God's Works

Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

11 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.

Known unto God are all his works, for known unto him are all his thoughts (Acts 15:18) and his works agree exactly with his thoughts; he does all according to the counsel of his will. We often do not know our own thoughts, nor know our own mind, but God is never at any uncertainty within himself. We are sometimes ready to fear that God's designs concerning us are all against us; but he knows the contrary concerning his own people, that they are thoughts of good and not of evil; even that which seems evil is designed for good. His thoughts are all working towards the expected end, which he will give in due time. The end they expect will come, though perhaps not when they expect it. Let them have patience till the fruit is ripe, and then they shall have it [Matthew Henry Commentary]

John Beukema, from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania wrote:  I attended a community prayer breakfast and sat at a table with a group of men I didn't know. In the course of our conversation, the subject of retirement came up. The man sitting next to me, who appeared to be in his early fifties, was quite excited by the prospect. He said how much he was looking forward to the end of his career and related a conversation he had with his wife that morning.

"My wife asked, 'What are you going to do when you retire?' I told her, 'I'm going to sit on the couch and watch TV all day every day.'"

The table was silent, but I couldn't keep quiet for long. "If you do that," I said, "you'll be dead in a year."

He looked at me, wide-eyed, and asked why.

I told him, "If the lack of purpose in your life doesn't kill you first, your wife will."

Throughout our lives God has a purpose designed for us. It’s a plan to prosper us in ways that give hope to the future and the future of others. We are God’s tools and God can use us for many things in life. Even those who have died for good causes have been inspirations to others to do things they may have never done before. Praise God for His mighty works.

Wisdom with grace

Proverbs 1:8-9 (NLT)

8 My child, listen when your father corrects you. Don’t neglect your mother’s instruction. 9 What you learn from them will crown you with grace and be a chain of honor around your neck.

This is the plea from a father to his child to seek and find wisdom that come from correct, instruction and learning. Then the wisdom that has been received will become a crown of grace and a chain of honor.

Research studies indicate that up to 45 percent of adult siblings have relationships marked by rivalry or distance. A story from the Wall Street Journal featured Al Golden, 85, who still chokes up when he talks about his twin brother, Elliott, who died three years ago. The brothers shared a room growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., graduated from the same college and then married within a month of each other in 1947.

Yet Mr. Golden still remembers how their father often compared their grades, asking one or the other, "How come you got a B and your brother got an A?" Elliott Golden became a lawyer and eventually a state Supreme Court judge. Al Golden went into the mirror business then sold life insurance. He says he always envied his brother's status and secretly took pleasure in knowing he was a better fisherman and owned a big boat. Once, Elliott asked him, "I am a lawyer. How come you make more money than me?" Mr. Golden says. "He meant: 'How come you are making more than me when you are not as successful?' But it made me feel good."

One day, Elliott accused him of not doing enough to take care of their ailing mother. After the conversation, Al didn't speak to his brother for more than a year. "It might have been the built-up of jealousies over the years," he says. His brother repeatedly reached out to him, as did his nieces and nephews, but Mr. Golden ignored them.

Then one day Al received an email from his brother telling a story about two men who had a stream dividing their properties. One man hired a carpenter to build a fence along the stream, but the carpenter built a bridge by mistake. Mr. Golden thought about the email then wrote back, "I'd like to walk over the bridge." "I missed him," Mr. Golden says now. "I never had the chance to miss him before." [Elizabeth Bernstein, "Sibling Rivalry Grows Up," Wall Street Journal (3-20-12);]

When you carefully seek out wisdom you will find it is more than knowledge, it is also learning how to build bridges that create relationships. It is wisdom to understand one another and to be able to reach out on love with grace.

In Christ Alone

Deuteronomy 13:4 (NLT)

4 Serve only the Lord your God and fear him alone. Obey his commands, listen to his voice, and cling to him.

As prescribing a preservative from the temptation: "Keep close to your duty, and you keep out of harm's way. God never leaves us till we leave him.' Or, As furnishing us with an answer to the temptation; say, "It is written, Thou shalt walk after the Lord, and cleave unto him; and therefore what have I to do with idols? [Matthew Henry Commentary]

In his book Fill These Hearts, Christopher West describes a surprising and simple discovery that changed his marriage:

Years ago [my wife] and I were out to dinner and she observed that something was different about our marriage in recent years, something good. She asked me if I had any insight into what it was. After reflecting a bit I said with a smile, "Yeah, I think I know what it is. I think I've been realizing deep in my heart that you can't satisfy me." She got a big smile on her face and said, "Yeah, that's it. And I've been realizing the same thing: you can't satisfy me either." I imagine anyone overhearing us in the restaurant would have thought we were about to get divorced, but to us that realization was cause for joy and celebration. We had never felt closer and freer in our love.

I love my wife more than words can express, and I know she loves me. But I can't possibly be her ultimate satisfaction, and she can't be mine.

And that's why our conversation at the restaurant was cause for rejoicing. Only to the degree that we stop expecting others to be "god" for us, are we free to love others as they really are, warts and all, without demanding perfection of them, whether a spouse, a friend, a son or daughter, or any other relationship. And only to the degree that we are free from idolizing … human beings are we also free to take our ache for perfect fulfillment to the One who alone can satisfy it.

In Christ alone my hope is found; He is my light, my strength, my song; This cornerstone, this solid ground, Firm through the fiercest drought and storm. What heights of love, what depths of peace,

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease! My comforter, my all in all—Here in the love of Christ I stand. [In Christ Alone, written by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend]

God helps us face the storms of life

Isaiah 43:11-12 (NLT)

11 I, yes I, am the Lord, and there is no other Savior. 12 First I predicted your rescue, then I saved you and proclaimed it to the world. No foreign god has ever done this. You are witnesses that I am the only God,” says the Lord.

