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God has not stopped being God because you are in the valley. He has not stopped being a God of goodness and kindness because you are either disappointed or have a broken heart. We would all love to spend our lives on the top of a mountain. We would all love to vigorously breathe in that fresh mountain air and take in the magnificent view. You can see things on the mountaintop that you would never see from the valley. Things take on their rightful perspective from the mountaintop. You are literally on top of the world. It's a place fit for a king - the king of the mountain! None of us wants to buy real estate in the valley of despair and disappointment. There is an extremely limited vision in the lower places and you are not able to see beyond the next grove of trees. And yet it is in the valley where vegetation grows and where flowers bloom. There is no growth on the top of a mountain but you will only find rocks and boulders there. The top of a mountain is no place to put down roots - that happens in the valley below. It is in the valley where the most magnificent growth of your life will happen and it is there that the fruit of the Spirit will grow in lush abundance. May I just say it this way: In the valley where your heart was broken will be the place of your greatest harvest. God wants our cups to run over not only when life is good and the view is spectacular; He wants our cups to run over in the valley of pain and in the desert of brokenness. God sets before you a table of blessing that will heal your broken heart and feed your hungry soul. God wants you to be a man who knows that disappointment does not have the power to disappoint him. God wants you to be a person who snuggles into His presence during times of brokenness and despair. God wants you to be a Christian who never blames but always blesses. God wants you to be a believer who bears fruit at the worst moment of life.

No matter what emotional battle you are facing and fighting today, when you tap into the wisdom of the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, you are guaranteed to win whatever battle you encounter. No longer are you a victim of vicious emotional outrage and sludge but you are more than a conqueror because of Christ's great love for you. God really does have a plan for your daily life and His plan is one of joy, peace and victory. God desperately needs you to conquer your emotional issues because you are an important part of His grander plan at this historical juncture. If you continue to wallow in the blahs, in anger and in depression, the world will be missing out on the gift that you have been created to be. You must never think that you are just a number to God and can get away with flaunting your disappointment and fear in a disproportionate demonstration. You are not merely one of the mass of humanity, but you are a valuable resource who is able to bring significant change at this historic moment. Will you purpose to be the best you possible? Or will you be a warped shadow of humanity who deviates emotionally from the plan of God for his or her life? God needs you! He needs you to be a living demonstration of joy and peace when your world is falling apart. He needs you to be a beautiful masterpiece of righteousness and patience in a culture gone wild. God needs men and women in every generation who will declare, "My life is not about me and my feelings. My life is about serving God and revealing His character to my world!" Will you be remembered for the song of your heart or the screech of your life? We all will leave a legacy that is determined by our daily emotional choices. The emotional and spiritual legacy with which you choose to endow the following generations is more important than the finances, houses or lands that you leave. As you gaze upon the emotional smorgasbord that your culture, your family heritage and your circumstances offer for the substance of your life, never forget that God gives His best to those who leave the choice with Him!

We sometimes need to prove ourselves to ourselves—to discover our capacity, what we do well, and even to reflect on our maturity—to see what God is doing in us. All of this is good. What’s not good is when we try to prove our worth to God or others. Yes, we can impress others with talent and effort. But deep down we want to be valued for who we really are, not primarily for what we can do. Ultimately, we can’t be satisfied by approval from only what we do. Who you are can never be proven by impressing. Who you are is already settled by God. You are a unique creation, made in God’s image, and eternally loved. When you’re trying to prove yourself worthy, you’ve missed the point. God is never impressed with anything you can do apart from what He does in you.

Success is an interesting animal. It can make you opportunity-driven instead of conviction-driven. Then you’re wide open to “succeeding” at becoming someone you never wanted to be! Convictions, on the other hand, get formed away from applause, achievement, and followers. They are about who God has called you to be, what you want your life to be about, the influence you believe God wants you to have. Convictions are also about who you don’t want to be. You’re deciding that your integrity will not be bought, that a larger stage must be the right stage. When you make choices from your convictions, you are deciding the nature of your significance and influence, what you’ll pass on to your children and their children. When you make choices from opportunity, the nature of your significance gets decided for you. A mature friend can help you sort through all this. Convictions can come at any age to radically affect the rest of your journey.

