Do not let any set of circumstances intimidate you. The more challenging your day, the more of My Power I place at your disposal. You seem to think that I empower you equally each day, but this is not so. Your tendency upon awakening is to assess the difficulties ahead of you, measuring them against your average strength. This is an exercise in unreality.
I know what each of your days will contain, and I empower you accordingly. The degree to which I strengthen you on a given day is based mainly on two variables: the difficulty of your circumstances, and your willingness to depend on Me for help. Try to view challenging days as opportunities to receive more of My Power than usual. Look to Me for all that you need, and watch to see what I will do. As your day, so shall your strength be.
Ephesians 1:18-20: "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.
Psalm 104:5: He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
Deuteronomy 33:25: The bolts of your gates will be iron and bronze, and your strength will equal your days.
I wanted to share that devotional with you today because most of us are at the point in the semester where school work keeps getting served up on our plate. If you are in any sports right now, all of the school work on top of your seasons getting really busy can be tough. For anybody this is a busy time of year. It's easy to get antsy because Thanksgiving break is right around the corner. I encourage you to be thankful for the busy days because God gives you such a crazy amount of strength on those days. I also encourage you to be thankful for them because when you are very busy you need to seek God more than anything. Be thankful for the business that we all go through.
I want to share a story about where God gave me more strength when I needed it the most and I will never forget it.
When I was in China this summer playing basketball with Athletes in Action, each and every single day was busy from beginning to end. If anyone has ever done a trip like that, I know that you understand where I am coming from with that. There was a particular day when we thought that we were not going to have a game. We had planned out that day that we were going to go to the Stone Forest, located in Shilin Yi Autonomous County in the Yunnan Province. That drive was about 2 hours from Kunming in 4 small vans. We were walking around the Stone Forest and having such a great off day. Sometime late afternoon, our leader told us that a game was scheduled for us back in Kunming. I remember that we were all exhausted from the previous week and a couple of days that we had already spent in China playing games and putting on clinics. It was tough for us to get mentally ready for the game and when you are in China, the traffic is crazy and you cannot communicate with your van drivers very well. Somehow all of our vans got split up so we didn't all get to the gym at the same time. It seems like we were in those small little vans for hours. When you are in China, everything runs on their time, it's not like the United States where time is so important. We didn't really know what time our game was supposed to start. The game was going to start when all of your players finally got there and got ready. Like most of our games while we were over there, the gym filled up to a capacity crowd with the university students. It was a large gym with a super cool atmosphere. Even with all that going on, we were all exhausted and didn't really seem ready to play. When the game was ready to start, our coach circled us up to pray. When we prayed before every game we all stood in a circle, held our fists together and prayed with our eyes open because we technically weren't allowed to pray. Praying with our eyes opened just looked like coach was giving us a pre-game speech. I remember standing in that circle and our coach just kept saying over and over again that we needed to rely on God and that he was going to give us all the strength that we needed to go out there, play for God, and play for the love of each other. It was a confident prayer and God gave us all the strength we prayed for. That turned out to be one of the most fun games during our entire trip. That game was one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned. I have been in situations like that before, but this time we relied 100 percent on God and that is something that I will never forget.
Next time like you feel you are so busy and have no energy to do anything, remember to trust God to give you strength because he will and remember to seek him in he midst of all the business. Have that mindset and attitude every day regardless of what you are going through. Be extra thankful for the business.
~ you are loved ~
No comments:
Post a Comment