Does a Pot Argue with the Potter?

“Our God is in the heavens, and he does as he wishes.” Psalm 115:3 Nothing is a surprise to God, not even our slightest trials. His plan may seem unfair, but that’s because we dwell in the here and now. We lack the vertical view. In fact, we sometimes quarrel with God, as the prophet […]

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God’s Unfathomable Ways

You know what I am going to say even before I say it, LORD. You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand. Psalm 139:4–6 Who hasn’t been tempted to shake a fist at God […]

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God Will Exalt You at the Proper Time

So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. 1 Peter 5:6–7 In the Old Testament, God’s hand symbolizes two things. The first is discipline (Exodus 3:20, Job 30:21, Psalm […]

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Direction, Discipline, and Discernment

Give your burdens to the LORD, And he will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall. Psalm 55:22 To grasp what true success really is and how to obtain it, we need to tune out the seductive messages from the world and tune in to the instructive messages […]

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The Gift of Hope

Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you. Psalm 25:5 Hope is a wonderful gift from God, a source of strength and courage in the face of life’s harshest trials. When we are trapped in a tunnel of […]

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Distinction

The essential question isn’t difficult to state: How can I, a person who has absorbed so many years of mediocre thinking, change? How can I, like a caterpillar, move from squirming in the dirt to enjoying the sweet nectar in God’s creation? As in the caterpillar’s case, a radical metamorphosis must occur.

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Individuality

One of the great American myths is that we are all a bunch of rugged individualists. We would like to think that, but it simply is not true. There are some exceptions, of course, but for the majority it is not that way at all. Deep within, we imagine ourselves as a mixture of Patrick Henry, Davy Crockett, John Wayne, and the prophet Daniel! But the truth of the matter is that most of us would do anything to keep from being different.

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Laughter

I know, I know—”life is serious business.” If I hear that one more time, I think I’ll gag. I fully realize that too much humor can become offensive. I recognize that it can be taken to such an extreme that it is inappropriate. But doesn’t it seem we have a long way to go before we are guilty of that problem? The final result of a joyless existence is sad—a superhigh-level intensity

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Optimism

Vision—the one essential ingredient for being an original in a day of copies—gets lost, overwhelmed by the odds. Too bad! We start focusing on the trouble. Then we start comparing the odds. The result is predictable: We become intimidated and wind up defeated. What is your challenge? Which giants make you feel like a grasshopper when you face them?

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Integrity

If some corporate position is the god of your life, then something terrible occurs within when it is no longer a future possibility. If your career, however, is simply a part of God’s plan and you keep it in proper perspective, you can handle a demotion just as well as you can handle a promotion. It all depends on who’s first and what’s first.

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