give your brain a break! Go do something and get yourself off your mind. Show God that you trust Him by turning your problems over to Him so that He can care for you and you can enter His rest.
February 1
One Good Choice After Another
Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you.
PROVERBS 4:25 NIV
A re you enjoying the life and blessings of God in your everyday life? Or have you made a series of choices resulting in disappointment,pain, or feeling that everything you do requires great effort and produces little reward? Don’t spend your time and energy mourning all the bad decisions you have made; just start making good ones. There is hope for you!
The way to overcome the results of a series of bad choices is through a series of right choices. The only way to walk out of trouble is to do the opposite of whatever you did to get into trouble—one choice at a time. Maybe the circumstances of your life right now are the direct result of a series of bad choices you have made. You may be in debt because you have made a lot of bad choices with money. You may be lonely because of a series of bad choices in relationships or in the way you treat people. You may be sick because of a series of unhealthy choices: eating junk food, not getting enough rest, or abusing your body through working too much and not having enough balance in your life.
You cannot make a series of bad choices that result in significant problems and then make one good choice and expect all the results of all those bad choices to go away. You did not get into deep trouble through one bad choice; you got into trouble through a series of bad choices. If you really want your life to change for the better, you will need to make one good choice after another, over a period of time, just as consistently as you made the negative choices that produced negative results.
No matter what kind of trouble or difficulty you find yourself in, you can still have a blessed life. You cannot do anything about what is behind you, but you can do a great deal about what lies ahead of you. God is a redeemer, and He will always give you another chance.
Trust in Him If you have a situation that is too big for you to solve, then you are material for a miracle. Invite God to get involved, trust in and follow His directions, make one good choice after another, and you will see amazing results.
February 2
God Will Lead You into His Wisdom
Wisdom cries aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the markets…
PROVERBS 1:20
G od wants us to use wisdom to make right choices, and the Holy Spirit will lead us into wisdom if we will simply ask Him to do so.
Have you ever needed to make a decision and had your head (your intellectual abilities) try to lead you one way while your heart was leading you in another direction? Have you ever had a situation in which your flesh (your natural thoughts and feelings) seemed to be guiding you down one path, but something inside you kept nagging you to go another way? For example, have there been times when you stayed up late at night watching television, even though you knew you needed a good night’s sleep to be strong and alert for an important meeting the next day—and you kept resisting the knowledge in your heart that you really should go to bed? Have you purchased something you were excited about on an emotional level, but knew in your heart you could not really afford and didn’t even need it?
What is happening in the kinds of circumstances I have just described? Chances are, wisdom is crying out to you. Many times, it cries out in the form of the things you find yourself thinking you should or should not do—you should eat healthily; you should be kind to other people; you should not spend money you do not have. These are all practical examples of using wisdom in everyday life. When you sense such leadings, the Holy Spirit, Who speaks to your heart, is trying to help you make a wise decision, even though it may