THIRSTY FOR GOD

Our thirst for God will be satisfied. Once we have become aware of this yearning, once this passionate need and longing has opened up within us, we can hear a stream off in the distance gurgling toward us. We bend every effort to find that stream. However strong or persistent our efforts, though, they are insignificant compared with the mighty rush of water coming to meet us. Though we may try to slake our thirst elsewhere, the Living Water will find our parched mouths.

It will not be our small dippers that finally bring the water to our tongues. Rather, it will be the desire of the Water itself to meet our need, the love of the One whom we have struggled to learn to love, that will overcome our last resistance and pour delicious satisfaction on our aching lips.

-- David Rensberger from "Thirsty for God" in Weavings, July/August 2000, published by The Upper Room, Nashville, TN. Used with permission.


#2525

KEEP BELIEVING

The timing of God is often a mystery to us, and even sometimes a frustration. But we must not give up. We must not try to arrange our own solutions…

Don't give up today, and don't give in to the voices of unbelief and impatience. Remember these words from a beautiful song I have enjoyed so much over the years:
Keep believing in what you know is true;
Keep believing - - you know the Lord will see you through.
When troubles rise in your life, and you don't know what to do,
You'll be fine if you just keep believing.

-- Jim Cymbala in Fresh Faith


#2524

YOUR UNIQUE TALENTS

God deals with each one of us as individuals, where we are. He has given us the talents we have. God is not a dilettante game-player, who gives us one set of talents and then somehow makes us justify our spiritual lives by calling us to give them up. Each person is an individual. Either the whole [person] is redeemed by Christ or none of [that person]!

-- Franky Schaeffer in Addicted to Mediocrity


#2523

GOD'S ECONOMY

God's economy is all about turning our hardship into help for someone else… Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 1:3-5… "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the Lord of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows."

There you have it. Overflowing comfort. When we're going through a hard time, God gives us more than enough to cope, so we'll have something leftover to share with someone else, thus giving us a purpose even in our hardship. This is so important because one of the tendencies when things go bad is to think that our life is suddenly pointless and wasted. We find it hard to wrestle anything good out of the bad things that happen to us. But the good is always there, and if we can't see it, it's because we aren't tuned into God's economy. We are just looking at the situation from one point of view, and it happens to be the most depressing one…

So are you going through it right now? Are you asking God, "Why?" and not getting any answers? Well, at its most basic level, the unique set of circumstances that set you up for this are such that they will qualify you to help someone else in a similar situation. So if that someone should say to you, "You can't possibly know what I'm going through," you will be able to say, "Oh yeah? Let me tell you my story and show you how God met me." It keeps circling around like that. That's part of God's economy.

-- John Fischer in The Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional


#2522

TRUE COMMUNITY

True community is where I can know and be known, love and be loved, serve and be served, celebrate and be celebrated, need and be needed.

-- adapted from Bill Hybels