devotionals

Disruption: Embracing Process

Excerpt from ‘100 Days of Believing Bigger” by Marshawn Evans Daniels

These trials will show that your faith is genuine.
It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—
though your faith is far more precious than mere gold.
So when your faith remains strong through many trials,
it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.

—1 Peter 1:7 NLT

Alignment with God’s will is necessary for our divine assignment. Disruption gives us a chance to get an overdue adjustment while God brings all the skewed parts of our life into proper, powerful, and purpose-ready order. Think of it like going to the chiropractor—it’s about getting aligned the way it’s supposed to be. In the middle of the discomfort, it’s important to remember that our purpose is always on the other side of process.

God sends His promise by way of a process, which is why we miss it! We think it is going to fall out of the sky like manna from heaven, but navigating the Gap—the zone of growth, transition, and divine reinvention—is where we must go to enter our promised land. Our purpose, more provision, more healing, and even more miracles are all on the other side of this process.

The Gap is your wilderness between Egypt (what you’ve known) and the Promised Land (what you’ve been praying for and are destined for). What we’re moving toward is not necessarily a bigger house, more money, less stress, or better relationships… although I have no doubt that everything is better on the other side of surrender. God doesn’t leave our heart’s desires behind as He ushers us into our destiny. But this isn’t about stuff. It’s about exchanging your current plans for the life God is calling you toward. And it’s about getting where God needs you to accomplish something new that heaven is seeking to do.

Attribution: Excerpt from “100 Days of Believing Bigger” by Marshawn Evans Daniels

Worry About Nothing, Pray About Everything

The Acceptable Sin of Worry

Adapted from a Facebook post by Charles Swindoll

The pressures of our times have many of us caught in the web of the most acceptable yet energy-draining sin in the Christian family: worry.

Chances are good you awoke this morning, stepped out of bed, and before doing anything strapped on your well-worn backpack of anxiety. You started the day not with a prayer on your mind but loaded down by worry.

It happens to me far too often. This silent companion that walks with us through sanctuary halls and hospital rooms alike.

The stress from worry drains our energy and preoccupies our minds, stripping us of much-needed peace. Few in ministry are exempt. We fret over big things and little things, carrying laundry lists of concerns that feed our addiction to anxiety.

And worse—we’re passing it on. As our children and grandchildren see the worry on our faces and hear it from our lips, we’re mentoring them in the art of anxiety.

The heritage we build with each furrowed brow wasn’t in our ministry plans, was it?

As always, Scripture holds the answer. Paul wrote from house arrest—a man who had every reason to worry yet discovered a different path:

“Rejoice in the Lord always… Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” (Philippians 4:4–7)

His prescription for anxiety can be distilled to six transformative words:

Worry about nothing. Pray about everything.

Let those words sink deep. Read them again, slowly.

Notice that the remedy involves a choice—not denial. “Don’t worry; be happy” fails to appreciate the seriousness of your concerns.

You worry because the problems you face are genuinely difficult. They carry real consequences. God doesn’t expect you to suddenly stop caring.

Instead, He offers an alternative to the pointless and exhausting habit of worry: transforming each anxious thought into a conversation with the One who holds tomorrow.

Before this day is done, you’ll stand at another crossroads between worry and prayer. The invitation remains the same: decide now what path you’ll choose.

What burden feels heaviest on your shoulders today? What if—just for this moment—you set down that well-worn backpack and opened your hands in surrender?

Do You Value What God Values?

From Paul David Tripp on life’s trials:

When hardship comes your way, will you tell yourself it’s a tool of God’s grace and a sign of his love, or will you give in to doubting his goodness?

If you are not on God’s redemptive agenda page, you will end up doubting his goodness. One of the most important questions you could ask is: “What is God doing in the here and now?” The follow-up question is also important: “How should I respond to it?” It is nearly impossible to think about life properly and to live appropriately if you are fundamentally confused about what God is doing. If someone were to ask you the first of those two questions, how would you respond? Are you tracking with God’s agenda? Are you after what God’s after? Are you living in a way that is consistent with what God is doing? Do you struggle with questions of God’s love, faithfulness, wisdom, and goodness? Do you ever envy the life of another? Do you sometimes feel alone? Do you fall into thinking that no one understands what you’re going through? Are you ever plagued by doubts as to whether Christianity is true after all? If you aren’t struggling with these things, are you near someone who is?

Here’s the bottom line. Right here, right now, God isn’t so much working to deliver to you your personal definition of happiness. He’s not committed to give you a predictable schedule, happy relationships, or comfortable surroundings. He hasn’t promised you a successful career, a nice place to live, and a community of people who appreciate you. What he has promised you is himself, and what he brings to you is the zeal of his transforming grace. No, he’s not first working on your happiness; he’s committed to your holiness. That doesn’t mean he is offering you less than you’ve hoped for, but much, much more. In grace, he is intent on delivering you from your greatest, deepest, and most long-term problem: sin. He offers you gifts of grace that transcend the moment, that literally are of eternal value. He has not unleashed his power in your life only to deliver to you things that quickly pass away and that have no capacity at all to satisfy your heart.

This means that often when you are tempted to think that God is loving you less because your life is hard, he is actually loving you more. The hardships that you are facing are the tool of his exposing, forgiving, liberating, and transforming grace. These hard moments aren’t in your life because God is distant and uncaring, but rather because he loves you so fully. These moments become moments of faith and not doubt when by grace you begin to value what God says is truly valuable. Do you value what God values?

Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014).

Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life.

Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.

So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

James 1:12–18 (The Message)

The Possibility of Faith

Paul Tripp guides our thinking regarding faith…

God hasn’t just forgiven you—praise him that he has—but he has also called you to a brand-new way of living. He has called you to live by faith. Now, here’s the rub. Faith is not normal for us. Faith is frankly a counterintuitive way for us to live. Doubt is quite natural for us. Wondering what God is doing is natural. It’s normal to think your life is harder than that of others. Envying the life of someone else is natural. Wishing life were easier and that you had more control is natural. It’s typical for you and me to try to figure out the future. Worry is natural. Fear is natural. Wanting to give up is natural. It’s natural to wonder if all of your good habits make a difference in the end. It’s normal to be occasionally haunted by the question of whether what you have staked your life on is really true. But faith isn’t natural.

This means that faith isn’t something you can work up inside yourself. Faith comes to you as God’s gift of grace: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Not only is your salvation a gift of God, but the faith to embrace it is his gift as well. But here is what you need to understand: God not only gives you the grace to believe for your salvation, but he also works to enable you to live by faith. If you are living by faith, you know that you have been visited by powerful transforming grace, because that way of living just isn’t normal for you and me. If your way of living is no longer based on what your eyes can see and your mind can understand, but on God’s presence, promises, principles, and provisions, it is because God has crafted faith in you.

Could it be that all of those things that come your way that confuse you and that you never would’ve chosen for yourself are God’s tools to build your faith? By progressive transforming grace, he is enabling you to live the brand-new life he calls all of his children to live—the Godward life for which you were created. You don’t have to hide in guilt when weak faith gets you off the path, because your hope in life isn’t your faithfulness, but his. You can run in weakness and once again seek his strength. And you can know that in zealous grace he will not leave his craftwork until faith fully rules your heart unchallenged. He always gives freely what we need in order to do what he has called us to do.

Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 53.