God’s Provisions for Your Success

English: Joshua commanding the sun to stand still (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Read | Joshua 1:1-9

Whenever our goals align with the Lord‘s, we can count on His help in achieving them. This truth is vividly confirmed in the story of Joshua. Since God gave him the huge responsibility of leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, He also provided everything Joshua would need for success. He will do the same for us every time we believe Him and step up to fulfill the goals He’s set for us.

His Promises: God assured Joshua that He would give him the land and that no one would be able to stand against him. In the same way, the Lord will enable you to achieve whatever He’s called you to do, and neither man nor the Devil will be able to thwart His purposes when you stand firm in faith.

His Power: Be strong and courageous, because you will encounter obstacles that challenge your obedience. Such boldness isn’t something we muster within ourselves. It’s developed through reliance upon the Lord. Courage comes when our faith isstronger than our fear.

His Word: Joshua’s success depended upon his obedience to God’s Word. The same is true for us. If the Scriptures aren’t shaping our thoughts, words, and actions, we will just naturally go our own way and miss the path God has planned for us.

Everything you need to succeed in life is provided for you by God. But these provisions are available only when you choose to follow His plans. If you ignore the Lord and set your own goals without guidance from the Scriptures, you may get what you want, but it won’t be genuine success.

Dr. Charles Stanley

Wavers

English: A reed shaken by the wind More than one reed, and bent rather than shaken. The lack of navigation as yet on the restored section of the Grantham Canal means that there is significant growth of vegetation, including these 2-metre tall reeds. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ere’s Today’s Devotional from The Vine…

When John’s messengers had departed, he began to tell the multitudes about John, “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? - Luke 7:24

 

The picture is of a man wavering and unstable, easily swayed and bent from uprightness. That is what a good many men are. A reed grows in soft mud by the water’s edge. Then it is so frail and delicate that every breeze bends it and shakes it. Jesus did not intimate that John was a man of that stamp, but meant just the reverse. John was not like a reed shaken with the wind. He was a man whom nothing could bend or sway. Rather than preach soft words to please Herod, and keep quiet about sins that the king was committing, John charged home the sins without quailing, losing his head at last as reward.

Yet there are some persons who are like reeds. Instead of being rooted in Christ, their roots go down into the soft mud of this world, and of course they are easily torn up. Then they have no fixed principles to hold them upright and make them true and strong; and they are bent by every wind, and moved and swayed by every influence of fear or favour. The boy that cannot say no when other boys tease him to smoke, or drink, or do a wrong or mean thing, is a reed shaken by the wind. The girl who is influenced by frivolities and worldly pleasure, and drawn away from Christ and from a beautiful life, is likewise a reed bent and swayed by the wind.

They are growing everywhere, these reeds, and the wind shakes them every time it blows. Who wants to be a reed? Who would not rather be like the oak, growing in soil as solid as a rock, which no storm bends or even causes to tremble?

There is one apparent advantage in being like a reed: one seems to escape persecution. John would hardly have met the fate he did meet if he had been easily shaken. People who are like reeds do not often lose their heads on the martyr’s block. But they are in danger of losing their souls; and that certainly is worse.