Good News! Only weeks ago, we learned that the posted devotionals were not being emailed to our readers since August 2019! I have been writing a weekly devotional and posting it on the website but did not realize EveryDay Life was NOT BEING SENT TO YOU – our readers. My sincere apology. Thank you for friends who expressed their disappointment, which is how we realized the problem. I value each of you who read and follow EDL.
Thanks to a tech savvy friend who has invested time and expertise from the beginning of EveryDay Life, that technical glitch has been repaired. You can read from a library of past devotionals at the website, allenrandolph.com. My thoughts and comments today are about, “Progress.” Thank you for welcoming me into your study each week. Blessings, Allen Randolph
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Progress is simple, really.
You need to be where you need to be.
You need to believe what you need to believe.
You need to do what God says you need to do.
Upward. Onward. Forward.
“Get up and start walking.” John 5:8 NIV.
My thoughts today are about, “progress.”
Progress is about going and growing. Life is about moving from where you are to where you need to be, and from who you are to who you need to become. Life is about becoming in Christ who you are meant to be. Reality is simple. You can’t get where you need to be if you are content to stay where you’ve been. The Bible is clear. ”But to all who believed Him and accepted Him, He gave the right to become children of God.” John 1:12 NLT. We are overcomers in order to become what we were destined to be.
Progress necessitates your effort to move onward, forward, and upward. But progress takes effort and presents challenges. To progress, you confront obstacles with hope and faith. Most will be challenging. Some will seem impossible. From God’s point of view, it is simple. “Everything is possible with God.” Mark 10:27 NLT.
Two things I want you to remember. First, you can do whatever you need to do when God tells you to do it. And secondly, God will do what He promises to do, when you believe and obey. Your history might suggest that you can’t. But your destiny is this: whatever God tells you to do, He will enable you to do so.
Remember this promise, “Our God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us.” Ephesians 3:20 NIV. You and I cannot limit a limitless God, except as that relates to our own life. We can ask within our personal knowledge of God and beyond our previous experience of Him. God works through His immeasurable power when we rest our faith in God’s character and our own faith-filled declaration of His Word.
The Bible shares the story of a man in a life-threatening dilemma. Read John 5:1-8 NIV. For nearly forty years, he was physically and emotionally dependent upon hope. He survived by hope. And he relied on the kindness of others. Daily, he was brought to a place where he and many others anticipated healing. But there was not much that he or others could do except wait and hope. He was realistic about his history but believed his story could exceed his history.
Inevitably, his hope wearied. I wonder how many times he struggled to hold on to hope. What else did he have but hope? Jesus saw a desperate man. Only a miracle could change his otherwise inevitable destiny. The Bible describes that supernatural hope as, “an anchor of the soul, both firm and secure.” Read Hebrews 6:11-20 NIV. Your hope is secure when it is anchored to Jesus, God’s Word, and the promises the Holy Spirit births in your heart.
What are you hoping for God to do today? What do you desperately need from God? That weak and weary man at Bethesda hadn’t chosen to be where he was; his hopeless circumstances were imposed upon him years earlier. In contrast to every previous day, this one day forever changed his history, and forever rewrote his story.
To that man, “Jesus said, ‘Get up, take your bedroll and start walking.’ The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off.” John 5:8 The Message. He had to believe that what he needed was possible. What had changed? Everything! Jesus asked him to do what he could not do without God. What God asks, He enables. What God enables, He expects. What He expects is obedience. Obedience is the pathway to progress.
He did what he couldn’t do, until that moment changed everything. He believed Jesus and obeyed. He got up from his bed of affliction and walked away out from his history and into his destiny. You can’t get where you want to be if you are willing to stay where you have been. The longest journey begins with a single step.
When will your situation change? When you understand that Jesus wants to heal you and you do whatever He is asking you to believe you can do, then you will experience release and healing. The answer seems too simple; the truth usually is. Jesus made a promise, “My Father is always at work to this very day, and I too am working.” John 5:16 NIV. Believing that promise renews my resolve when I struggle. Whatever else may not be working for you today, God can. God will. God does.
My prayer for you today is that you measure your progress by steps of obedience.
EDL Communications 2020
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