Trusting God Day by Day: 365 Daily Devotions (38 page)

I
have come to understand that multitudes of people that we encounter daily are just trying to survive until someone rescues them—and that someone could be you or me.

My mother was deeply afraid of my father, so she was unable to rescue me from the various kinds of abuse he perpetrated against me. I felt very alone, forgotten, and abandoned in my nightmare. I finally
decided that nobody was going to help me, so I proceeded to “survive” my circumstances until I could escape them.

The Bible says that in God’s love, “He chose us [actually picked us out for Himself as His own] in Christ before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). He planned in love for us to be adopted as His own children.

Those beautiful words brought a great deal of healing to my wounded soul. God adopts the forsaken and the lonely and He lifts them up and gives them value. He works through His Word, through the Holy Spirit, and through Spirit-led people who live to help others.

Mother Teresa felt that each person she met was
“Jesus in disguise.”
Just try to imagine how much differently we would treat people if we really looked at them the way she did.

Jesus said if we do good or bad to even “the least” of people, we do it to Him (see Matt. 25:45). In other words, He takes our treatment of others personally. If someone insulted, slighted, ignored, or devalued one of my children, I would take it as a personal insult, so why is it so hard to understand that God feels the same way? Let us all strive to build people up, to make everyone we encounter feel better, and to add value to their lives.

O
ne of the amazing things I have noticed from teaching and ministering is that God loves to make people laugh. I don’t plan to be funny when I speak, but the Holy Spirit speaks through me—and I’m amazed at how He adds funny little thoughts or illustrations. He clearly knows the value of humor and the healing effect it brings.

God wants us to laugh, and He wants us to make other people laugh. That does not mean we should all become jesters or laugh at inappropriate times, but we can certainly aid one another in taking a more lighthearted approach to life. We would all be much better off if we would learn to laugh at ourselves sometimes instead of taking ourselves so seriously.

The last three times I have worn white pants, I have spilled coffee on myself. I can either think I am a klutz who cannot hold on to anything and begin to devalue myself, or I can make a joke out of it and try harder to stay clean the next time. For years, I have listened to people downgrade themselves verbally for every mistake they make, and I believe that grieves God. If we know our value in Christ we should
never
say things about ourselves that devalue what God has created.

Why not make a habit of helping people see that we all make silly mistakes and we can choose to laugh rather than get upset? Give people permission to not be perfect! I love to be with people who do not pressure me to be perfect. God loves us unconditionally, and that means He accepts us the way we are and then helps us to be all we can be. Helping people laugh at themselves is a way of saying,
“I accept you, faults and all.”

Remember to take every opportunity to laugh—especially at yourself—because it will improve your health and you will enjoy your life much more.

J
esus said we would be known by our fruit, which means that people can tell who we really are on the inside by what we produce with our lives and by our attitudes.

Jesus not only talked about love, but He showed love by His actions. Acts 10:38 says He got up daily and went about doing good and healing all those who were harassed and oppressed by the devil. His disciples saw Him daily helping people, listening to them, or letting His plans be interrupted in order to help someone who came to Him with a need. The disciples saw Him make sure they always had money set aside to help the poor. They also witnessed Him being quick to forgive and showing patience with the weak. He was kind, humble, and encouraging, and never gave up on anybody. Jesus did not merely talk about loving people, He showed everyone around Him how to love. Our words are important, but our actions carry more weight than our words.

The single biggest problem we have in Christianity is that we listen to people tell us what to do—and we even tell others what to do—and then we walk out of our church buildings or Bible studies and do nothing. It doesn’t matter what we
think
we know. The proof of what we know is in what we do.

I must constantly ask myself,
“What am I doing to actually show love?”
We can be deceived by knowledge, according to the apostle Paul (see 1 Cor. 8:1). We can become blinded by the pride of what we know to the point where we can never see that we are not really practicing any of it. We should all make sure there is no gap between what we say and what we do.

P
eople who want to live powerful lives must become experts at forgiving those who offend and hurt them. When someone hurts my feelings or is rude and insensitive to me, I find it helpful to quickly say,
“I will not be offended.”
I have to say those words quietly in my heart if the person is still in my presence, but later when the memory of what he or she did returns to haunt me, I repeat them aloud. When I say,
“I will not be offended,”
I always pray for God to help me, realizing that I can do nothing without Him.

