We need to accept whatever roles are ours to play, regardless of where these rank on any worldly scale of values. We should be glad for our part and grateful for the work God gives us. After all, God has set us in the body “just as He pleased.”
“Be still, and know that I am God.” We won’t revere God properly until we’ve gotten still, and stillness in God’s school may not be something we’re willing to accept. We may have to be forced to be still by the “preschool” of pain and suffering.
The spirit of worship is selfless wonder at God’s majesty — the smallness of ourselves in His presence. And for sinful beings, it involves repentance. Our hearts may be proud or they may be worshipful, but they can’t be both. Pride kills worship.
Our adversary specializes in confusion. He loves to prey upon minds that are torn and upset by multiple worries, and he often tempts us when we’re so beset by cares that we act on impulse, failing to consider the consequences of our actions.
God cannot be defeated, and this truth is attested by everything ever been known about Him. When, in the face of temporary opposition, we choose to believe the ultimate victory will be His, we adopt a faith the devil can do little to vanquish.
Those who will enjoy heaven are those who know how to be patient, and patience comes down to what the old-timers used to call “grit.” But mark it well: grit is not something some people are born with and others are not. It’s a matter of choice.
We can take it for granted that God’s way will always work — it will always accomplish the purpose that He had in mind, whether that purpose is clear to us or not. So the question is not what will happen, but what our principles should be.
We are a “reaching people” who strain forward, eager to connect with something that can fill our needs. Foolishly, however, we reach for the wrong things, things that can’t satisfy us. But if we grasp the wrong things, we doom ourselves to death.
Satan loves to discourage us. He takes perverse delight in keeping us from taking even one step toward God. But he need not have the last word. We can determine that, God being our helper, we will summon the courage, self-respect, and energy to act!
In the end, the dividing line won’t be between those who had it easy and those who didn’t; it will be between those who decided to go to heaven and those who didn’t. When “every wind of doctrine” is gusting, it’s the set of our sails that matters.
The vivid account in Psalm 22, written so many centuries before Jesus’ death and corresponding so closely to the event, can be explained in only one way: David was enabled ...