Posted on by intentional4christ

Billions of puzzle pieces

Do you like to solve jigsaw puzzles? Can you imagine solving a 20-piece puzzle without a picture? Pretty easy, right? How about a 100-piece puzzle without knowing what the final product looks like? I guess that just got a tad difficult! Now imagine a jigsaw puzzle with billions of pieces but you were not shown what the final completed picture was. Where would you even start? How would you know what piece fits where?

Yesterday while I was lamenting to someone about what the next big direction of my life was going to be, I had an epiphany: my life is like a jigsaw puzzle and each second constitutes a puzzle piece of my life. So far, over a billion pieces have been put together already and there are so many more pieces to go until the final picture is done. This is where faith and trust take center stage.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Hebrews 11:6 NIV

Faith allows us to envision what the next puzzle piece of our life is- allows us to hope beyond the now to a future state; to be assured that the next piece of the puzzle whatever it is will be just the right piece that needs to interlock with the piece before and the piece that will come after. Not all the pieces will be joyful, indeed some will be filled with sorrow, heartbreak, and disappointment- but rest assured, they all fit together to paint the complete picture of your life.

What’s more, even though we do not know the full picture of the sum our lives and we live through life one puzzle piece at a time, there is someone who has the full picture and is actually the Orchestrator of each puzzle piece. Afterall, many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails (Proverbs 19 :21). Scripture encourages us to put our trust in the One who has the master plan for our lives. It says:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.

Proverbs 3: 5-6 NLT

Why? because He knows the full picture and knows how the next piece fits into the next and the next. The reality is, even though we think we are in the drivers seat of our lives, there is nothing farther from the truth. Proverbs 20: 24 clues us in:

A man’s steps are from the LORD; how then can man understand his way?

In fact, that is the source of all anxiety and worry: thinking that we can fit together the billions of pieces of our lives without a picture of where pieces are supposed to go. Sometimes if we are lucky, we succeed in fitting just the right piece on “our own” without the help of the master “Puzzler.” More often than not, we pick the wrong piece and try to jam it into a space that it was not designed to fit into. We end up with choices that we regret or with more heartache than we should have had. But thanks be to God who leads us in His triumph and gives us victory through Jesus Christ our Lord! Jesus takes those “wrong pieces” and works them out for our good and His glory sake. This is why we can look back on some of the self-inflicted messes in our lives and they appear to all still be connected to a larger picture. God works out everything back into place within the puzzle. How? Only the Master Craftsman knows! And the best thing we can do for ourselves is to put our trust in His plan- the one that brings us to an expected end and gives us a future and a hope! When you feel overwhelmed with what the next steps of your life should be and you are unsure if that move, that decision, that action is the right one or not, can I encourage you to say this to your soul:

But I trust in You, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in Your hands…

Psalm 31:14-15a BSB

Indeed He’s got times and seasons in His hands- in my home we call it the bird’s eye view. He has the bird’s eye view of our lives; he sees the whole picture which is why He alone is the Author and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2)! From our first cry to our final breath, He commands our destinies! So friends, will you join me today to trust God for the next step in whatever season of life you are in? The next piece of your life’s puzzle is in His hand.

Yours truly.

Posted on by intentional4christ

For the Love of God!

If you read the title of today’s post and thought, “Oh my! this is going to be a rant!”…. well… you are not wrong! But stay with me you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

We are now in October and I am already starting to dread the days leading up to the end of the year when I review everything that was on my new year’s resolution list to accomplish for this year. There are things on that list that I can catch up on and get done so I can check them off; but sadly there is so much more that I will have to concede that I failed to accomplish. One of them was to blog at least once, every week, for every week of the year 2024. And if you have been following my posts, you know I have failed woefully on that account. Another even more important thing on my list was to read my bible and spend time praying everyday. Well… that too went the way of the dodo and now I am left with two choices. Do I make up for lost time from now till the end of the year? or do I simply decide that I failed to meet these goals for this year and put them on the list again for next year? For some of you, you have fallen off the wagon for your diet, or exercise regimen, or may be for you it is also something of a spiritual discipline. I’ll tell you what I did:

I decided that everyday I have life is an opportunity to do and be better… to occupy well… and so I grabbed a 30 day devotional to read through the month of October. And guess what? God met me right where I was. Yesterday, I decided to read the back cover of the devotional and right there was this statement:

“For some of you, daily devotionals is a familiar discipline. For others, this may be new or a habit that has been hard to master. If you miss a day, do not be discouraged. Simply begin anew. This is not a test of endurance or consistency. It is an opportunity to be fed and loved by God”

Dr. John Neufeld

That just warmed my heart. It felt like God reaching right down from heaven to remove my guilt for not spending as much time with Him throughout the year and give me a new perspective for the rest of the days ahead. Do you know how many times my approach to reading the bible has been to just get it done so I can cross it off my list? Can you imagine how God has felt all these years when I grab my bible to meet with Him and I am rushing through it just to get it done so I can go to sleep? How many wonderful opportunities have I missed to just be fed and loved on by God as I spend “unsanctioned” time in His presence?

