We’ve got your daily encouragement, written by Phil Woody.
Bible Reading:
Hebrews 10:23
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”
Word:
If you’ve lived for any period of time, you have hoped in something for that hope to only be met by disappointment. This story of disappointment can become our story until hope is all but lost.
Every new year we are offered a new start and new beginning, but the mistake is to think we can hope in the same things that left us disappointed countless of times before. It’s learning to shift our hope to something, a better someone, who is perfectly faithful, and whose promises never fail.
But how? Like this. Most of us look through the lens of our own story to God. So I start with my limitations and my circumstances, and my gifting or education or lack of. When we do this we compare our stories to everyone else’s. They are smarter, have better circumstances, had better parents, are prettier, and more educated than me.
When this becomes the lens we look through to see God, we don’t see his faithfulness, we see the opposite. Or better yet, we see our own lack of ability to measure up to his faithfulness. Either way we are left defeated and hopeless.
But as we learn to look through the lens of God and his perfection, his goodness and his faithfulness, at ourselves we see that we are made perfect in his image. We see he doesn’t make mistakes, so we are not a mistake and our circumstances are perfect for the perfect work he is accomplishing in us and for us. Instead of dreading our circumstances, we embrace them knowing they are perfect for us and promise us everything, hope, joy, love, and fulfillment. Instead of putting our Hope in the same old things we always have, we put our Hope in his perfect love.
Prayer:
Jesus help me see myself as you do. Help me to live and walk confident and unswervingly knowing your good so I am good and more than enough. Thank you for my circumstances, I choose them knowing somehow your using them for me and for my future.
Skillwork:
Choose one of the circumstances of your life you don’t quite like and would love to see changed. Instead of avoiding it or fighting it, choose it and ask him to use it in your life to create a new tomorrow.
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