Friend, you don’t have space for both the positive and the negative. When you let the negative things in, they take up space for the positive things that are meant to reside there. If you’ll empty out the negative, if you’ll make room, God will fill your life with good things. He’ll fill you with peace, joy, confidence, health, creativity, and favor.
Today's Word: Nov 22, 2020
Joseph's brother stood before him. This could have been his moment of revenge for them selling him into slavery and for the long years of his suffering in prison. Their lives were in his hands. But notice that Joseph is going to nourish and care for the ones who did him wrong. He had learned to let God be his vindicator, to forgive and show kindness to those who wronged him, and that God won't promote us if we're being vengeful.
It's easy to hold on to the hurt, to be vindictive and try to pay back people who have hurt us. One test we have to pass is not just to forgive people, but to be good to those who have not been good to us. Jesus said, "Love your enemies, do good to them...Then your reward will be great." That's God seeing if you're ready to be promoted. When God can trust you to handle favor, influence, and power without using it to be vindictive, He can take you to new levels.
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We all face challenges in life that we don't know how they're going to work out. How am I going to get well? How am I going to meet the right person? How is this dream going to come to pass? But here's the key: The HOW is not as important as the WHO. When you know who you are, a child of the Most High God, crowned with favor, with royal blood flowing through your veins, then the WHO will override the HOW. The HOW may look impossible, but that is not up to us. If you stay focused on HOW, you're going to live worried and discouraged. Your job is to honor God, to be your best, and He will take care of the HOW.
We spend too much time on the HOWs. How is my child going to get back on course? How am I going to make it through this pandemic? How am I going to overcome the opposition at work? Why don't you spend that same time on the WHO? Your heavenly Father created the universe, flung stars into space, and has ways of doing things that you can't see. He's working behind the scenes lining up what you need to accomplish your dreams. When you understand that you belong to Him, you can live from a place of peace, knowing that your Father is going to protect you, show you favor, and has a solution to that problem that's stressing you out. Your heavenly Father is going to take care of the HOWs.
I talked to a young lady who had big dreams. She knew God's hand was on her life, but she made poor decisions and ended up in prison. She was so down on herself that she didn't want to live. Someone gave her one of my books, and when she started reading it, hope filled her heart, and her dream started coming back to life. She believed that she was still a child of God, redeemed and forgiven. The problem was the HOW. How could she fulfill her purpose? But through a series of unusual events, she was unexpectedly released from prison years ahead of schedule. She went back to school, got her Ph.D. in counseling, and now she's helping people who were like her. She said, " never dreamed that I would be where I am."
You don't have to figure out your HOWs today. Just get the WHO right, and God will take care of the HOW. You may have made mistakes, but that's not who you are, that's what you did. You are still a son, a daughter of the Most High God--forgiven, redeemed, restored, called, equipped, chosen, and anointed. You still have an awesome destiny to fulfill.
If you’re going to overflow with hope, you can’t consider all the circumstances. If you stay focused on how big the problem is, what the experts said, and how impossible it looks, you’re going to be discouraged.
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