Recently I came upon a sign that bothered me. The message said "If you can't do it better, why do it?" That message stuck with me and just nagged at me.
My initial reaction was...but this is not what the bible tells us.
Philippians 4:13 tells us, "I can do all things through Christ"
Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
Then I began to wonder...it made me wonder if our young people were looking to messages like this and thinking..."Yeah...why should I do that"...and then simply not trying. It made me wonder if those who are struggling with something may see this and think "you know what...forget it...I'm not even gonna try." I saw this as a perfect example of how the world is swaying us with popular culture.
Later that week I was listening to a devotional CD by Jennifer Rothchild from her Missing Pieces study and came across some great inspiration that fell right into place with what I was feeling and wanted to convey. I had to share her analogy of living life in the IFs. And so my lesson started.
In order for you to accomplish things in your life you have to acknowledge God's presents in your life.
In chapter 6 of the book of Judges, in Gideon's land, the Israelites were in the promised land but Midian is moving in on their territory and taking crops and killing their livestock, forcing them to live in caves in fear. So they cry to God saying "Look at what they have done to us." So God sent them a profit to remind them that he asked them to not worship other gods and they didn't obey.
The angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and tells him "The Lord is with you, oh valiant warrior."
His response was "If the Lord is with us why has these things happened to us? And where are all his miracles which our fathers told us about?" He asked "Now the Lord has abandoned us?"
Gideon was not present in the present with God. He was looking at the past and saying he was with our fathers and if we had great things happening around us we would know God was with us.
So do you confirm God's presents based on the great things happening in your life?
So when things are crummy, do we think he isn't in our lives?
Notice Gideon began his statement with IF the Lord is with us. IF is not a statement of present. IS is a statement of present.
God is in the IS not in the IF.
Do you live in the IF?
How many times have we said if...
IF God...
If you were there...
If you were there then I would have passed that test or my grandma wouldn't have died or I wouldn't have got in a wreck or I would have made the cheer leading squad or football team...
IF.
How many IFs do we place on God?
You will only feel uncertainty and alone if you live in the ifs. God lives in the present.
References:
Missing Pieces, Jennifer Rothchild
