FROM THE KEYBOARD

A mirror does not determine your beauty just as a bank account does not determine your worth. Because the truth be told, only a relationship with Jesus Christ establishes our value on earth. "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10).

You cannot reach forward into what God has for you today if your hands are still holding onto what happened to you yesterday. Consider this: There’s an engaging Peanuts cartoon where Lucy is apologizing to Charlie Brown for missing a fly ball during a baseball game. She’s sorry she missed the fly ball and says it’s because she started remembering all the others she missed. “The past got in my eyes,” she says. Thus, let us change our focus from the messes of our past to the mercies of God. "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead" (Philippians 3:13).

Wrong thought is the slave of life, because when we think wrong, our life follows along. Therefore, in order to change your life from the tyranny of self to liberty in Christ, one must renew their mind by spending time in the emancipating truth of God's Word. "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7).

Worry ends right where your worship begins. You see, whatever we focus on becomes magnified. So either we empower worry to weigh us down or we receive God's power in worship to lift us up, but we cannot do both. Therefore, the quickest way to stop worrying is to begin worshipping (which is concentrated thought on God's goodness). "You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You" (Isaiah 26:3).

If worship is communion with God, then worry is rebellion against God. And when we worry about how we are going to make ends meet, we are essentially saying God is not capable of taking care of our needs. However, if He takes care of the sparrows, we can trust that He'll more than provide for our today and tomorrows. Let us therefore, choose to worship over worry. "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" (Matthew 6:26)

True humility is when you simply do what God has asked you to do, while not looking to others for approval. It's also accepting the place that God has asked you to be, while not looking to others for removal. In short, true humility is trusting in God's sovereignty.