How can we pray for you today?

“I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father but by me.” (John 14:6)

My day had started badly, but as I turned to God’s living word, I found just what I needed written in the pages of the Psalms:

Psalm 126:5 – “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping carrying seed to sow will return with songs of joy carrying sheaves with them.” God was gently reminding me that through all the difficult places I walk his plans and purpose would be fulfilled. His comfort and peace surrounded me as I continued my day.

After delivering a friend to the ferry terminal I had time to stop at a quaint sea-side town for the first time. I discovered a delightful mix beside the bay’s blue water; boats with tall masts, crying gulls circling over-head and attractive gift stores with bright beach wear hanging in open doorways along the sidewalk.

One store that I wandered into had a mix of every kind of new age philosophy available in the form of books and CD’s, ornaments, jewellery, and gifts. Over the entrance was written:  Dragon Horse – a candy store for the spirit.

The living God doesn’t sugar-coat us with a warm array of trinkets to entice us to follow him. His way isn’t an exploration of self discovery and fulfillment. Rather, his path may be uncertain or even painful at times unearthing deep wounds that need healing before we can move forward.

Following the God of John 14:6 appears to be a ridiculous choice to those who can give you with an ample supply of alternatives. But the way of the cross is narrow for a reason. It’s the only way to forgiveness, healing, wholeness and freedom. True peace and joy comes through Him.

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) He is the living God who will walk with you every day in whatever circumstance you find yourself and He will faithfully guide you. He will never let you down.

Prayer – Thank you God for sending Jesus, your only son to die on the cross for my sin. Please forgive me. Come into my life and fill me with the presence of your Holy Spirit, then teach me how to follow your path for my life. Amen.

Question – Have you come to God by way of the cross?

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“And my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

I believe that when God says He will meet all our needs it doesn’t necessarily mean that He will provide material goods, but rather that He is the embodiment of all we need.  Paul, in the midst of a great struggle, heard the Lord speak to him. God’s response to Paul’s cry to remove the torment was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Which leads me to a question: do we believe that God is enough?

Is He enough to fill my need for approval? Is He enough to satisfy my longing for love? Through sickness and hardship and grief, is God enough to sustain me?

God revealed Himself in the Old Testament to Abram (Genesis 17:1) as “El Shaddai” which means, “God Almighty” or “God All Sufficient.”

Purpose, fulfillment or satisfaction can’t be found in relationships, work or possessions. Humans will never satisfy our need for approval or love because they are imperfect.  Sooner or later they will fail.

God, on the other hand, will never fail or forsake us. He alone gives our lives meaning. The Scripture promises: “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Yes, He is all I need.

All Sufficient God, help me to rest in the knowledge that You are all I need.  Amen.

Questions: How has God been enough for you in the past? How do you need God today?

Do you feel isolated, hurt or afraid and have no one to talk to?

“At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you; I will rescue the lame and gather those who have been scattered. I will give them praise and honor in every land where they were put to shame. At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home. I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes, says the LORD” (Zephaniah 3:19, 20).

Zephaniah tells us that a day of judgment is coming when God’s wrath will be poured out on the earth. He urges us to repent and seek God before that day arrives. He reminds us that God has provided the sacrifice for our sins – Jesus Christ, the perfect Lamb – and that He has invited us to accept His gift and join in the celebration with all those who seek Him. Zephaniah then proclaims that God is with each one of us and He is mighty to save.

Now, as he finishes this short book of prophesy, he encourages us with what God will do for us in the future:

•    deal with all who oppressed you
•    rescue the lame
•    gather those who have been scattered
•    give them praise and honor … where they were put to shame
•    bring you home
•    restore your fortunes

We may have to wait until this life is over to see the fulfillment of all these promises, but we can have confidence that at that time, God will do what He has said.

Father God, how my heart yearns for You to do these things for me – to deal with those who oppress me, to rescue me, to replace my shame with honor, to restore my fortunes and bring me home. Help me to rest in You and wait for the time when You will do it.  Amen.

Questions: Which part of this hope for the future, do you need most right now? How can we pray for God to help you?

TAKE THE NEXT STEP: Reasons to be thankful

About the Author Suzanne Benner

But as we walk along the path of our life, this familiar path that we have walked many times before, we may perceive a longing that cannot be realized by the beautiful yet ultimately unfulfilling things around us.

There are cravings of the soul, perhaps hinted at in the world though never satisfied by it, that are meant to be pointers to something more. What, or who, are these signs pointing to, and how can you know? Have you ever experienced these “soul cravings,” and what have you done to satisfy them? Have these things truly satisfied, or ended up leaving you searching? You could continue along your current familiar path, or you consider a new one, perhaps unexpected, but also one that will lead to unexpected joy: Consider that your search will lead you to Jesus Christ.

After you have watched the video above, consider the following:

Take a look at your life. How would you describe it?

Contented? Rushed? Exciting? Stressful? Moving forward? Holding back? For many of us it’s all of the above at times. There are things we dream of doing one day, and there are things we wish we could forget. In the Bible, it says that Jesus came to make all things new. What would your life look like if you could start over with a clean slate?

