That "Somebody" Has a Name

Psalm 108:3
I will give you thanks before the nations, O Lord!
I will sing praises to you before foreigners!

On a particular day, shortly after I moved to Atlanta, I remember walking into the office and stopping at the administrative assistants desk. I was telling her about something that happened to me. I really can't remember what it was, but what I do remember and it has stuck with me to this day. I told her that "somebody" was watching over me. The words she spoke struck me to the core. She said, "You better give the 'somebody' a name!"

I, along with so many other Christians, are so afraid that we will "offend" somebody that we have stopped acknowledging God in front of other people. God has done so many wonderful things for us, but even if He didn't, sending His Son to die for me would be enough to acknowledge and praise Him in front of others! King David had no problem giving thanks to God before other nations, and these were nations that denied the God of Abraham. King David had no problem singing praises to God in front of foreigners...he wasn't afraid that he was going to offend them. King David would rather offend the foreigners and other nations than offend God. And really that is what we are doing, we are offending God. When we choose not to offend others by holding back our praises to God, we are really offending the One Who has done a wonderful work in our lives, the One Who has answered our prayers. I'm not saying that every time you see someone you have to shout "Praise the Lord." What I am saying is that when someone asks you "how did you get through this?" or "how did you get that job?" or whatever...that's the time to speak out and give praise and thanks to God!

41 and Soaked

Psalm 119:164
I will praise you seven times a day because all your regulations are just.

A few weeks ago I was getting ready to do a mountain bike ride with my best friend. I was excited to ride with him and to get out in the outdoors, I mean it was going to be a good day. Now one thing you need to know about me is that I hate to ride in cold weather. If its under 50 degrees, I really don't want to ride. Well, the morning we were going to ride, it was 41 degrees, so already my mind was thinking "I really don't want to ride in this weather." Then on the 30-minute drive to the trailhead, that was all I was thinking about..."its too cold, I won't enjoy this, I'll be freezing the whole time." So I get to the trailhead, my buddy is there and its still 41 degrees. He's wearing shorts and excited to ride, I'm bundled up with several layers of clothes and wondering "what the heck am I doing here." So we started on a ride, me grumbling about how cold it is. So we get to a creek crossing. I started across, my front tire plants in a hole and I go over the handlebars and land in the water, feet soaked, gloves soaked...and its 41 degrees! For the next hour I rode with wet, cold feet, grumbling, feet starting to go numb and all I wanted to do was head home. 

What happened that morning that set the tone for the whole ride? It wasn't that it was cold outside...it was what I did knowing it was cold outside. I could have focused on riding with my best friend and enjoying the time with him...but NOOOO! I chose to focus on how I didn't want to ride in the cold...and it went downhill from there. We do the same with God. We will let some thing get our minds off of our Lord and on to a circumstance. What the psalmist was trying to convey in Psalm 119:164 was how important it was to keep our minds on God and in order for him to do this, he would praise God seven times a day. Now I don't think the actual number is the important part, what IS important is that he put God as the focus of his day. When we praise God, we get our minds off of our circumstance and onto Him. When that happens, He is able to work on whatever it is that is bothering or troubling us. 

Make a point of taking several moments each day to praise God!

Being on the Team

1 Corinthians 12:27
All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.

When I was a kid, my dad wanted to get me into sports. So he got me on a soccer team. I was terrible at it. I couldn't kick the ball to save my life! I was so bad that during practice, the coach put me as a goalie on the other end of the field...where they were NOT practicing! Although I was a member of the team, I felt useless, like "why am I here?"

A lot of people feel that way as a Christian. We feel we have nothing to offer to God, and in feeling that way, we wonder "why would God want anything to do with me?" This kind of thinking can only go one way, and that is downward...downward to a point of giving up on God, getting depressed, diving into low self-esteem...well the list goes on. However, the reality is God sees you as a necessary part of His family! When Paul says we are Christ's body, he is talking about Christians, the family of God that we belong to (and yes, if you claim Jesus as your Lord, you are part of the family of God). And being in the family of God, each of us is a necessary part of it. You may not know what your part is right now, and you may not think you have anything to offer...but God thinks you DO have something to offer. All you need to do is to be available and willing and have the "I can" attitude. He WILL let you know what your part is when you need to know it.

Human-Being or Human-Doing

Hebrews 4:10-11

10: For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. 

11: So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall. 

