Liz’s Morning Devotional based upon Upper Room
January 27, 2022
Read Psalm 94:16-19
16 Who will stand up for me against the wicked? Who will help me against evildoers? 17 If the LORD hadn’t helped me, I would live instantly in total silence. 18 Whenever I feel my foot slipping, your faithful love steadies me, LORD. 19 When my anxieties multiply, your comforting calms me down.
Isaiah 12:2
Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD himself, is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.”
Good Morning! Trust in the Lord with all your heart!
God is so good! He blesses us with everything we need, but somehow we still feel the need to take control of our lives. This should sound very familiar to our early passages this week. I see three major themes interwoven throughout the Bible. In short: love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself, and trust God. I see trusting God as an issue for many. Both the Old and New Testaments are full of stories illustrating the challenges of others: Moses, David, Job, and Peter to name a few. The stories exist to show us how to overcome our own adversities.
It is easy to trust God when everything is going well, or maybe going the way we expect. However, we might begin to doubt God when we are facing an unexpected obstacle. Let’s look at this with a baseball parable: Imagine you’re a great pitcher! You are at your peak and you have the lowest ERA in the league.
You are on your way to becoming the league MVP when suddenly, you can’t seem to throw a strike. The doctors evaluate your health and find nothing that would cause your troubles. The more you think about your pitches and try to control where the ball will land, the wilder your pitches become. In this situation, I’m told that pitching coaches would try to convince the pitcher to quit aiming the ball and just throw because your body knows what to do if your brain will get out of the way.
It seems that this is how we are with trusting God. We know that God loves us, has a plan for us, and will be with us always, but sometimes our own thoughts take over and question our actions. Sometimes human reason and logic are counterproductive to achieving God’s plans for our lives. The funny thing is that we need to hear this message over and over again. So again I say, let go and let God.
Loving God, Thank You for loving us. Once again, we are talking about trust. It seems so easy, yet we continue to try to take control. Help us trust in You. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen
Thought for the day: I can grow in my faith by trusting God with my concerns.
Trust and Obey God! Pastor Liz
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