People often ask, “What pillars does Trueface believe are essential to the gospel of grace?” Three things. First, every major religion, except Christianity, is based on performing-for or pleasing their deity. We want you to leave that road of pleasing your deity, and take the road of trusting God, which is how you met Jesus in the first place. Millions of Christ-followers remain on that dead-end road of performing for God. He already performed for you! Second, “humility is trusting God and others with me.” If you act on this, you will begin to believe who God says you are, instead of believing who you say you are. God says you are righteous, holy, and a saint. This changes everything! Third, humility actually attracts (doesn’t earn) God’s grace. Grace alone can overcome your shame, can help you work on annoying true things about you, and nurture authentic environments of grace through your life. So powerful! Applying these three truths will produce hundreds of healing and freeing applications in your life.

When your steering wheel is crooked while driving straight, your car is likely out of alignment. You may learn to compensate for your wonky drive, and do nothing about it. Life is too full of clamoring matters. But, when your tires start rapidly wearing out on one side, you’ll probably give it attention. Now, you’ve cost yourself some real money. Throughout life God will give you gentle signs that yours is sliding out of alignment in a given area. This can range from sleeping, rising, eating, working, resting, engaging and retreating from friends, engaging with God and sharing Him, earning money and saving or giving it. All kinds of areas. Like many, you may think, “I’ll get to this later.” Indeed, “later” comes, but usually with much higher costs. The beautiful joy of living out of your new identity is you can relax. No need for shame-driven defensiveness. Early-on, you can actually accept that this or that area of your life is out of whack. You can enjoy lower-cost, freeing corrections all through your life.

Doing what God wants us to do could seem intimidating, like we’re inviting God to hand us a giant “to-do” list that we could never complete. How many things are there for us to do? Where do we even begin in obeying all of Jesus’ commands? One thing clear from the gospel narratives is that the people did not feel the same way about Jesus as they did the Pharisees. The Pharisees made righteousness complicated and unattainable, and probably undesirable. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus simplified it all, capturing in one sentence the theme of what we are to do: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). This may feel threatening, but consider your day today: you will probably be meeting people of all kinds as you do your job, or take classes, or care for your family, or run errands and deal with general life maintenance and logistics. You may connect with others on social media. And then there are the casual interactions as you go about the business of daily life. In each interaction in your day, how would you desire to be treated? Doing what Jesus wants us to do means that is the way to treat them. Micah 6:8 gives three categories that help us think practically about what we do: treating others fairly and without partiality, showing mercy to those in need, and living in humility before God by not putting ourselves as greater or more important than others. It’s easy to think doing what God wants us to do is mostly about unique or herculean tasks, perhaps in a moment of crisis. But more normally, and thus often missed, is doing what he wants in the mundane and unnoticed moments. These small, daily acts of surrender grow our faith and courage, and prepare us to act as he wants us to when the stakes are higher. It can be as simple as just following through on a commitment, especially when doing so involves sacrifice or personal inconvenience.

Smokey Bear has reminded us for over seventy years that “only you can prevent forest fires.” The damage from just a small spark can lay waste to a beautiful forest and destroy whole communities. Scripture uses the same vocabulary to describe the destructive power of our words: “The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!” (James 3:5) With the potential for such destruction, and also the potential for good that comes from our speech, it’s important to say what Jesus wants us to say, and not just imitate the values of our culture. Our world is filled with speech characterized by hatred, jealousy, condemnation and anger. Jesus gave a principle that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” We can’t avoid the truth; our speech will reveal what is deep down inside of us. How does following Jesus affect what we say each day and why? He is described as “the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). He is God’s ultimate communication to his creation. And we are told that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” As he lives through us, we can expect to be speaking with both grace and truth. Jesus’s life was marked not just by loving and gracious words, but by honest words that reflected truth about himself and the world around him. In Acts 1:8, Jesus told his disciples that when the Holy Spirit came upon them they would experience power to be his witnesses. As we yield to his control, we’ll find that we’ll want to tell others about him. That doesn’t mean we’ll be obnoxious or condescending to others, as some fear. In fact, just the opposite: we’ll be kind and compassionate, telling people who Jesus is and what a difference he has made in our lives. But saying what God wants us to say isn’t just about telling others about Jesus. It is using our words to talk to others the way Jesus would: expressing kindness and forgiveness, and affirming others for who they are and things they do well. In doing so, we bless them and encourage them on their spiritual journey.

