God’s Incredible Grace; November 28, 2019

Posted on November 30, 2019 by jgarrott

Hosea 1:10 “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.'”

I don’t know that there is any person (apart from Jesus) in the whole Bible whose life itself was more a message from God than Hosea. His wife Gomer seems like a caricature, but I’ve read some reports on the Internet just recently of people who have been “in her league,” at least. The thing is, God told Hosea to marry her, (verse 2) and their relationship was a graphic illustration of God’s relationship with His people. Apparently the younger boy in the household wasn’t even Hosea’s child, but his birth prompted this marvelous Word from the Lord. This calls to mind Paul’s words, written hundreds of years later: “Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:12-13) Hosea’s household was an illustration of the scandalous love of God, who calls not only the physical descendants of Abraham, but all mankind to be His children, spiritual Israelites. Just as the boy Lo-Ammi came to be Ammi, (“Not my people” vs. “My people”) so Gentiles who acknowledge Jesus as Lord by faith cease to be “non-Jews” and become heirs of all the promises of God to Abraham. (Romans 4:16) However, we need to be clear that the younger boy being accepted didn’t exclude the two older children. “Replacement Theology” is a deception and lie any way you look at it. It is when we recognize and rejoice in God’s amazing grace that “sons of the living God” multiply to the point they can’t be counted.

Growing up in an intact, functional family and having established one myself, households like Hosea’s are hard for me to imagine, but I know they exist even today. I am surrounded by wounded people who are desperate to hear God call them “my people,” but they just don’t know it. I am to proclaim God’s grace and love to them, never forgetting that I am just as much in need of it as they are, even though I have received and acknowledged more of it than they have to this point. I certainly didn’t earn being born into the family that I had! I am to recognize that absolutely anyone can become as much a child of God as I am, and consistently issue the invitation to them to do so. I want to take part in their number becoming like the sand on the seashore!

Father, thank You for Your absolutely incredible grace. Thank You for the privilege of being a channel of that grace. I ask You to make me more and more effective in that, so that people may recognize and receive Your love for them and repent and believe, for their salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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Humility Before God; November 27, 2019

Posted on November 29, 2019 by jgarrott

Daniel 9:4-5 I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed:
“O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands, we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws.

This prayer of Daniel is worthy of a lot of meditation. Daniel was as personally righteous an individual as appears in the whole Bible, excepting only Jesus. However, he uses the 1st person plural throughout this prayer, including himself in this confession of sin. That makes it an excellent example of what Peter wrote: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” (1 Peter 5:6) It is only when we humble ourselves that we can take advantage of the next thing Peter wrote: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7) Daniel was not only personally righteous, he had extremely high status, having served as prime minister to multiple rulers over the greatest empire of his day. We certainly can’t claim that, and our personal righteousness is doubtless far below that of Daniel, so we have no excuse for the pride that keeps us from full confession and dependence on God. Daniel certainly didn’t act alone; there were other faithful believers among the Jews. However, his posture before the Lord was sufficient that an angel was sent in response, saying to him, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them.” (Daniel 10:12) That’s the sort of thing God has in store for those who genuinely humble themselves before Him in faith.

My genetic ancestry has been remarkably righteous, since my parents were missionaries, one grandfather was a pastor and the other a seminary professor, and at least one great-grandfather was a pastor as well. However, I am also part of America as well as part of Japan, and there is much to repent of from that standpoint. That said, I have plenty of sins in my personal history as well. I have had times of personal repentance, and God has been gracious indeed, but I haven’t done much with corporate repentance. I remember one time I did repent before a group of Japanese pastors for the sins of missionaries, including pride and cultural imperialism, but that was several years ago. I see much in both Japan and America that calls for repentance, but as a “third culture kid” I have both identified and failed to identify with each of those cultures. I need to understand that as a product of both of those cultures I not only have their strengths, but also their weaknesses. I need to let the Holy Spirit show me how to repent, for the sake of both of the nations that I love.

