Archive for category: upwords

God will always be the same. No one else will. Companies follow pay raises with pink slips. Friends applaud you when you drive a classic and dismiss you when you drive a dud. Not God. God is always the same.

James 1:17 says, with him, “there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Catch God in a bad mood? Won’t happen. Fear exhausting His grace? A sardine will swallow the Atlantic first. Think he’s given up on you? Wrong. Did he not make a promise to you?

You see, God is not a human being, and he will not lie. He is not a human, and he does not change his mind. What he says, he will do. What he promises, he will make come true. His strength, truth, ways, and love never change. Hebrews 13:8 declares he is “the same yesterday and today and forever.” What he says, he will do!

I can’t assure you your family will ever give you the blessing you seek, but God will. Let God give you what your family doesn’t. How do you do that? By emotionally accepting God as your father. It’s one thing to accept him as Lord, another to recognize him as Savior, but another matter entirely to accept him as Father.

To recognize God as Lord is to acknowledge that he is sovereign in the universe. To accept him as Savior is to accept his gift of salvation offered on the cross. But to regard him as Father is to go a step further. Ideally, a father is the one in your life who provides and protects. That’s exactly what God has done! God’s proven himself as a faithful father. Now let God fill the void others have left. You are his child, and he’ll give you the blessing he promised!

Crankcase oil coursed my dad’s veins. He repaired engines for a living; Dad loved machines. God gave my dad a mechanical moron, a son who couldn’t differentiate between a differential and a brake disc. Dad tried to teach me. I tried to learn. Honestly, I did. Machines anesthetized me, but books fascinated me.

What does a mechanic do with a son who loves books? He gives him a library card. Buys him a few volumes for Christmas. Places a lamp by his bed so he can read at night. Pays tuition so his son can study college literature in high school. My dad did that. You know what he didn’t do? Never once did he say, “Why can’t you be a mechanic like your dad and granddad?”

Study your children while you can. The greatest gift you can give your children is not your riches, but revealing to them their own.

The Bible says in Romans 8:28 that “in everything God works for the good of those who love him.” Do this simple exercise. Remove the word “everything” and replace it with the symbol of your tragedy. How would Romans 8:28 read in your life? In hospital stays God works for the good. In divorce papers God works for the good. As hard as it may be to believe, you could be only a Saturday away from a resurrection. Hours from that precious prayer of a changed heart. “God, you did this for me?”

“Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us,” Paul said. “The Scriptures give us patience and encouragement so that we can have hope” (Romans 15:4 NCV). These are not somewhere-over-the-rainbow illusions. They are historic moments in which a real God met real pain so we could answer the question, “where is God when I hurt?”

They sat on opposite sides of the room, a man and a woman, bidding on an adorable puppy at a school auction. Others dropped off, but not this duo. Back and forth until they’d one-upped the bid to several thousand dollars. This was the Wimbledon finals, and neither player was backing off the net. Finally, the fellow gave in and didn’t return the bid. Going once, going twice, sold! You know what she did? Amidst the applause, she walked across the room and presented the puppy to the competition.

Suppose you did that to the competition, with your enemy, with the boss who fired you. Suppose you surprised them with kindness. Not easy? No, it’s not. But mercy is the deepest gesture of kindness.