I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. 2 Timothy 1:12b, NIV*
This is the first verse I ever memorized on my own initiative—well, I learned it as part of a hymn, and was delighted to recognize it in my Bible.
I’ve been reading the book Majesty in Motion: Creating an Encouragement Culture in all Your Relationships, and one thing that has challenged me is the need for personal confidence in God. This is area I’ve been working to grow in for a number of years, and confidence in God is the basis for enabling us to encourage others, so we won’t be threatened by their needs or our inadequacies.
This week I’ve chosen to pray and meditate on God’s strength and promises, as a way of cultivating that confidence. When I found this verse from 2 Timothy in my daily reading, something clicked.
I’d always taken the words to mean that God would keep my soul at the end. But it’s so much more: He is ready and able to look after me in the here and now. Exactly what I needed to read this week!
Father, You are so good to us. You show Your care in so many ways. Help me to believe You and to stay confident in Your care whatever the day brings. I won’t necessarily like what comes, but You can use it. And it’s not about me, it’s about You. Help me live in love and confidence in You so others will see the difference You make.
Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Philippians 4:7-86-7, MSG*
Tuesday was a full day.
It was my first day filling in for a friend at her work, and that meant keeping a lot of mental balls in the air—not an easy task for someone who’s easily distracted. Between learning where to find everything and what to do with it, what I’d naively expected to be a morning slid halfway into the afternoon.
Not a big deal… except I’d planned to spend said afternoon cooking a large pot of spaghetti sauce and making apple-rice pudding for my writers’ group’s supper meeting. And writing this blog post.
Okay, cancel the sauce and open a can. Easy. Print the document I’m supposed to critique for the meeting before starting the pudding, so I don’t forget.
Open the email program to find the document. Also find urgent prayer requests I need to respond to under my hat of prayer team lead for The Word Guild. (And bless my wonderful assistant who’s already at work on this!)
So by the time the rice is cooking, I know I’m going to be late for my meeting. So much for going early to help set up. And I can’t reach our hostess on the phone.
Before you start playing tiny violins to accompany my suffering, I need to say it was a good day. Not bad, just hectic. And I’m not complaining.
We’ve all had days like this or worse.
What’s encouraging me this evening is that for once, instead of tensing up and trying to “hurry harder” I was able to remember the verses from James that talk about embracing what comes and being eager to cooperate with what God is doing, rather than fighting the tools He may want to use to shape us.
I’d read these verses recently, and I think our conversation here last Friday about using Scripture to retrain our minds made the truths stick.
When uncertainty and self-doubt asked (several times!) why I thought I could do this job, and self chimed in “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I remembered that God is quite able to help me learn and serve with a cheerful heart.
And He did. I even saw Him in the encouraging way the others treated me.
When perfectionism and fear murmured about my potential mistakes and what was left undone, it was enough to know I’m still learning and I did my best.
Time was passing, but I knew I was where God had me to be and instead of trying to mentally slow the clock (you’ve done that, right?) I trusted Him to arrange the rest of the day.
Well it all got done, even this blog post after my meeting—for which I was late and had to resist the guilt that goes with that. I’m tired, late getting to bed, but I feel good. Whole. Like I got it right even though a performance review of the day would reveal imperfect work.
It seems a tad self-focused to share this, but it’s not about me getting something right. It’s about God and discovering what relying on Him can do. We can each do that, and sometimes listening to one person’s story can encourage us about our own.
Father, thank You so much for Your grace today that enabled me to rely on You instead of on my self-defeating behaviour patterns. I’m sorry this is such a rare thing, and I pray in faith that You will finish the work You’ve begun in me—begun in each of us. Remind us of Your Word, help us to choose to believe what You say instead of what our inner critic claims to be true.
We tend to believe our emotions or thoughts–they’re inside us, they must be true. But believing them often means not believing God.
This catches me every so often. I’ll be sure I’m right, and then I realize that this feeling or thought is directly opposed to what God says.
I may put too much stock in my own understanding (He’s working on that!) but when I bring it down to “me or God” I have to admit He’s more likely to be right!
The trick is to catch those pesky thoughts/feelings and retrain them by replacing them with God’s true Word. Different verses help different people in their circumstances, but here are a few of mine:
When I despair of ever changing: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV*
When I’m feeling down: “Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.”Isaiah 50:10b, NIV*
When I feel inadequate: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” 2 Peter 1:3, NIV*
Abram believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:6, NIV*
God told this childless old man that the longing of his heart – the aching wound he had carried so long – would be satisfied. And Abram believed him. Pure and simple. He accepted God’s promise as truth, and trusted God to do as He said. There’s peace in that.
For me, his simple acceptance of God’s word is key. Not the particular promise he received, but the general heart attitude of believing God. Not whether he understood the hows and whys, nor what was at stake, just that he heard God and believed him.
Sometimes we hear God speak a personal word to us. We may not understand, but we need to trust His character and believe Him. Every day, whether we hear Him or not, we have His character and promises revealed in the Bible. We can believe them.
It’s the simplicity of Abram’s belief that inspires me. I’m so bad about complicating things. Instead of fretting, I need to quietly believe God. Accept Him. Let Him be the strong one, the leader. Trust Him and let Him have the wheel.
Help me, Father, to take my proper place trusting You, open to You, believing You. I’m sorry for the tangled complication I make of life – and of my own thoughts – and ask You to lead me into a simplicity of spirit that rests in You – actively trusts You – believes You the way a flower believes the sun.
Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-he will be blessed in what he does. James 1:23-25, NIV*
As a new mom, I thought I could tell my toddler something once—explain it to him—and that would be enough. Before long I was reciting the age-old parental question, “How many times to I have to tell you not to do that?”
Now I understand the reason young children need repeated coaching: they’re still developing cognitive and reasoning skills. We’re often like that with spiritual lessons, or at least I am. I wonder what some of the things are that God has been patiently repeating, waiting for me to process?
In this chapter alone I see a few:
Pay attention and consciously apply what He says;
Perspective: see that trials prove I can depend on God-and don’t take them personally;
Trust God’s character when I’m asking for wisdom; He wants to give it, and I don’t have to convince Him;
It’s about God, not about me.
He could zap me in some mystical way to “get” the message, and sometimes people do learn in one take… often the hard way. But it seems His preferred method is involving us in the learning. Any teacher will tell us it’s a more effective way to ensure the message sticks.
Instead of passively reading the Bible and then carrying on as usual in our days, let’s stay alert for the verses that really resonate with us. Maybe stick them on the fridge or steering wheel. Think about what they mean in our circumstances. Speak them aloud. After all, they’re our defence against despair and defeat… and one way God wants to grow us.
Father, I confess I tend to wait for You to change me, when You want to involve me in the change. You are the power in the equation. I can’t change myself. But you want to develop my spiritual muscles so I’ll grow up in my faith. Thank You for Your patient teaching. Please help me pay attention and practice what You teach.
Our song this week is “Thy Word,” sung here by the Maranatha Singers.