When I started to write today's devotion, I got writer's block. I could not figure out how to start this devotion. You don't know how many times I typed the first sentence only to delete it and start again. Then the Holy Spirit said, "uhh, why don't you rest." I chuckled a bit, but He made a point. Its just like when you are trying to remember the name of a band that played your favorite song, but for the life of you, you could not remember the name of the band? No matter how hard you were working your mind, you couldn't remember it? THEN, a few hours later, when you were in the kitchen chopping an onion, suddenly the name came to you! There is something physiological that happens when our mind is at rest, and God designed it this way for a purpose.

When we are at rest, that is when God can do His work! He put Adam to sleep so He could work and take the rib out of Him. Adam had to be at rest. When God needs to work in us, we need to be at rest. That is why it is so important to Him that we enter into His rest, so He can do His work in us. If we are constantly trying to figure things out, we do not allow God to help us...and He WANTS to help us.  When we don't enter into that rest, like the people of Israel, we will fail at whatever it is we are doing (Heb 4:11). I'm going to use a phrase from Joyce Meyer...we are human-BEINGS, not human-DOINGS. We need to be STILL, enter into His rest, and allow Him to do His work.

Wish or Exercise?

Luke 10:19 (AMP)
19 Behold! I have given you authority and power to trample upon serpents and scorpions, and [physical and mental strength and ability] over all the power that the enemy [possesses]; and nothing shall in any way harm you.

When I got married, I inherited three dachshunds. Up until we got married, these dogs had seen me but maybe a handful of times, so I was really nobody to them. Then when they moved in, they quickly learned I was a somebody to them. I started exercising my authority over them. They didn't listen to me for a while, but they soon realized I was the one in authority, not them. Now I could have let those dogs run around, doing whatever they wanted with me "wishing" they would listen to me, but I CHOSE to exercise my authority, and the more I did it, the more they listened.

We have a choice in our daily walk with God. We can either let the enemy run all over us, making us feel defeated, making us feel worthless, stirring up anxiety in us, getting us depressed...well the list goes on and on. OR, we can exercise our God-given authority over the enemy and walk in victory, joy, peace, and contentment. The enemy may push back (and he probably will), but as long as we keep exercising our authority and keep doing it over and over and over, we will walk in the fruit of the Spirit. Wishing for it to happen will not work, you must EXERCISE you authority. 

Start exercising your authority over the enemy, and if you don't know how to do it, read the scriptures, find out what God is saying about a situation, then stand your ground, acknowledge the problem and then announce what God says about that problem...and keep doing it!

The Supervisor

1 Peter 5:6-7
So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

One of the hardest things to do is to release control of something to someone else. If you are a supervisor at your work, that is something you need to do on a continual basis. And when you do release control, you are trusting that person can do the job. Now they may not do it in the way YOU would do it, but you know that they will get the job done. And the more you give control to that person to do a job, and the more they get the job done, the easier it is to release control of something to that person.

But why do we have such a hard time giving control of an area or problem in our lives to God? God has the ability to handle more than you could ever imagine, but yet it is one of the hardest things to do. This is a Kent-ism, but I think the reason we don't give God control is because one of two reasons, 1) we don't completely trust Him to get the job done; OR 2) we hand the problem over to Him but with the condition that He does it the way WE want Him to. It could be a combination of both.

In 1 Peter 5:6, Peter says we need to HUMBLE ourselves under God's power. That means we need to come to an understanding that His power is greater than what we can do. When we do that, we KNOW that God can handle our problems, that way we can cast/give/place upon all our problems on Him KNOWING that He will take care of it in His own way with His own power.

The Training Ground

1 Cor 9:26-27 NLT
So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.

As some of you know, I love mountain biking, it is one of my passions. This past year I started doing something I said I would never do, and that is racing. I never thought I was really competitive, but after doing two races, I discovered something about myself. One; I was competitive, and two; I was not ready to race...in other words I needed training. So starting last month I began training so I could be race ready by March. My training involved CrossFit, and it so happened that my wife was doing CrossFit and her instructor was a road biker.  He knew exactly what I needed to train, not only working out, but also diet. I learned that there were things I was doing in my normal workout routine that were not helping me, in fact, they were hurting me. I also learned that my diet was not what it needed to be, there were things that I was doing with my diet that were hurting me. So I had to change my workout and diet and get rid of what was not helping me.

What does this have to do with our walk with God? You can look at our Christian walk as a training ground. In training, we learn that there are things we do that help us and that hurt us in our relationship with God. In order to find out the things that hurt us, we need to take an inventory of our lives, such as what we do, what we say to others, what we dwell on in our minds, what we view, whether on our phones, iPad, TV, Facebook, whatever...and whatever we find that doesn't help us in our walk with God, we need to get rid of it. In doing that, we will have a stronger and more solid walk and relationship with God.