Are you ready to choose a different path?

Jesus came, and died, and rose again to wipe the slate clean. He was scourged, tormented, and finally nailed on the cross for humankind’s sins – this was all part of God’s plan to bring you and I back into relationship with him. God wants to be a part of your life … in fact, not just a part of your life, but wants you to live in full fellowship with Him. Is this the life for you?

God loves you and created you to know Him personally. He longs for you to have the kind of full life you were always meant to have. So why do people not experience this kind of life? People are lost and separated from God, so we cannot know Him personally or experience His love. Because of our sins, we justly deserve judgement. But God provided his Son, Jesus Christ, as the only provision for our sin. He died in our place, then he rose from the dead.

We must individually trust Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know God personally, receive forgiveness for our sins, and experience His love: “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12)

We trust God through faith. You can trust Christ right now by faith through prayer! (Prayer is just talking with God.) God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart. The following is a suggested prayer:

Lord Jesus, I need you. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be.

Does this prayer express the desire of your heart?

If it does, pray this prayer right now, and Christ will come into your life, just as He promised.

The desire for fulfillment is universal.

You don’t have to look too far before you run into a myriad of quotes on the topic of living life to the fullest. Carpe Diem translates from the Latin into Seize the Day and appears everywhere from graduation presents to plaques. Living a full and satisfying life is at the top of our inborn priorities, and yet it seems to be a goal that is impossible to reach completely.

Insatiable by Design

It is not a matter of chance that humans not only seek to survive but actually thrive. This desire to live rather than simply exist is what separates us from animals, and it is one of the many ways in which God made human beings unique. We were created with the ability to feel emotions, and the hunger to grow and learn because we were created by God in his own image. God is the creator, source and definition of life and it is these characteristics of him that cause us to be creative and drive us to live enjoy and treasure life.

Where’s the Disconnect?

If we were created by God himself to live fulfilling lives, why do so many of us feel like we are running on empty? And why does it seem like most of the time religion hurts rather than helps the cause of a life fully lived? Though we were created by God to live lives that are rich and satisfying, they can only be made complete by a relationship with Him. The Bible says that, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

God gave us many things which are pleasurable and which he made to enjoy, but their sole purpose was only ever to point us towards him. Without this relationship, every experience is dulled by being limited to itself. It no longer satisfies its original purpose – to point us towards the Creator who imagined it.

He ingrained in our hearts the knowledge of a reality much greater than our temporal existence. When we expect to live completely fulfilling lives without God, we expect something of life that it was never designed to do.

About Jesus

A life to the fullest is a life that is characterized by being in relationship with Jesus, because he himself is the definition of life.  John 14:6 identifies Jesus as the life. It reads, “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Christ is not only the life but he is also the truth and the way in which we can have a fulfilling relationship with God the way we were designed to. We cannot pick and choose which parts of Jesus we accept and which we don’t. Just in the same way that we cannot choose to be in relationship with certain parts of any individual, we cannot live with Christ fully if we do not accept him as the truth and the way, as well as the life.

What does Truth and Way mean exactly?

Accepting Christ as the truth and the way means appropriating Christ’s ways as our own ways, and recognizing him as the source of all truth. This is not a popular choice. Instead, we naturally prefer to have control of our lives and create our own definitions of right and wrong. This is evident in the prominence of brokenness in our world resulting from our poor choices. It is these choices that the Bible defines as sin.

Sin translated from the Greek means “missing the mark.” God created us to have a full satisfying life filled with his presence. We miss the mark when we live any other way than in unity with God. However, we are unable to experience this unity because we have chosen another path rather than God’s.

Sin is not a recent phenomenon. When Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, they chose their own version of life and thus sinned. They traded in the truth of God, his perfect mark, and instead bought into a lie of independent living that could never fulfill its false promise of freedom.

As we see and experience now, this life apart from God turned out to be not life at all but instead brokenness. It is similar to that of a child who desires the freedom to run into traffic. In their eyes they are living more fully when they run freely, but the parent knows that this kind of “full living” results in death.

Romans 6:23 explains this in spiritual terns, “For the wages of sin is death.” The wage we deserve for our choice to live outside of God’s will for us is death: eternal separation from God and everything that is good. This is what is often understood as hell. However, these negative consequences affect our experience of life here on earth too, causing brokenness and in a very real sense spiritual death.

And so we have our world, a series of hit and runs, where we run freely to gain freedom, but end up paying with our entire lives. The life that Christ offers us is spiritual life. Christ’s life allows us to be re-united with God the Father who created our lives and desires to show us for what purposes he gave us these lives.  It is here that we can leave behind empty lives of striving and instead experience satisfied lives that are full of purpose and meaning.

How does Christ restore our relationship with God?

