Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. (1 Corinthians 8:6, NIV)
As I write today, I am sitting in my house alone and separated from most of the rest of humanity, in obedience to the law of the land. We as a nation, and the world as a whole, are facing a most difficult time in our history. A golfer might describe a similar circumstance as a slump—that dreaded time when nothing is going right and our past success is replaced by doubt and fear that things might never change and that we have already seen our best days. Now we fear that we could die from something we’ve only recently heard existed.
Though very different, such real fears paralyze us because we cannot control what is going on.
When fear and despair come for us, we can give in to them, or we can look beyond ourselves to the hope we have in our relationship to God. Any thoughts we have had in the past about controlling our own destiny should be replaced by the truth that we can control nothing. That realization should rightly point us to the one who controls everything. When things are going just fine, it is easy to fall back on our own abilities. Times like these force us to think deeper about who we are and what we are supposed to be doing with our lives.
God is still in charge of the universe and of me and you individually. He is God over all things.God calls on us to depend on him for everything including the next breath we take. That matters because if we live empowered by him, we will have everything we need to make it until our life is over. He holds us in his hands. We trust in God, the Father from whom all things came and for whom we live. He is the reason we live at all. Any life we have is because he wills it, and when it is over, we will be forever with him if we trust in Jesus Christ through whom all things came and through whom we live. Our divine purpose is to live for God through Jesus Christ. We have nothing to fear if we are doing that.
God is still in charge of the universe and of me and you individually. He is God over all things. He is also God over the details of our life. It is a binary choice. We can try to figure out what to do next to save our lives, our fortunes and our future, or we can trust God to take care of all of it. Crisis teaches us even as believers where our faith really lies. This is probably a temporary slump designed to humble us and force us to look at our own frailty. What we do in response to it will depend on our choices. Fear? Or faith in the one who made us?
I hope by the time you are reading this that things have improved, but if not don’t live in fear. God has a plan and he can be trusted. We know that by what he has already done for us.
—
Linda Ballard
April 2, 2020
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.