Father, thank You for this Word. It obviously isn’t something I have thought about a lot from a personal perspective. Help me learn from Daniel’s humility and do exactly as You show me, for the sake of both my countries and for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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Speaking for God; November 26, 2019

Posted on November 29, 2019 by jgarrott

Ezekiel 33:31-32 “My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to listen to your words, but they do not put them into practice. With their mouths they express devotion, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain. Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but do not put them into practice.”

Probably most preachers suspect this is the case with them, at least sometimes, but that can be a bitter pill to swallow. Throughout the Bible God makes it clear to His spokespeople that they are responsible to communicate what He gives them, but they aren’t responsible for people’s response. That becomes a major problem when preachers allow the lack of genuine response to embitter them, so that they stop speaking the Word. It was this same Ezekiel who received the definitive word on that, God telling him twice that if he failed to speak as he was told, the fate of his intended hearers would be on his head. The first time was in chapter 3, right after God called him as a prophet, but the second time was in this very chapter, so in saying this, God was in no way giving Ezekiel an excuse to shut up and stop speaking the Word of the Lord. This is a tension experienced by every person who speaks God’s Word, but the good news is that some people really do receive what they hear, take it to heart, and put it into practice. When that happens, it makes it all worth it! However, every preacher has to be careful that they themselves are paying attention to what they are saying, to do it rather than just proclaim it. We can deceive ourselves into thinking that just saying it is good enough!

This applies to me in spades. I minister in Japan, which statistically has the worst response level to the Gospel of any country in the world, and at the same time I have deceived myself at times into feeling that just knowing the Word was enough, rather than actually putting it into practice. I was particularly struck by the reference here to singing, since God has blessed me in the area of music, and I had a vocal music minor in college. Whether I’m singing or speaking, people seem to like my voice, but whether my words ever get past their ears into their hearts is a different matter. I’ve got to be at peace with the reality that this is God’s business, and it is between my hearers and Him. At all times I am to seek God’s guidance and anointing so that I am indeed speaking His words and not just my own, and that I am speaking them in the most understandable way possible. There is indeed a craft to speaking, and I need to keep working on it. However, I keep coming back to the basic reality that I can’t save anyone by my own powers of persuasion or the force of my will. That is a transaction between the individual and their Creator. That said, I need to be available for God to use me to that end whenever and however He chooses. He has demonstrated that He can and does do that at times, and that is my hope and prayer.

Father, thank You for the privilege of speaking Your Word. Thank You for those who actually do receive it. I was so encouraged by some of the testimonies at the Thanksgiving dinner! I pray that I would never give up, but would always be available as Your mouthpiece, Your hands, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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The Purpose of Trouble; November 25, 2019

Posted on November 27, 2019 by jgarrott

Lamentations 3:31-33 For men are not cast off
by the Lord forever.
Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
so great is his unfailing love.
For he does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to the children of men.

This chapter is rightly dearly loved by many, and the song made from verses 22-23 is loved by even more, but it’s these verses that really strike me this morning. They express a truth that I have tried to communicate since even before I was formally in ministry: God doesn’t pick on us. One of the devil’s primary lies is that God is mean and He doesn’t want us to have any fun. The opposite is true, but too many people swallow the lie because it is so big and pervasive. The Nazis discovered that if a lie is big enough, if you say it often enough people will believe it, and they did that to devastating effect. Actually, oppressive governments throughout history have used that tactic, which is all the more reason for us to be on our guard. The truth here is that God is love, (1 John 4:8) and everything He does is in keeping with His character – including executing judgment on those who rebel against Him. The thing is, God is also totally holy, and He can’t ignore that factor either. He deals with our sins in ways to lead us to repentance, but if we refuse that, we face the consequences. I quote John 16:33 so often that even I get tired of it, but it’s important: in this world we will have trouble. That’s just a fact of life in this fallen world. The problem comes when we believe the devil’s lie about the trouble we experience, that it is God being mean to us. That makes us shut our hearts to God, when God is our only real hope in the middle of the trouble. When troubles come, our first thought needs to be an honest inventory of how we might have brought the trouble on ourselves. If anything comes to mind, there needs to be repentance, and the sooner and more thorough the better. If nothing does come to mind, we need to remember that we live in a fallen world, and getting through it all properly will strengthen us and draw us closer to our Creator, and be grateful even for the trial.