As we’ve already discussed, our attempt to independently live from God results in the natural consequence of spiritual death.  However, God desires life for us to such a great extent that he made a way through Christ for us to have that life restored.  The second half of Romans 6:23 tells us that though “the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

John 3:16 is also another popularly quoted passage in the Bible, and it is so for a valid reason. It tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Jesus Christ, God’s Son was both fully God and fully human. He was able to live a life in perfect unity with God because he lived it in perfect obedience to him. Unjustly, Christ was crucified on the cross, a perfect God sacrificed to cover the wages of sin we deserve. At the same time Christ is able to welcome us into life because he himself did not stay surrendered to death. Three days after Christ died on the cross he rose again, and was resurrected to life.

What’s my part?

Christ’s death and life means we do not have to give up our physical lives, but it does mean we must make an active choice to surrender our right to live independent lives of sin, and instead accept and welcome God’s way of life.

This requires us to confess to God that we have chosen to live apart from him, and to commit to live a life dedicated to him. It is here that can accept Jesus’ gift of having lived and died on our behalf before God, and acknowledge that this is the only way our relationship with God can be made right. He must not only be the guide (or Lord) of our lives, but also our Saviour from a spiritual death and slavery to sin.

Does this mean I’ll always be happy?

Happiness is one of the many emotions that we have been given by God and we can accept it as one of his good gifts. However, like any other emotion it is dependent on circumstances and can quickly vanish. It fades when your child becomes sick, when the career of your dreams turns out to be the world’s worst job and when you age at an ever increasing speed.

God may not guarantee us constant happiness when we begin a relationship with him, but he does promise to be an ever flowing source of joy. Joy knows and reminds us that our security is in our restored relationship with God and the eternal life he has promised us. It comes with knowing God and is based on his faithfulness.

There comes a choice:

Deuteronomy 30:19-20 holds a challenge that each of us must respond to, “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life.”

Where are you today? Are you ready to allow God to be your life?

If you are, the final step is a prayer asking God to come into your life and make you the person he wants you to be.  Prayer is just talking to God.  There is no right or wrong way to do it.  God is not concerned about the words that you choose. He cares about the state of your heart.  He hears you, the words aren’t that important. This is a suggested prayer you might want to use if you’d like to begin a relationship with God.

Jesus, I want to know you personally.  I know that I am a sinner and that nothing I could do can make up for that.  Thank you for dying in my place and paying the price for my sin.  I know that my sin doesn’t separate me from God anymore.  Thank you for forgiving me.  I know that you love me and that I will spend eternity with you.   I want you to be my Savior.   Come into my life and take control, make me the person you want me to be.

Does this prayer express the desire of your heart? If it does, pray this prayer right now, and Christ will come into your life, just as He promised.

If you have prayed this prayer today, please let us know!

Join us for our Daily Devotional Chat today in our Women’s Chatroom at 10:30 am EDT.

Restlessness is not always a bad thing. That sense that there is better somewhere, that the grass is greener elsewhere is part of the eternal call of God on our hearts.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

As believers we know that we are just passing through this world. Our restless spirit is often the call to focus on more eternal things.

Faith is a steadfast refusal to seek ultimate things – ultimate pleasure, ultimate fulfillment, ultimate purpose, ultimate understanding – where God has not laid them.

We know God calls us to a greater value system. Let that realization anchor your heart with hope.

Rest is mixed with restlessness. Vacations are always too short and less than ideal. Dream homes have problems, some nightmarish with leaky pipes and cracking foundations. Good health is hard to maintain and can be snatched by sudden mishap or stray virus. Community is fragile and even amid close friends we can feel a little lonely.

Delight in the rich things of today that the Lord blesses your life with. Know that when they cannot satisfy you entirely, it is His call upon your heart to look upward. Look homeward to Him and know that the richest treasures are not kept in an earthly bank.

Heavenly Father,
Right now I ask You to train my restlessness in Your ways and help me find the deep treasures of Your Kingdom today. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

Inspired by “The Rest of God” Chapter 14 by Mark Buchanan

Questions: How do you analyze your restless spirit? How can that restless spirit be satisfied?

About the Author Gail Rodgers

You can look for these answers in many places–newspaper columns, friends’ advice or new-age philosophies. But have you considered how Jesus could answer these questions for you? As the world’s most significant person, he can do what no one else can–give you peace, purpose and power to change.

Imagine for a moment that you’re building a house. You hire a building contractor, but he never consults the blueprints drawn up by your architect, your designer. He works without a plan. An unwise move–because the contractor needs to know where to lay the foundation, erect the walls and place the windows. Only then will the home look the way it was intended.

The same can be said of life. How can we try to build our life without first consulting the great architect of life, the one who created us for a wonderful purpose? The Bible says, “We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them” (Romans 8:28).

Furthermore, there is more to be gained by living according to God’s plan. True fulfilment and meaning in life is found in God. That’s why the philosopher St. Augustine said centuries ago, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

By asking Jesus–God’s son–to be the biggest part of your life, you will discover the very purpose for which God created you. There is no thing and no one else who can do this–no religion, no philosophy, no person. Just Jesus. He said of himself, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Copyright Power to Change. Used with permission.