In the first chapter of his second letter, Peter gave us several characteristics that we are to add to our faith in Jesus Christ. The first two were goodness – that is our moral excellence, and knowledge – which is living out what we know. The next attribute Peter gives us to add to our faith is self-control. Self-control can be defined as not giving in. Sometimes this applies to sin. We have a choice between sin and holiness and we say, “I am not going to give in to that sin.” Sometimes this doesn’t involve righteousness and sinfulness. We don’t need to have “queso” or dessert at every meal. Maybe it’s about accepting the fact that the alarm clock goes off and I have to get up. Or that I have to go to bed on time. You and I were made for much more than just to feed our natural cravings. So don’t give in to “I am just going to eat like a crazy person. I am just going to sleep.” Because a lack of self-control is going to get you in the end. The next thing Peter mentions is endurance. Watch how these two tie together. Self-control is not giving in, Endurance is not giving up. Those who spend their lives giving in will ultimately be those that give up. The more you give in when it comes to small things, the easier it is to give up when things get hard. We are going to encounter many problems in our lives – sickness, mean people, a bad investment, a wrong decision. That’s just how life goes. We don’t know how God is going to work us through it, but we do need to not give up. We want to be people that are walking with God in such a way that we are saying, “Lord, we want You to refine our desires. Instead of those worldly, fleshly things my neurons say I need right now, what is my heart saying? What do I really need in my soul? What am I really looking for?” One man put it like this: “When a man knocks on the door of a brothel, he is knocking for God.” It means that what he is really looking for is not illicit sex; what he is looking for is a soulful touch in a wrongful way. So if we don’t give in, then we are going to have a better chance of not giving up. Don’t give up. Hang in there. You never know what God has for you.

Every day, every moment, God reaches into your life with His hand of grace to help you through all that you face. It’s His way of saying, “Be assured. I know you are weak, but I am strong. Rest in My power and let My grace take over where your efforts end.” There isn’t anything He can’t do or accomplish through you, so be glad and rejoice in knowing that wherever you lack, He is more than able! Prayer of the day: Father, I love You and trust You. I receive the covering of Your grace and the power of Christ in me today.

It’s so easy to become anxious about all the what-ifs tomorrow may, or may not, bring. But, Jesus says exactly what to do in any given day or circumstance – seek God’s kingdom first and foremost. That means putting both palms up and saying “Okay, God, I trust You and believe that as I live out this day for Your glory and do what You lead me to do, You will provide everything You know I need.” That includes peace of mind that passes all understanding to rule in your heart.

If you ever need to know how to clean, assemble, change, remove, or repair something around your house, YouTube has a great videos for getting help fast. But what about when you need help with your life? There’s only one reliable source for that, and it’s God’s Word. It’s not only alive, it’s been “updated” for your very situation. As you read in faith, God will literally lead you to the exact passage you need for knowing what to do in any situation. It’s no less than miraculous, but then, our God is an awesome God who loves and cares for you!

The one thing most everyone will agree on is that change is certain – change of seasons, change of jobs, change in appearance as you grow older, change of heart as you experience both good and trying times. Some changes are for your benefit, while others test your faith. That is why it’s so assuring to know One who has never changed and never will – Jesus. He is unwavering in His devotion, steadfast in His promises, and eternal in His love. He is the one and only Rock that won’t be moved or manipulated. Ever. Shout all praise to Him!

Is there something you’ve done in your past that is so bad, you are convinced that God would never love you the way He loves other “good” people? Well, dear one, that is the enemy telling you a lie. The instant you accept Jesus as your Savior, you are forgiven, and there is nothing that can separate you from His love! Nothing! The depth and width of the Grand Canyon, or even the distance from earth to the heavens – nothing is too big or too bad to keep you from being His beloved child. Prayer of the day: Thank You, Father, for forgiveness and for Your great love for me!

Have you ever put together a jigsaw puzzle with hundreds of tiny pieces and a detailed picture to recreate? The process can be slow and tedious, and the picture remains incomplete for a long time. The same can be said for your life. Some days or pieces are strenuous, jagged or ugly; some don’t even make sense for what God has called you to do. But He sees the bigger, final picture He created you for. So whatever piece you are living today, know that it has a purpose – God fits each day and experience together to create a beautiful masterpiece in the end. Prayer... Father, even though I don’t understand some things in my life, I know You are in control, and I will trust in Your ways.