This is very much in line with the sermon I preached just yesterday morning about a grateful heart, but I had further training in it in the afternoon, with the stresses of dealing with people in the process of decorating the church building for Christmas, coupled with breakages in the lights that I was personally involved in putting up. I even commented to a couple of the believers that I needed to apply the sermon I had just preached! That was a rough spot in me the Lord wanted to work on. I have found that the sermons He has me preach are first of all to me, before they’re to anyone else! However, He did get me through that moment of high stress, and gave me the realization that I don’t really work well with others, though I put on a good front most of the time. I needed to realize that I’ve got a lot of room to grow in that area, letting go of control and building others up. My God is indeed gracious and loving, and I need to be more like Him!

Father, thank You for this reminder, clarifying what You were teaching me yesterday. Thank You for the evidence of spiritual growth in people as they gave testimonies of thanks after the meal. I pray that we would all continue to grow, drawing others to You by Your light radiating out from us as we live in fellowship with You, for their salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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Hearing God; November 24, 2019

Posted on November 26, 2019 by jgarrott

Jeremiah 33:1-3 While Jeremiah was still confined in the courtyard of the guard, the word of the Lord came to him a second time: “This is what the Lord says, he who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it–the Lord is his name: ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.'”

As came out yesterday, Jeremiah’s greatest reward on this earth for serving God was hearing from God, unmistakably and in considerable detail. Many people think they would like that, but I don’t think they would like the rest of Jeremiah’s life! After all, at this point he was imprisoned, and he was even thrown into a cistern, where he sank into the mud! (Jeremiah 38) Jeremiah’s circumstances were so poor that he focused his thoughts fully on God as a way of escape, and his reward was magnificent. I think a major reason we don’t hear from God more often is that our attention is so completely taken up with the things of this world. We are so obsessed with our electronic devices that we don’t even hear each other! As it says so famously in Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” We seldom get still enough to listen! Every parent has experienced trying to get through to a squirming youngster. The child has the double problem of distractions and the inability to comprehend the words and/or concepts the parent is expressing. We are the same way with God, which is hardly surprising since we are His children. It is a measure of maturity to be able to get quiet before God and allow Him to place His thoughts into our heart and mind. That’s one of the biggest purposes of a daily devotional time. That is deliberately setting aside time, with as few distractions as possible, to talk to God and let Him talk to us through His Word. The rewards are essentially limitless!

Since our church is having Thanksgiving dinner this evening, before I could even be sure what part of today’s passage the Lord wanted to speak to me I had to put down my Bible and go take the turkey out of the refrigerator, as my wife had asked me to do. (It is now well thawed, and ready for all she will do to it before the service this morning.) With that weighing on my mind, I couldn’t focus on listening to God. (Actually, I think He reminded me of the turkey. He loves my wife, too, and doesn’t want her mad at me!) It has been many years since I got into the habit of consistent devotions first thing in the morning, and I’m grateful to say that it is becoming easier for me to get quiet before God several times throughout the day. I probably don’t have a Bible open, but He brings passages to mind, or a song that focuses on Him, and it is a great blessing. As a pastor, I think my greatest desire for the members of this church is that they too discover the blessings of listening to God. I have learned that if we don’t have the mindset of obedience before we hear what He is saying, He isn’t likely to talk to us much. Once you are a believer, James 1:22 is one of the most important verses in the Bible! I am to lead others into listening obediently to God by doing so myself. If I don’t go there, no one will follow! God is neither mute nor stingy, and I want everyone to know that.