Today, I have come to find encouragement in these words: that reading my Bible and spending time with my Heavenly father is not a test of endurance or consistency but rather an opportunity to have God reach out and feed my hungry soul and quench my ravaging thirst with His very presence and His word. God is not as interested in how many times I have read my bible as He is in how many times I have given Him an opportunity to refresh and replenish me. His ask is very simple.

You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.”

Psalm 27:8 ESV

He says, “Seek my face” and like the psalmist, my only response should be “your face Lord do I seek.” And you know why? For the love of God… that’s why. Spending time with God is not only an expression of how much I love God, but an opportunity to experience first hand His love for me. It is all for the love of God! So folks if you are so far behind on your bible reading goals for this year, its not too late to catch up- well, realistically you will not catch up if you are months behind; but there is brand-new mercy and grace and an abundance of love waiting for you the next time you pick up your bible. It is never too late for that! Now this is not a criticism of those who have made a discipline of reading their bibles and spending time with God everyday. I do commend you! Rather, this is to take away the condemnation that the enemy brings to those of us who have fallen off the wagon and to silence the voice that wants to rob us of the opportunity to experience the love of God in these last few days of 2024 by telling us “its too late to pick up the habit!”

I grabbed another devotional to read with my kids and the topic for today was “starting over.” The devotional said:

Aren’t you glad God is in the “starting over” business? He doesn’t look at our failures. He’s not interested in focusing on what wagon we’ve fall off of . He’s only interested in picking us up, dusting us off, and putting us back on the road to success once more. What wagon have you fallen off of recently? don’t worry about it! just make up your mind to try once more God will honor your faithfulness.

Janice thompson

If I was doubting that God is lovingly reaching out to encourage me, I don’t doubt it now! How about you? Is God saying something to you through these words? You better believe it is all for the love of God!

Yours truly.

Posted on by intentional4christ

Water for the thirsty

For those of you who hunt, you know that deer do not stray far from water sources. This is because deer do not sweat but instead pant to cool off when they are hot, thus losing a lot of water in the process. So, the hotter the weather, the more their need for water. For a deer, access to water is not a lackadaisical matter, it is often one of life and death as water is its life source. With this image in mind, lets turn our attention to scripture:

As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?

Psalm 42:1-2

Let me contextualize this scripture: each one of us has been created with a deep-seated need and longing for God. I have heard this longing described in terms of natural habitat. You take a plant out of the soil, it dies; you take a fish out of water, it dies; you take man (humankind) out of God, and we die- both physically and spiritually. As it is said in scripture Acts 17: 28a: For in him we live and move and have our being.

The psalmist says, as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you. Do you feel a thirst and longing for God? And what are you filling this thirst with? Sometimes we chase after things that do not satisfy that deep longing in our hearts; these things are mirages which leave us thirstier and so we keep searching and chasing in this vicious cycle. Scripture describes this in Jer 2:13:

My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
    broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Jeremiah 2:13

What cisterns have you dug to satisfy the thirst in your life? Fast forward to the New Testament and Jesus meets a woman at a well. She is a typology of many believers today- more concerned with the performativity of worship; chasing after things that do not satisfy; holding on to broken cisterns and trying desperately to quench a God-thirst with man-made systems. And Jesus says to the woman,

“If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”

John 4:10 NLT

To personalize this, it feels that of late God has been speaking to me about idols in my life- almost every sermon in church for the past couple of months have touch on this topic. Most recently, I was listening to a sermon by John Neufeld from back to the bible  he made  profound statement about idolatry- he said sometimes we hold images in our minds about who God is and about what we believe the worship of the true God is-  not what God says about Himself or how we should worship him, but what we think and feel it should be and when I reflect on my life, that is so true- Sometimes I come to church and I close off my heart to be receptive to God because I did not like the song choice for worship, or the opening line of the sermon was not as funny and so and so forth.  That is exactly what the woman at the well was doing… Jesus was offering her something eternal, living waters and she deflects and starts to talk about how her ancestors worshiped on a particular mountain, but the Jews say worship must be in Jerusalem. Jesus gently refocuses her gaze from the broken cistern of man-made rules, from her idol of what she thought and felt the worship of God should be to what it actually is “the true worshippers will worship in Spirit and in truth.” Jesus refocuses her to what is as stake… the living waters that He gives… the Holy Spirit. How do I know this? John 7: 37 says:

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

John 7: 37

Have you been hearing the call of the Jesus to come to him and drink of living water? Perhaps the Holy Spirit has been speaking to you like He has to me to abandon your broken cisterns. How are you going to satisfy that thirst? Will your response today be I thirst for God, the living God, when can I go and meet with God?

I conclude with a prayer from Psalm 63:1

O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water. AMEN

Yours Truly