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In the famous lace shops of Brussels, Belgium, certain rooms are dedicated to the spinning of the finest lace, with the most delicate of patterns.  These rooms are completely dark, except for a shaft of natural light from a solitary window.  Only one spinner sits in the room.  The light falls on the pattern while the worker remains in the dark.

Has God permitted a time of darkness in your world?  You look but you cannot see him.  You see only the fabric of circumstances woven and interlaced.  You might question the purpose behind this thread or that.  But be assured, God has a pattern.  He has a plan.  The Bible says in Romans 8:28, “In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”  He is not finished.  But when he is, the lace will be beautiful!

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No moment, event, or detail falls outside of God’s supervision.  God is the one who “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).  He isn’t making up this plan as he goes along.  Daniel 5:21 says, “The most High God rules the kingdom of men, and sets over it whom he will.”

So if God is in charge, why does he permit challenges to come our way?  Wouldn’t an almighty God prevent them?  Not if they serve his higher purpose!   The ultimate example is the death of Christ on the cross.  Everyone thought the life of Jesus was over.  Jesus was dead and buried, but God raised him from the dead.  God took the crucifixion of Friday and turned it into the celebration of Sunday.  Can he not do a reversal for you?

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Paul urges us to “rejoice in the Lord always!” (Philippians 4:4).  Not just on paydays, good days, or birthdays.  But rejoice in the Lord always.  Rejoice in the Lord always?  Yeah, right, mumbles the person from the hospital bed.  How? sighs the unemployed dad.  Always? questions the mother of the baby born with a disability.

It’s one thing to rejoice in the Lord when life is good, but when the odds are against you?  It’s not easy, but it is possible.  Lay claim to the promise of God in Colossians 1:17: “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  Rejoice in the sovereignty of God.  His throne is still occupied; his will is still perfect.  Rejoice in the Lord always.  God uses everything to accomplish his will!

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In one of Henri Nouwen’s books, he tells about the lesson of trust he learned from a great trapeze artist.  The acrobat said, “The flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything.  I have simply to reach out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me safely over the apron.”  The flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him.”

In the great trapeze act of salvation, God is the catcher, and we are the flyers.  We trust.  Period.  We rely solely upon God’s ability to catch us.  And as we trust him, a wonderful thing happens– we fly!  Your Father has never dropped anyone.  He will not drop you.  His grip is sturdy and his hands are open.  Place yourself entirely in his care.  As you do, you will find it is possible, yes possible, to be anxious for nothing!

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There’s a reason the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror.  Your future matters more than your past!  God’s grace is greater than your sin.  You thought the problem was your calendar, your marriage, your job.  In reality, it’s this unresolved guilt!  Don’t indulge it.  Don’t drown in the bilge of your own condemnation.  What you did was not good.  But your God is good.  And He will forgive you.

He is ready to write a new chapter in your life.  Say with Paul, “Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God is calling us” (Philippians 3:13-14). Your salvation has nothing to do with your work and everything to do with the finished work of Christ on the  cross.  Rejoice in the Lord’s mercy!

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Denalyn and I had enjoyed a nice dinner at a local restaurant. As we received our bill, a church member spotted us and came over. After we chatted a few moments, he took our bill.  “I’ll take this,” he said.  Guess what?  I let him do what he wanted to do.  I let him take it away.

Someday we will stand before God.  All of us will be present.  All of us will have to give an account for our lives.  Every thought, every deed, every action.  Were it not for the grace of Christ, I would find this to be a very terrifying thought.  Yet, according to Scripture, Jesus came to “take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).  On that day, I will point to Christ.  When my list of sins is produced, I will gesture toward him and say, “He took it.”  Let him take yours!

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I can bear witness to the power of God’s grace!  I could take you to the church, to the section of seats in the church auditorium.  I might even be able to find the very seat in which I was sitting when this grace found me.  I was a twenty-year-old college sophomore, living with a concrete block of guilt that had made a mess of my life.