Father, thank You for this reminder, particularly as we are entering into the very busy Advent season. Help us have quiet hearts before You, even as our bodies are busy, so that we may hear and obey all that You are saying. For Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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Commitment; November 23, 2019

Posted on November 26, 2019 by jgarrott

Jeremiah 32:17, 27 “Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.”
“I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”

This whole chapter is one that really needs to be meditated on by every genuine servant of God. God tells Jeremiah to do something preposterous (buying land that was occupied by Babylonian troops, with real money). Jeremiah is obedient, but after praying a very pious prayer, by verse 25 he is essentially saying to God, “Are You out of Your mind?” Then God echoes Jeremiah’s accurate, pious words back to him. He then goes on to flesh out the why of all that is going on, and makes some more wonderful promises. I really think God explains Himself to Jeremiah more than perhaps to any other Biblical character (other than Jesus, of course). What a huge privilege! At the same time, Jeremiah went through a life that I don’t think any sane person would choose. The one thing that sustained him was the assurance that God loved and talked to him – and that very thing would mark him as insane in the eyes of psychologists today! God chooses His servants according to His sovereign plan, but how we respond makes a world of difference. God wants us to be so committed to Him that everything else takes a back seat, and most of us aren’t really there yet. God doesn’t want us literally to hate our families, (John 14:26) but our love and commitment for and to Him is to be so strong that everything else looks like hate by comparison. Jeremiah laid everything on the line for God, and in this world that ended up with him being stoned to death by those to whom he ministered. Our commitment to God should be no less.

Ouch. I desire to be fully committed to God, but I confess other things loom in my awareness from time to time. I desire to see massive harvest in Japan, but I realize I have to yield even that to God. Even Jeremiah didn’t live to see the restoration that he prophesied so gloriously. I am reminded of the time I was lying in bed, not consciously praying but just thinking, “There are so many things I wish were different.” At that point, for only the second time in my life, I heard the Lord speak to me very clearly: “How do you think I feel?” I was naturally blown out of the water, but in that instant I realized that whatever happens, God is still God. He doesn’t desire that people sin or that disasters happen, but none of it surprises Him and He is going to use every bit of it to bring about His perfect plan, which is glorious and loving. (Romans 8:28) I need to remember the last part of Hebrews 11, where after listing many giants of faith it says, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:39-40) I’ve got to be at peace with God’s schedule, trusting Him with every detail of my life, whether it seems good to me at the time or not, because only He knows what is really going on.

Father, thank You for this reminder. To this point You’ve given me a far easier life than you gave Jeremiah, so thank You. Help me not complain about anything, but follow You faithfully in every detail, being humble enough before You to hear Your slightest whisper, so that Your purposes may be fulfilled in and through me for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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God’s Covenant; November 22, 2019

Posted on November 24, 2019 by jgarrott

Jeremiah 31:33 “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.”

This is a promise that makes my heart cry out for it to be fulfilled. In over 40 years of ministry, both in the US and mostly in Japan, I have sought to lead people to receive God’s Word into their hearts, to live it out and let it live in them, but few have accepted the challenge. There is no question that this can only be a work of God; human beings alone certainly can’t make it happen. For anyone involved in ministry, the comfort is that God sometimes does indeed make it happen, even in the most barren of locations. It has been pointed out that the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) doesn’t say, “make converts,” it says, “make disciples.” Only someone who is a disciple of Christ can lead someone else to become a disciple of Christ. Those who would be great in God’s kingdom have got to be focused on serving, serving God through serving the people around them. Jesus was very explicit on that point. (Matthew 20:25-28, John 13:12-17) If we want God to write His law in the hearts of others, we must welcome that law into our own hearts.

This is intensely personal for me, as I think it should be for every believer. Following my parents before me, we have been ministering in Japan for the past 85 years. Yesterday on a Facebook page for Mks, (Missionary Kids) it came out that after over 100 years of Protestant missions in Japan, less than 1% of the population is actively Christian, and the average age of pastors continues to climb. Someone in another part of the world wrote, “Then you must be doing it wrong.” Frankly, that hurt rather deeply. Practically everyone who has ministered in Japan, either missionary or Japanese, has agonized over the low “rate of return on investment” in Japan, in time, resources, and personnel. We have no human answers, and are forced to operate in sometimes blind faith. This verse and the one following it are the desire of my heart for this nation, but only God can bring it about by His Spirit. My task is to be listening faithfully and obeying actively, so that I may in some way be useful to Him in accomplishing His purposes.

