Random Thought: Be Thankful in All Things

1 Thessalonians 5:18 says to be thankful in ALL things.  Why be thankful in the hard times?  Faith grows.  Relationships with God deepens.  Sometimes someone who wasn't saved before will have a new beginning.  So often on the other side of the pain there's a blessing that we can't possibly foresee. 

Faith After Failure

 

If you feel like a failure at times, you're in good company. The apostle Peter himself repeatedly had a fair amount of trouble getting it right. His faith gave out as he walked on the water. He misunderstood Jesus frequently. He denied the Lord three times, and was even warned in advance he was going to do it, and he *still* couldn't manage to stop himself! Peter had numerous "fails" and he was still the rock on which the church was built. He was afraid. He was weak. His faith faltered. But he kept going. You keep going too.

Capturing Thoughts: Trusting God

 

I love it when God speaks to me.  I tuned in to my favorite Christian podcast and the two-day series was on handling your thought life.  Later, I picked up an older devotional, turned to the next reading, and darned if it wasn’t about our thought patterns and aligning our minds with the mind of Christ.

I’ve learned that when I am getting bombarded with the same topic from different sources, I need to pay particular attention.  What is God saying to me?  What do I need to do in response?

As a result, I have begun to pay closer attention to the things that go through my mind.  When something happens, I tend to jump to conclusions about the events to follow – and I have a nearly perfect track record of being 100% wrong.  Mulling over these assumed conclusions provides nothing valuable.  But it does increase my stress level – and all for nothing.  There’s no gain from it.

Something valuable I learned about thoughts is to not leave a void.  Satan loves a void.  If you are removing a toxic thought from your mind, replace it with truth.  “God has complete control over this, and I truly have no idea how He plans to play this out.  But no matter what He decides, He will provide what is needed and never leave my side.  I’m going to let Him handle this, not me.  I chose to trust Him in this.”

Another thing I learned is that this takes work.  It takes effort, and I need to be deliberate about it.  But it has huge payoffs, not only in reducing stress, but in reminding myself that God is completely powerful, He sees more than I do, He loves me dearly and is completely worthy of my trust. 

Eliminating the "Yeah, but" from our lives

I remember when I was a kid, my mother would tell me to do something and the first words out of my mouth were "Yeah, but..." and then go on to list all the reasons why her request would be impossible for me to fulfil.  I don't have time.  That's my brother's chore.  Tomorrow would be better.  Eventually before I even got "Yeah, but..." out of my mouth she'd look at me and say, "Yabut, Yabut, Yabut." and I knew at that point the conversation was over.  If this was English class, we'd just replace everything after Yeah But with a period, because that would be the end of the sentence.

The same thing is true of God.  When He tells me to go talk to that stranger, He's not interested in my, "Yeah, but what if they don't want to be bothered?"  When He tells me to do that favor, He's not interested in my "Yeah, but they won't appreciate it."  When He tells me to extend a kindness, He's not interested in "Yeah, but they treat me poorly."  He's no more interested in my Yeah Buts than my mother was.  Might as well end that sentence right there.

The Fine Line Between Helping and Hijacking

Subtitled: "My Nose Always Knows (Where It Doesn't Belong)"

My friend TJ had some great words of wisdom regarding our innate desire to want to "fix" everyone's everything for them: "I have a relatively small nose but it is always where it doesn't belong with the best of intentions."

There's a fine line between helping someone and completely taking over their situation and "fixing" it for them.

Sometimes God just wants to get someone's attention directly, without anyone inserting themselves in between.  That's a hard one to remember.

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Image used from Pixabay according to their Content License

Today's Random Thought: Does God Have a Better Plan?

Sometimes our plans may not work out to be in our best interest. We can't possibly see all the repercussions of getting what we want, but God can.  When what we desperately want doesn't happen, we need to trust that a perfect God who loves us more than we can possibly imagine is carving out a path that is exactly what we need, when we need it.

Today's Random Thought - Why Isn't God Doing Anything??

We pray for what we want.  It’s frustrating when we pray and pray and God doesn’t appear to be doing anything. But God has a plan for every single situation, and a perfect timeline for that plan.  And His plan is always the best.  He puts others with needs in our paths for a reason; sometimes we are the ones with needs and we're put in others' paths.  He could just meet those needs directly, but there's blessing and learning and growing when He puts people with needs in front of people who can meet those.