Praise the Lord for another day. The message is going to touch on something that each and every one of us deals with every day. I have shared this many times before and a conversation I had with a friend yesterday reminded me of this message. When reading it, please let it hit your spirit.
Today’s Prayer
Dear God, Thank You for the blessing of spiritual gifts that You have given us. We are honored to be a part of what You want to accomplish on this earth and in people’s lives. We pray for wisdom, gained from the experiences and knowledge You have allowed us to have, and for guidance through Your awesome Holy Spirit. We know that sometimes we just go and do and it’s not always what You have planned for us. Please forgive us for not waiting or listening to You in those cases. We want to be sensitive to Your leading. We want to grow through the faith experiences You take us through. We want to trust You fully in all things every day. We want to be a vessel through which You minister to others. We want to use the spiritual gifts You have given us to serve You and make a difference in the world around us. Help us please. In the matchless name of JESUS we pray, Amen.
Let’s eat.
The Value of Words
And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your “Yes” be “Yes,” and your “No,” “No”; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. -Matthew 5:36-37
Imagine for a moment that you are living in JESUS’ time. It is before JESUS has begun His public ministry. He is a carpenter in your local town of Nazareth. You have asked JESUS to make a table for you. You’re on a deadline and you must have it in a week. You agree on the price of $100 for the table and the date of one week for completion. A week later you arrive to pick up the table. You lay your money down on the table and JESUS says, “Sir/Madam, I am sorry but the table is not ready. I ran into complications. Also, I can no longer honor the price I gave you. It is now $150 instead of $100.”
Now we jump two years later you hear about this same JESUS who is preaching to the local townspeople. How are you going to view this JESUS? You probably won’t give much credence to His message because of your personal experience. Our lives have an ability to reinforce the message we stand for, or they can violate it and make it totally ineffective. This literally happens all over the world in different settings with Christians. Our message becomes ineffective because we have not done what we said.
I know people who, when they tell me they plan to do something, I can expect them to follow through about 50 percent of the time. I am sure you have had the same experience. Words and commitments are made with little meaning behind those words. However, I know others who will follow through almost every time. The only time they don’t is when something falls outside their control. I quickly learn whose words have substance behind them. There are times when we are unable to perform or deliver what we promised due to outside influences. The key to turning these potentially negative circumstances into a witness for Christ is communication. If we are unable to pay a bill on time, we must communicate with those we owe and make a good faith effort to resolve it within our means. In these cases, God’s purposes are being performed as well if we seek to do the right thing.– Do your words mean anything to those who hear them?
- Do you make commitments and fail to follow through on them?
- What would others say about how you follow through?
Ask the Lord today to show you how you are doing in this area. You might even want to ask three people who are the closest to you how you fare in this area.
Quote of the Day
Your worthiness gives you no help, and your unworthiness does not harm you. As one drop of water is as compared to the great ocean, so are my sins as compared with God’s incomprehensible grace in Christ. ~Johann Arndt~