Father, thank You for this reminder. You have placed me in a very rocky field. May I not complain, but keep planting and watering as You direct, knowing that You are the Lord of the harvest. Thank You. Praise God!

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Prophecy and Fulfillment; November 21, 2019

Posted on November 23, 2019 by jgarrott

Jeremiah 31:1 “At that time,” declares the Lord, “I will be the God of all the clans of Israel, and they will be my people.”

Verses 12, 13, and 14 of this chapter are dearly loved because of how they have been set to music, but I think we overlook this verse. At the time it was downright shocking. The Northern Kingdom, all 10 tribes worth, had been conquered and carried off to Assyria. That’s why verse 5 mentions “the hills of Samaria,” and verse 6 says, “the hills of Ephraim.” (Ephraim was often used to mean the Northern Kingdom.) We speak of “the 10 lost tribes,” but they were never lost to God, and when He brought Judah back from Babylon there were representatives of all the other tribes as well, because Babylon and then Persia had conquered Assyria, so geographically it was the same area. At the point Jeremiah prophesied this, the two kingdoms had been divided for hundreds of years, and the idea of their being reunited seemed preposterous. However, nothing is impossible for God! (Luke 1:37) Even reading the Bible we often fail to recognize just how miraculous it all is. Simple chance couldn’t account for it all, and on top of that, God told people about much of it ahead of time! We rightly make much of how many times, and in what detail, the birth, life, ministry, and death of Jesus are prophesied in the Old Testament, but we often lose sight of the recurring cycle of prophecy and fulfillment that is throughout the Bible. When we realize how often God has given advance notice of what was going to happen, we pay more attention to those prophecies that haven’t yet been fulfilled! At the same time, becoming obsessed with things like “where are we on the Revelation timeline” can keep us from being obedient and effective servants of God in our daily lives. In this chapter God doesn’t give Jeremiah any sort of schedule, He just says these things are going to happen. When we read the prophecies and promises in the Bible we need to ask God how He wants us to respond to them. Likewise, when we hear or read the pronouncements of modern prophets we need to ask the Holy Spirit for confirmation and “fact-checking.” There are fully valid prophecies being made today, but there is also a lot of junk arising from human imagination and wishful thinking. God’s prophets throughout the Bible had to deal with false prophets, and we need God’s discernment to distinguish between the true and the false – sometimes from the same person!

I wasn’t really exposed to modern prophecy until I got involved in the Charismatic Movement from 1973, but I grew up knowing about Biblical prophecies, and it never seemed logical to me that God would stop talking! Since my own baptism in the Holy Spirit I have been used in prophecy many times, most often in encouragement and admonition, but occasionally in a predictive way. One particular incident seemed medically impossible, but God fulfilled it anyway! I can no more take credit for that than I could take credit for the Rocky Mountains, but I can give God thanks and praise for using even me. There have been some specific prophecies about my ministry here that I long to see fulfilled, but I have to leave that timing in God’s hands. Meanwhile, I am to be faithful and available to my Lord all day every day, knowing that indeed, nothing is impossible for Him, and I can do nothing apart from Him. (John 15:5) When God has said it, it will be fulfilled, period.

Father, thank You for this encouraging reminder. Help me walk in growing faith, regardless of what my intellect and senses tell me, so that I will be instantly obedient for whatever You want of me, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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True Salvation; November 20, 2019

Posted on November 23, 2019 by jgarrott

Jeremiah 14:11 Then the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for the well-being of this people.”