But then I heard a preacher describe the divine grace that is greater than sin.  At the end of the message he asked if anyone would like to come forward and receive this grace.  Iron chains couldn’t have held me back. Truth be told, chains had held me back.  But mercy snapped the guilt chains and set me free.  I know this truth firsthand– Guilt frenzies the soul; grace calms it!  The benefit of being a great sinner is dependence upon a great grace!

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What kind of person does unresolved guilt create? An anxious one, forever hiding, running, denying, pretending. As one man admitted, “I was always living a lie for fear someone might see me for who I really was and think less of me.  I hid behind my super spirituality but this lie was exhausting and anxiety producing.”

Unresolved guilt will turn you into a miserable, weary, angry, fretful mess.  In a psalm David wrote after his affair with Bathsheba, the kind said, “When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long.  Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me.  My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.”  (Psalm 32:3-4)

As Paul told Titus, God’s grace is the fertile soil out of which courage sprouts! “God’s readiness to give and forgive is now public. Salvation’s available for everyone!” (Titus 2:11, 15 MSG).

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Guilt sucks the life out of our souls.  Grace restores it.  No one had more reason to feel the burden of guilt than did the apostle Paul.  He had orchestrated the deaths of Christians—he was an ancient version of a terrorist.

Paul gave his guilt to Jesus.  Period.  He surrendered it to Jesus.  As a result he could write, “I am still not all I should be, but I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God is calling us up to heaven because of what Christ Jesus did for us.”  (Philippians 3:13-14).

What would the apostle say to the guilt-ridden?  Simply this: Rejoice in the Lord’s mercy.  Trust in his ability to forgive. Cast yourself upon the grace of Christ and Christ alone!

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Many years ago I spent a week visiting the interior of Brazil with a longtime missionary pilot.  Just to say, Wilbur and Orville had a sturdier aircraft!  I could not get comfortable.  I kept thinking the plane was going to crash in the jungle and I’d be gobbled up by piranhas.  I kept shifting around, looking down and gripping my seat—as if that would help.

Finally the pilot had enough of my squirming.  He looked over at me and shouted over the airplane noise, “We won’t face anything that I can’t handle.  You might as well trust me to fly the plane.”  Is God saying the same to you?  Examine those poles of your faith, those truths which sustain your belief in God.  Make sure one of them is etched with the words, “My God is sovereign!”  Then be anxious for nothing!

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I think God is testing the church.  By that I mean He is strengthening us.  He’s calling upon us to be the people He desires for His church to be.

You will remember that when Jesus fed that crowd of 5,000 men plus women and children, the gospel tells us that Jesus tested his followers by telling them to feed those people.  They could have and they should have looked to him and said, “Lord, you can do this.”  And so that’s the call of the church right now…to be the people who come to God and say, God we cannot solve this but you can.

Bless our leaders.  Bless those in research.  Bless those who are vulnerable, we ask you Lord.  So let’s be that people, folks.  Let’s be people who call out to God in asking for help. We’re gonna get through this.  I’m not saying it’s going to be easy.  I’m not saying it’s gonna be quick.  But God will take this and He will use it for good.

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I love what Chuck Swindoll always says.  That “God is not sometimes sovereign.  He is always sovereign.”  The challenge that awaits us is to not give in to despair…to not do foolish things, but to trust.

The key question that we all need to be asking right now is, “What is God saying to us?”  I think He’s talking to the whole world.  I think He’s telling us that our priorities have gotten misplaced.   We need to dislodge those priorities and return to our heavenly Father.  I think He’s calling us back to Himself.  I do…I do.

Is this a signal of end times as some people are saying?  I do not know.  But I do know God is doing something in the world and He’s calling upon us.  He’s talking to the whole world.   And we are going to get through this.  It may not be quick.  It may not be easy.  But God is going to use this for good.

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I’m just checking in to make sure that you are feeding your faith more than you are feeding your fears. You know if you feed your faith, your fears will starve.  But if you feed your fears, your faith will.  So we have to make an intentional decision during this season of high anxiety and turbulence to encourage one another and to feed one another’s faith.  And also we need to take the initiative to feed our own faith.

