Embrace God's Guidance
Pause and take a moment to reflect on the last time you truly allowed yourself to be led by someone else—the kind of leading that required you to give up control and trust the person leading you.
If we’re honest, many of us struggle in some way to completely surrender trust. And even when we do decide to surrender, we might still slightly find ourselves trying to taking back some measure of control.
We fear being hurt.
We fear vulnerability.
We fear being misled.
We fear rejection.
But here's the truth: when we place our fears in the hands of a loving God, it readies our hearts to cultivate a deeper intimacy with Him.
God knows your heart, He sees your struggles, and He's aware of your weaknesses. And He's there—right there, in the midst of your anxieties and fears—ready to guide you, teach you, and lead you to truth. Allow the words echoed by the psalmist to be your prayer today…
Power, Love, and Discipline
One of the miracles of salvation is that when we have faith in Christ, God not only saves us—He also gives us the power to live according to His will. Your life in Christ is one that is empowered by the Holy Spirit living within you.
This is a great gift, but a big shift. It often takes time to change how we think and act. We may have bad habits that take hard work to correct, or patterns of thought that are challenging to break.
Thankfully, God promises to be with us and to empower us to make these changes in our life. When Paul is writing to his mentee Timothy, he encourages him to continue to develop the gift that God has given to him. While we are saved in an instant, it takes a lifetime to develop and work out what God is doing inside of us.
Paul reminds Timothy that God’s Spirit does not give us fear or cowardice. Those things are tools of the devil who is trying to keep us from God. But the Spirit of God empowers us with confidence in Him. He gives us the ...