Matthew 6:34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
When I first gave my life to the Lord, like many of us, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. If God would have shown me, at that time, all the things that would have to change about me, I think I would have gone running for dear life!
After over 20 years working in ministry in Israel—where we still keep our ministry house—I’ve spent the last few years traveling.
It’s been a wild ride with so many challenges and close encounters with major events that really showed me just how poorly news can be reported. In fact, it got to the point where I couldn’t in good conscience link to news stories anymore; we had to start producing all our news content ourselves. That’s how we ended up becoming a full-blown news agency.
If you would have shown me this picture back in the days of my rebellion, I think I would have laughed my head off in unbelief!
But that is the Lord’s way. God is a gentleman. He doesn’t show us more than He feels we need to know. He knows that we are weak and He’s merciful enough not to give us more than we can handle. He desires for us to lay our worries upon Him and trust Him for our future.
God has not given us the power to overcome all the problems we have yet to face. He has given us only the power to overcome what faces us today! Just as the children of Israel could collect only enough manna for one day, the power God gives us to face our trials — it only comes one day at a time.
God has so many wonderful adventures ahead for us who love Him and are called according to His purpose — and He will surely give us the strength to endure the trials we’ll face with each adventure. Let’s trust Him only for today’s trials — and let Him worry about the rest!
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For a season, I worked in Washington, D.C., for one of America’s largest Christian political organizations. Sometimes I saw how politics could get ugly and, more often than not, how it changed people — not for the better…but usually for the worse!
In the mid 1850’s a troubled teenager from Northfield, Massachusetts moved to Boston to try to find work. He hadn’t gone to school beyond the fifth grade; he couldn’t spell, his grammar was awful and his manners were brash and crude. Thankfully, an uncle took him on as a shoe salesman–on condition that he be obedient and that he attend church.
Have you ever felt uneasy, unsettled or unstable? Or maybe a better question is — who hasn’t? How do we overcome these feelings?
Is that a trend or something? I don’t know what it is but I’ve heard that phrase said quite a bit. We were even walking down the Wal-Mart isle to pick up a few things and my wife showed me a T-shirt with “I have issues” written across the front! I guess the world is coming to the sad reality that we really do have some issues.
It never ceases to amaze me, the way the devil uses our offenses and our “offendedness” to divide and conquer marriages, relationships, churches — even entire nations!
There’s an old adage, “Have the heart of a lion!” Hearing it, we think, “courage”. This recalls a quote I once heard; “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened”. I doubt there’s a single hero story in which the fearless leader fails to inspire the righteous determination of his army or people. The voice of the captain resounds through the ranks evoking the fierce cry of every warrior ready to face death or worse, for the cause. Courage truly is contagious.
The Hebrew word for “face” is “panim”, (the Hebrew letters, peh-nun-yud-mem), literally “faces”, a plural word. Normally, when we think about God, we focus only upon one of His “faces” at a time. God is “love” – or He is “holy”– or He is “just”— or He’s a God of “wrath”. Yet, of course, ALL these “faces” are His at once; and so the word “panim” accurately reflects the truth of God’s multifaceted being. As we get to know Him better we begin to appreciate the complexity of His nature and the fact that our focus on one “face” is a very limited view, since there’s so much more going on in His amazing “Personality”.