Jeremiah is the only person to whom the Lord says not to pray for His people, and He does it three times, here and in Jeremiah 7:16 and 11:14. At first glance that seems terribly out of character for God, but a slightly closer analysis makes it all clear. What God is talking about in all three instances is prayer for trials to be removed, for the situation to get better by human standards. Usually there is a reason for trials! What Jeremiah needed to pray, and what we often need to pray, is for people to repent of their rebellion against God. That’s what Jesus was doing when He wept over Jerusalem. (Luke 13:34-35) Had Jeremiah prayed as the people wanted him to, it would have been “bandaid prayers” that didn’t touch the root cause of the problem. Someone who speaks for God certainly needs discernment, because our desires and expectations can be very much at odds with the real situation. That can make us seem cold and uncaring at times, but it’s very much like firm discipline for children: in the long run it is the best expression of love. (Hebrews 12:11) This is the problem with what are called “bleeding heart liberals,” because they are so consumed with the symptoms they can’t discern the causes of the problems. This isn’t to say we aren’t to be compassionate toward people in difficulty, whatever the cause of the difficulty. I feel the Lord is very pleased with Samaritan’s Purse, for example. They set no conditions for their work, but they do everything in the name of Jesus, so that people may be led out of their ignorant rebellion against their Creator and brought to genuine salvation. We are not to ignore suffering, but we are not to prioritize temporal suffering over eternal salvation.

This is a struggle I think every compassionate person has. We see need and want to meet it, but too often we fail to see the underlying real need. We are to remember Jesus’ famous story of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46, but realize that it’s talking about “brothers of mine.” We are to meet physical need, but remember that the overarching goal is for those we help to become children of God. I think most people define “salvation” in terms of the here-and-now, and that is a huge mistake. I am to seek to be God’s instrument in meeting all sorts of needs, but remember that an unrepentant healthy millionaire is still headed for hell.

Father, I don’t have sufficient wisdom for all of this. Help me hear You clearly and reflect Your heart accurately, so that as many as possible may repent and believe, for their true salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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Life on Earth; November 19, 2019

Posted on November 20, 2019 by jgarrott

Jeremiah 12:5 “If you have raced with men on foot
and they have worn you out,
how can you compete with horses?
If you stumble in safe country,
how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?”

I have always been struck by this verse. It sounds like something one of my drill instructors in Army basic training would have said! Basically, it comes across as, “Quit grousing. You haven’t seen anything yet.” In Jeremiah’s case that was quite literally true, because he would see the fall of Jerusalem and would eventually be stoned to death in Egypt by his own countrymen. He is considered one of the great prophets, yet his reward for his faithfulness was almost entirely in the next life rather than this one. Being God’s representative and spokesman isn’t an easy path! However, our entire lives on this earth are literally just a moment compared to eternity. Blink and they’re over! Their whole point is to give us an opportunity to seek God and choose to commit ourselves to Him in obedience. If our focus is on the “fun stuff,” we eventually discover how empty that is. If our focus is on the suffering, we are miserable indeed. The key to enjoying it all is to recognize from Whom it comes, and that He is love itself. I probably quote John 16:33 as much or even more than any other verse in the Bible. “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” The state the world is in is the result of mankind’s sin, but that doesn’t negate the character of God. We are to focus on the One who created us and loves us and who has a marvelous plan for us that extends for all eternity. When we have that focus, we can even enjoy the ride!

It was not through any conscious choice of my own, but I seem to have had an awareness of this truth for much of my life. I have certainly had some down times, and at one point I actively wanted to die, However, in the total balance of my life I have been aware of the incredible grace of God. I can’t say I’ve earned the good stuff that’s come my way, but there’s been a great deal of it. That’s not to say that I am wealthy or famous or even “successful” by this world’s standards, but it is to say that God has walked with me (or run with me, as in this verse) and has taught me to fellowship with Him. That’s worth more than I could possibly put into words. I still mess things up with my stupidity, missing out on various blessings, but God is incredibly patient with me. As it is, I choose to enjoy each day as it comes, giving God thanks and praise, and look forward to eternity with Him, with none of the distractions of this life.

Father, thank You for Your amazing grace to me. Help me be an open channel of that grace to all those around me, tearing down the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) by speaking Your truth in love, for the liberation and salvation of many, and for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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