See what it is that the great God glories in, not so much that he is the only ruler as that he is the only Saviour; for he delights to do good: he is the Saviour of all men, 1 Tim. 4:10. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

For the past 25 years, Jim Cantore, The Weather Channel's "Storm-tracker," has tracked, chased, run into, and then reported on some of the most extreme storms on the planet. A 2011 USA Today article on Cantore noted, "Whether he is leaning into the ferocious winds of a hurricane or shivering as a blast of polar air drops down from the Arctic, Cantore, 47, is often on the scene to help viewers appreciate how weather tests us."

In the spring of 2011, Cantore provided coverage in the midst of the severe tornado outbreaks in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Joplin, Missouri. Both towns suffered extensive damage. "It was as unthinkable as you would think," Cantore says. "Houses were piled up into corners, and the streets looked more like movie sets."

But according to Cantore, these kinds of storms pale in comparison to the personal storms of life that some people experience on a daily basis. In particular, Cantore thinks of his two children, both of whom were born with Fragile X syndrome, a genetic disorder that can lead to autism-like symptoms. Cantore says that his children have the real storms of life, or what he calls the "storms that hurt the most and never go away."

Cantore says, "What my children have to deal with on a daily basis is by far more difficult than anything I will ever come in contact with." [Jonathan Lebowitz, "Jim Cantore Has Weathered 25 Years of Chasing Big Storms," USA Today (8-10-11); submitted by Van Morris, Mt. Washington, Kentucky]

We all face the storms of life, but God is there not as a ruler over us, but as a savior, as one who loves us and cares for us. In our times of pain God picks us up and holds us tight.

Searching for God

Psalm 63:1 (NLT)

1 O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water.

God's lovingkindness is in itself, and in the account of all the saints, better than life. It is our spiritual life, and that is better than temporal life, Ps. 30:5. It is better, a thousand times, to die in God's favour than to live under his wrath. David in the wilderness finds, by comfortable experience, that God's lovingkindness is better than life; and therefore (says he) my lips shall praise thee. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

"I don't believe in God, but I miss him."

This is the opening line from a book titled Nothing to Be Afraid Of by the award-winning British writer, Julian Barnes. Barnes, who describes himself as an agnostic, writes, "I was never baptized, never sent to Sunday school. I have never been to a normal church service in my life." And yet this agnostic intellectual still feels haunted by the beauty of Christian art and music and by what he calls the "wake up call to morality."

[Matt Woodley, Editor, PreachingToday.com; source: James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular (Eerdmans, 2014), pp. 4-5]

Our soul thirsts for God and longs to be with Him. Even the author above who claims to be agnostic feels God tugging at his heart.

Trust in The Lord Our Eternal Rock

Isaiah 26:4 (NIV)

4 Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.

"Let us make ourselves easy by trusting in the Lord for ever; since God has promised peace to those that stay themselves upon him, let us not lose the benefit of that promise, but repose an entire confidence in him. Trust in him for ever, at all times, when you have nothing else to trust to; trust in him for that peace, that portion, which will be for ever.' Whatever we trust to the world for, it will be but for a moment: all we expect from it is confined within the limits of time. But what we trust in God for will last as long as we shall last. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

I remember watching a father play with his little boy, repeatedly throwing him in the air and catching him just before he hit the ground. The child is relaxed and having a great time saying, "Do it again! Do it again!"

I thought, If that was me, I 'd be stiff as a board .

"Can you explain why he's so relaxed, even when he's out of control?" I asked the father.

"It's very simple," he said. "We have a history together. We've played this game before, and I've never dropped him." [Rod Cooper, "Worship or Worry?" Preaching Today, Tape No. 108.]

God is our eternal Rock and is always there to catch us when we fall, so let us trust in The Lord Forever!

Seek The Lord and Call on Him

Isaiah 55:6 (NLT)

6 Seek the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near.

Let them pray, and their prayers shall be heard and answered: "Seek the Lord while he may be found. Seek him whom you have left by revolting from your allegiance to him and whom you have lost by provoking him to withdraw his favour from you. Call upon him now while he is near, and within call.' [Matthew Henry Commentary]

Psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Grosz points to research that shows we usually don't respond when a fire alarm rings. Instead, of leaving the building immediately, we stand around and wait for more clues. But then even with more information, we still won't make a move—and sometimes that proves deadly. For instance, in 1985, 56 people were killed when a fire broke out in the stands of a soccer match in England. Close examination of television footage later showed that fans did not react immediately and continued to watch both the fire and the game, failing to move towards the exits.

Research has also shown that when we do move, we follow old habits. We don't trust emergency exits. We almost always try to exit a room through the same door we entered. After a fire in the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Kentucky left 177 people dead, forensic experts confirmed that many of the victims sought to pay before leaving, and so died in a queue.

Grosz concludes:

After 25 years as a psychoanalyst, I can't say that this surprises me. We resist change. Committing ourselves to a small change, even one that is unmistakably in our best interest, is often more frightening than ignoring a dangerous situation. We don't want an exit if we don't know exactly where it is going to take us, even—or perhaps especially—in an emergency … We want to know what new story we're stepping into before we exit the old one. [Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (W.W Norton & Company, 2013), pp. 122-123]

Don’t resist the one who is calling you, for God is calling you to come close and leave sin behind.