So I encourage you my friend, I encourage you.  Don’t give into despair.  Don’t give into anxiety.  We’re gonna get through this.  We really are.  I know that we’re getting new news day by day.  I know that developments are changing it seems by the hour. But let me tell you the thing that has not changed.  Our heavenly father is still on the throne.

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Every person you see was created by God to bear his image and deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.  Imagine the impact this promise would have on the society that embraced it.  What civility it would engender.  What kindness it would foster.  Racism will not flourish when people believe their neighbors bear God’s image.

Will society write off the indigent, the mentally ill, the inmate or the refugee?  Not if we believe, truly believe, that every human being is God’s idea.  And he has no bad ideas.  High IQ or low standing—doesn’t matter.  First string or cut from the squad—doesn’t matter.  You are a diamond, a rose, and a jewel, purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ.  And because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!

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Children have a tendency to say, “Look at me!”  On the tricycle– “Look at me go!”  On the trampoline– “Look at me bounce!”  On the swing set– “Look at me swing!”  Such behavior is acceptable for children.  Yet many adults spend their grown-up years saying the same thing.  “Look at me drive this fancy car!”  “Look at me make money!”  “Look at me wear provocative clothes, or use big words, or flex my muscles.  Look at me!”

Isn’t it time we grew up?  We were made to live  a life that says, “Look at God!”  People are to look at us and see not us but the image of our Maker.  This is God’s plan.  2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “We…are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”  Because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!

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Has someone called you a lost cause?  A failure?  Has someone dismissed you as insignificant?  Don’t listen to them.  They don’t know what they’re talking about.  You were conceived by God before you were conceived by your parents.  You were loved in heaven before you were known on earth.  You aren’t an accident.

When you say yes to God you are being made into God’s image.  Print that on your resume!  In the eyes of God you are worth dying for.  Would you let this truth define the way you see yourself?  Would you let this truth define the way you see other people?  Every person you see was created by God to bear his image and deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.  This is God’s plan.  This is God’s promise.  And he will fulfill it!  And because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!

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Pop psychology is wrong when it tells you to look inside yourself and find your value!  According to the Bible you are good simply because God made you in his image.  Period.  He cherishes you because you bear a resemblance to him.  And you will only be satisfied when you engage in your role as an image bearer of God.  Such was the view of King David.  “As for me,” he wrote, “I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness” (Psalm 17:15).

How much sadness would evaporate if every person simply chose to believe this–  I was made for God’s glory and am being made into his image.  Why does God love you with an everlasting love?  It has everything to do with whose you are.  You are his!  And because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!

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We are all made in God’s image and in his likeness!  Sin has distorted this image, but it has not destroyed it.  Our moral purity has been tainted, but do not think for a moment that God has rescinded his promise or altered his plan.  He still creates people in his image to bear his likeness and reflect his glory.

As we fellowship with God, read his Word, obey his commands, and seek to reflect his character, something wonderful emerges.  We say things God would say.  We do things God would do.  We forgive, we share, and we love.  In time an image begins to appear.  God’s goal is simply to rub away anything that is not of him so the inborn image of God can be seen in us!  Because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!

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We all ask the question, “Am I somebody important?”  It’s easy to feel anything but important when your ex takes your energy, or old age takes your dignity.  Somebody important?  Hardly. But remember this promise of God:  you were created by God, in God’s image, for God’s glory.

God spoke, “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature, so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth” (Genesis 1:26 MSG).

God never declared, “Let us make oceans in our image,” or “birds in our likeness.”  The heavens above reflect the glory of God, but they are not made in the image of God.  Yet you are!  And because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!

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According to Peter, God’s promises aren’t just great, they are very great.  They aren’t just valuable, they are precious! (2 Peter 1:4).

It is God’s great and precious promises that lead us into a new reality, a holy environment.  They are direction signs intended to guide us away from the toxic swampland and into the clean air of heaven.  They are strong boulders that form the bridge over which we walk from our sin to salvation.

Promises are the stitching in the spine of the Bible.  Receive them.  Allow them to soak you like a spring shower.  Let’s be what we were intended to be —people of the Promise.  Fill your heart with hope, and let the devil himself hear you declare your belief in God’s goodness!  Because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!

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