Jesus died on Calvary’s cross to rescue ruined and broken lives that have no hope in this life or the next. We long for His touch because He gave His life for us. When our human plans are ruined, we learn to trust in God and to live according to His ways as we act in His timing rather than in our own (Proverbs 3:5-6).
As teenagers, we have high hopes for our future, dreams of how our life will turn out. These expectations are rarely part of reality, however. Life seems to thwart us at every turn, and to continually frustrate us. We often blame these setbacks on God, and in our disappointment, many turn away from Him and His Body.
We think that we can manage our life better than God can, but at the end of our life, we realize that we conformed to the world and lost our own soul (Romans 12:2; Mark 8:36-38). This causes our stress to increase, our true happiness to diminish, our confidence to wane, and our hope to dissipate.
Sometimes, we shut down our emotions, and we put up barriers between our self and those who love us. These walls make us numb to the pain of disappointments, but they also prevent us from fully enjoying a fulfilled life of contentment. At times, we hide behind anger or bitterness to keep our heart from getting hurt again.
The key to success in life is to remain open to God’s loving plans for our life. At the edge of the unknown, we take one more step into the darkness, and we find Him as the light of our path (Psalm 119:105-112). We learn to trust God with our whole heart, and not to depend on our human understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6).
Prayer:
Father God, we want to learn to delight our self in You alone, and to embrace Your desires that You plant in our heart (Psalm 37:3-4). You bless us when we fully trust in You. You give us a secure place to live in Your everlasting arms, we send our roots deeper and deeper into the soil of Your love, and we have no need to fear what happens to our earthly home or possessions (Jeremiah 17:7).
Help us to set our expectations on Your will for our life, rather than on our own goals and desires. You repeatedly prove Your faithfulness to us throughout our life. Teach us to bear the fruit of Your Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) regardless of our circumstances. We want to mature spiritually each day of our life and to grow in our intimate union with You.
Thought for the Day:
Before the world ever began, God knew the end from the beginning of time and everything that would happen in between, and that is why He planned to heal the universe by sending Jesus to carry our sins to Calvary’s cross; sadly, 3/4 of the world has always rejected Jesus, but when we read the end of the Bible, we see that in God's timing Jesus comes back as King and Lord and completely heals our world for eternity - His eminent and imminent return is closer today than it was yesterday.
- John 3:16-18; 1 Timothy 6:15-16