My husband, Dave, has always been difficult to offend. When he is around people who could hurt him or in situations where he could be offended, he says,
“I am not going to let negative people control my mood. They have problems and they are not going to give their problems to me.”

On the other hand, I spent many years getting my feelings hurt regularly and living in the agony of offense, but I am not willing to live that way any longer. I am busy getting a new mind-set. Are you willing to join me in becoming a person who is hard to offend? If so, you will open the door to more peace and joy than you have ever known before.

People are everywhere, and you never know what they might say or do. Why give the control of your day to other people? Being hurt and offended does not change the people, it only changes us. It makes us miserable and steals our peace and joy, so why not prepare ourselves
mentally not to fall into Satan’s trap? Developing the mind-set that you are a person who is difficult to offend will make your life much more pleasant.

O
ne of the reasons we find forgiving others difficult when we are offended is because we have told ourselves probably thousands of times that forgiving is hard to do. We have convinced ourselves and set our minds to fail at one of God’s most important commands, which is to forgive and pray for our enemies and those who hurt and abuse us (see Luke 6:35–36). We meditate too much on what the offensive person has done to us, and we fail to realize what we are doing to ourselves when we take Satan’s bait.

Though praying for our enemies and blessing those who curse us may seem extremely difficult or nearly impossible, we can do it if we set our minds to it. Having the proper mind-set is vital if we want to obey God. He never tells us to do anything that is not good for us or to do anything we cannot do. He is always available to give us the strength we need to accomplish the task. We don’t even need to think about how hard it is; we just need to do it!

God is just! Justice is one of His most admirable character traits. He brings justice as we wait on Him and trust Him to be our vindicator when we have been hurt or offended. He simply asks us to pray and forgive—and
He does the rest. He makes even our pain work out for our good (see Rom. 8:28). He justifies, vindicates, and recompenses us. He pays us back for our pain if we follow His commands to forgive our enemies and even says that we will receive “double for our trouble” (see Isa. 61:7).

As we renew our minds with thoughts such as,
I freely and quickly forgive
, we will find forgiving and releasing offenses easier than ever to do. The reason this is true is because
“Where the mind goes, the man follows.”
As we mentally and verbally agree with God by obeying His Word, we become a team that is unbeatable.

W
e put a lot more pressure on ourselves than God would ever put on us. God removes all that makes us unrighteous (our transgressions) and sends it as far away as the east is from the west. How far is the east from the west? A long way!

When my son was younger, he decided to do something nice for me. He got a bowl of water and went out on the porch. Soon he came to me and said,
“Mommy, I washed the windows for you.”
The porch was wet. He was wet. The windows were smeared up. But he did it because he loved me. God reminded me of this one time. He said,
“Do you remember what
you did afterward? You sent your son off to get cleaned up and then you went and cleaned up his mess when he wasn’t looking.”
God showed me that He does the same with us.

God is aware of our imperfections, yet He receives what we do out of love for Him. He cleans up our messes, and even works good out of them, because He loves us with a perfect love. He sees our faith in Him and through it considers us to be “in Christ.”

If God asks,
“Why should I let you into heaven?”
the only right answer is,
“Because I’m in Christ.”
If God asks,
“Why should I answer your prayers?”
the right answer is,
“Because I’m in Christ.”
If God asks,
“Why should I help you?”
the only right answer is,
“Because I’m in Christ.”

Jesus wants us to come fearlessly, confidently, and boldly to the Father to receive mercy for our failures and grace for every need we have. He understands our weaknesses and faults. He understands that we are not going to manifest perfection every day. But we can ask God to forgive us for the mistakes we make and then go boldly before the throne to ask God to meet our needs.

B
elieving the best about people is very helpful in the process of forgiving people who hurt or offend us. As human beings, we tend to be
suspicious of others and we often get hurt due to our own imaginations. It is possible to believe someone hurt you on purpose when the truth is they were not even aware they did anything at all, and never intended to upset you.

I can remember, during the early years of our marriage, focusing on everything I considered negative about Dave and ignoring his positive traits. My thoughts went something like this:
We just don’t agree about anything. Dave is so stubborn, and he has to be right all the time. He is insensitive, and he just doesn’t care how I feel. He never thinks of anyone but himself
. In reality, none of these thoughts were true! They only existed within my own mind; and my wrong thinking caused a great deal of offense and disagreement that could have been easily avoided had my mind-set been more positive.