM

The Anchor That Endures


Did you know that the United States doesn’t have a federal law that requires boats to have an anchor? I know that’s a random question to start your day with, but go with me on this for a minute. I’ve been on a boat many times to fish. We used the anchor to hold us in position over the fishing hole, but anchors are mainly needed if your motor dies or if you run out of gas. When that happens, your boat is simply adrift at the whim of the water without an anchor. That’s not a good situation to be in. 

Like boats, many people don’t have an anchor – something that can steady them. When bad times come or when they burn out, they have nothing to hold onto. Their life goes out of control and they begin drifting away. That’s a helpless feeling, but it’s something that all of us face at one point. It’s why we need an anchor in our lives. We need a truth that we can hold onto snd believe in when don’t have the strength to move forward. 

As Christians, we have an anchor. In Hebrews 6:19, it says, “We have this hope as an anchor for our lives, safe and secure” (HCSB). The whole world around us can be crumbling, but our anchor holds us in place. We don’t have to be at the mercy of our circumstances. We don’t have to succumb to the pressures around us. We don’t have to worry when we can’t see the future. Our hope in Jesus is secure and provides us with stability in unstable times.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, “‘For I know the plans I have for you’ — this is the Lord’s declaration — ‘plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’” God gives hope because He knows it is essential to life. He has a plan for you, and He often uses hard times to mold us, shape us, and to correct our course. When we are in those times, we can hold on to the hope that He gives and it will not fail us because it is an anchor that endures. 

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 25, 2017 · 5:31 AM

Focus On The Good


It was 14 years ago today that I hit rock bottom in life. I had endured five months of everything going wrong in my life, and on September 25th, I lost my job to top it off. Every time I thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. It was almost a daily occurrence. I laid down on the floor of my living room and told God, “If one more thing happens, I give up. I refuse to go down any further.” I went to my calendar and wrote, “The Bottom,” on today’s date. I vowed to climb out if that hole until I saw daylight again.

I didn’t know it would take about a decade before I got out of the hole that those five months created. I suffered some set backs through those years, but I never went further down than I had been that night. I was on the edge of ending my life because I couldn’t take the failure and the pain anymore. I was embarrassed of where my life was, and I knew I was going to have to make some changes to how I was living if I was going to get out of the hole. For starters, I was going to give control of the rebuild to God.

Clearly my way didn’t work. My life had been life a block tower that a kid built. It got to a point that it could no longer sustain itself, and it all came crashing down. I knew if I gave God control it would be built the right way and would be more stable. Fourteen years later, I can tell you that was the best decision I made. God has been good to me and has restored the years that were stolen. He has taken me farther than I dreamed I could go, and has given me more joy than I could have imagined. 

Today, instead of focusing on the bottom, I like to focus on the good things He’s done for me. It’s no longer about where I was. It’s not about where I’m going, and it’s all because of who God is. Psalm 103:3 says, “Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me” (NLT). We need to all make the decision to quit reflecting on past failures and pains, and instead focus on the good things God does for us. I can tell you it made a difference in my life, and I’m sure it will make a difference in yours. 

5 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 20, 2017 · 5:33 AM

Hope Returns


There have been a few times in my life when I’ve been desperate for hope. When I was in my early twenties, my mom was in ICU at the M.D. Anderson cancer center. I remember living in that holding room for families. Each family in there lived day to day desperate for good news. Some families got it, but most of us didn’t. We were tired, exhausted, mentally drained, and were looking for a ray of hope that might mean our loved one would walk out of there. 

Another time was after my first wife left me. My business was failing and the world all around me seemed to be crashing in. When I thought I had hit rock bottom, the bottom would fall out. When I thought I had good news, it turned out to be wrong. I just wanted something to hold onto in order to keep from from falling deeper in that hole, but everything I grabbed seemed to slip between my fingers.

To be without hope is a dangerous place, yet so many of us live there. Our lives seem to have no future, and we just want something we can believe in to brighten up the darkness a little. The writer of Lamentations was there too. He was in a desperate place having lost everything. As he recounted his trouble in chapter three, he then wrote in 3:22-23, “Yet hope returns when I remember this one thing: The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue” (GNT). His hope returned when he took his eyes off his situation and focused on God.

I love what he goes on to write in verses 25-26. He says, “The Lord is good to everyone who trusts in him, So it is best for us to wait in patience—to wait for him to save us—.” God sees us in our hopeless darkness. Looking back, He used those times to shape me and polish me. Trusting God when you can’t see a future is hard, but be patient. The Lord is good and is working things out for your good. Hope will return because God has not forgotten you.

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 19, 2017 · 5:37 AM

Promise Keeper


I once had a boss who would promise to do things for us. Each week, during staff meeting, he would tell us if we hit a certain goal, he would buy lunch or get us gift cards. They weren’t crazy promises, but they were commitments none the less. After about six weeks had passed, I hadn’t seen any of the things he’d promised. I finally asked a co-worker, “Is he full of hot air or does he make good on these promises?” It turns out, he was full of hot air.

Maybe you’ve been let down by people too. I’ve learned that people are great at breaking promises. It’s easy to make them in the moment, but hard to keep them once the time has come. After working for this person, i vowed to do my best not to make a commitment unless I know I could keep it. I’m amazed how many people are shocked when a promise is kept. We’ve all gotten used to people breaking commitments, that we’re taken aback when someone actually keeps it.

The problem is that we’ve taken that mindset and have applied it to God. When we don’t see answers right away, we think God doesn’t care or He’s forgotten us. 2 Peter 3:9 tells us that God really isn’t being slow like some of us think. He’s patiently waiting for the right time. I’ve learned His timetable is different than mine. I often pray that He would act on my time, but really, i need to be praying that I could be patient enough to wait for His time. He always makes good on His promises.

Psalm 100:5 says, “For the Lord is good. His unfailing love continues forever, and his faithfulness (in fulfilling promises) continues to each generation” (NLT). I added the original meaning in parentheses because it’s important for us to understand. God is good, and He keeps His promises. If you’re waiting on Him to fulfill His promise to you, keep holding on. It’s not too late. He is faithful to keep His promises to you.

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,