CWW Week 19 - Day 7 - Who Are You?

Scripture.

Proverbs 3:5-6 (NKJV) says:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.”

Devotional

These verses emphasise the importance of relying on God rather than our own limited perspectives, promising that He will guide us when we seek Him in all aspects of life.

A life in Christ is about a life of overcoming. Have you ever thought that we were born to be happy and that life is about happiness? If so who told you that?

Would someone born into Rwanda at the time of the troubles, have thought that as family members all around them were being slaughtered? There are a thousand examples I could site here but you get my drift. Who told us that life was meant to be happy? I’ll give you a hint. It wasn’t God; well not after the Garden of Eden anyway. 

Yes bliss was all that we would ever have experienced if the first family hadn’t made the wrong choice. But heres the crazy thing. How would we know we were living in bliss if we had never experienced trouble?

Now we need to define happiness. Is it in the joy of buying a new car or a fresh new relationship. How about living the dream of home ownership. Have you ever weighed up what we give up in order to support these temporary joys? The dream becomes a nightmare when there is an interest rate rise.

I was in a supermarket once watching a toddler laying a guilt trip on his mother. He wanted chocolate and he wanted it now. If only he could have chocolate he would be happy. Mother caved in and the child was in ecstasy, until the chocolate ran out then the rant started all over again.

The many things in life that we are told make us happy are mostly only temporary. It’s a fine line between pleasure and pain, between hardship and happiness. 

I was talking to a guy recently who’s bottom line belief is that his life is a struggle. He wares it like a badge of honour. “Oh boy, we have learned the hard way what it’s like to struggle,” he always says. But recently I pointed out how little he really struggles. When I pointed out all the good things in his life it jolted him a little.

Like so many of us he was caught up in his story. In the book Affluenza the authors tell the story of research they conducted in a major city in Australia. For several months they asked passers by two questions.

1. Do you earn enough to meet the basic requirements of life?
2. If not what is the most pressing requirement you cannot afford?

Most of the respondents answered NO to the first question.

To the second, the top answer was a flat screen TV????

If outward success defines your state of happiness and this is supported by stuff that goes on to be landfill eventually, then I would like to know where the fulfilment is in that? I know many men who live by the mantra “I am an Airline Captain, therefore I am a man.” What happens to their identity when they retire or lose their licence for medical or other reasons?

I have run several campaigns over the years in an attempt to get men to fill the breach. One of the lectures I titled “Living For Good Funeral.” The message is of course that a good funeral is usually the consequence of a life lived in service and contribution. As we discussed yesterday; When we know that our new eternal life is in God’s keeping and it got there through Jesus, all the rest is just background noise.

In Christ the old is discarded and everything becomes new as we unburden ourselves of the desire to buy security for our future. Our identity now is in Christ as He alone directs our path. As we acknowledge Him in all aspects of our lives we come to know Him and in so doing, truly we get to know ourselves. Then we can answer this weeks question with confidence. I am the son or daughter of the living God who created me in His image and it is well with my soul.

We must not lean on our own understandings because it limits us and it limits God. I am confident that the Holy Spirit will reveal what we need to know when we need to know it. That works for me. How about you?

Questions.

1. Have you felt that your life has no lasting direction?
2. What are the stumbling blocks that you see between you and God?
3. Do you now trust God enough to go with Him one hundred percent?

Prayer.

Dear Lord, Papa God.

I cannot begin to understand your ways in the light of my earthly education. I have had so much mental pollution in my life as I have been manipulated and influenced by all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. Help me to detox my understanding and lean into Yours, knowing that I am Your child and my identity is secure in that knowledge. As Your child I am trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will so that I can live in reasonable happiness in this life and supreme happiness with You forever in the next. In Jesus name I pray. Amen

Have a great day with Jesus.

Graham Hood.