Life is filled with battles. We all know this. But what most of us fail to realize is that God provides us with ways to prepare for these battles. We don't have to be caught off guard by the unexpected crises life throws at us. For every battle we face in life, there are ways we can plan and strategize to overcome them. One of the best ways we can prepare for life's toughest battles is through counsel. Not all wisdom needs to come through experience, or through failure; counsel serves as a shortcut to wisdom. Remember The Godfather? The head of the Corleone family never made a decision alone. He always confided in his trusted consigliere, Tom Hagen. Even people with great power, wealth and influence never face something alone. They always bring people they trust and ask for council. Don't face life's battles alone.

One of the fruits of wisdom is credibility. In an era where anyone can use social media to create a platform and voice their thoughts and opinions, credibility has become increasingly valuable. In order for our words to truly have an impact on the world, we need credibility. Credibility comes from integrity which comes from wisdom. This is why Solomon states that fools cannot 'open their mouths in public.’ Because no matter what they say they don't have the credibility for it to have an effect. Don't be a fool. Lead not only with your words but with your actions and example.

Imagine lying in bed at night, wrapped up in your sheets, and replaying the day in your mind – all the things you wished you’d done or said differently. Or maybe your soul is downcast because of an overwhelming problem. You may even wish you could hit replay and start all over. Well, you can! With each new dawn, God’s love and mercies are there waiting for you to soak them in and start anew. Yesterday and its regrets are over, and His faithfulness and love are still burning strong with each new morning.

When you look at and think on the word sinner, there is no good or just thought to put with it – sin is all that is bad. And yet, while all of humanity was full of sin, God in all His humility, goodness, and love poured down His holy oil of grace – Jesus – to remove sin’s effects on all who receive Him. That is pure love. “It is an unseemly sight to see God humbling Himself and man exalting himself; to see a humble Savior and a proud sinner.” –Thomas Watson

Why is it so easy to make fun of people or to enjoy when someone else fails? Does it stem from gratitude that it wasn’t us who messed up, or are our motivations more sinister? I think we can all agree that kicking someone while they’re down isn’t very moral, let alone wise. Grace and compassion are part of wisdom. A wise person extends grace to someone who fails because they know that one day that could be them. Compassion is a hallmark of God’s character. God is always compassionate with us and always patient with our imperfections. Let us be compassionate with others. It’s easy to fall into the trap of tearing people down to make yourself feel bigger or safer, but it is wiser to become the type of person that lifts others up. Remember that one day you will be the person who falls and needs compassion from others!

Sometimes it seems like evil is winning. It feels as if there is more despair in the world than there is hope, more sadness than joy. With every news cycle, it can feel that we are caught up in more ethical and moral crises around the globe. Hope is part of wisdom. In order to live a life of wisdom, we must be able to keep our eyes on the future. A wise person understands that there is more to life than the present hardships. Pain is real, but can’t be prioritized over joy and goodness and friendship and parties and dancing. Remember that evil always has an expiration date, but good is eternal.

How does a wise person approach authority? Respect is an integral part of wisdom. The scriptures are filled with heroes and heroines of the faith that boldly disagreed or resisted against authority figures, but this never led to disrespect. A wise person always honors those who have authority over them, regardless of whether they agree with them or not. We live in a culture where we confuse disagreement with disrespect. Though it may be hard for some to believe, it is possible to love and respect someone while strongly disagreeing with them. A wise person always honors and respects those in authority because they understand two things. The first has to do with empathy; a wise person understands that leadership and authority is a heavy burden. Leadership is a stewardship that you will one day have to give an account for. Secondly, a wise person knows that there will come a time in which he/she will be in a position of leadership and will reap what they have sown in the past. If you were loyal and honorable as a follower you will have honorable and loyal followers when you lead. But, if you are divisive and rebellious as a follower, what kind of followers do you think you will attract when you lead?

As soon as you accept Christ as your personal Savior, His Spirit takes up residence in your heart! He lives there to love, to forgive, and to intercede on your behalf when you pray to God the Father. Your physical body is still alive, but the Spirit of Jesus is in authority to lead and guide you, to speak to you, to give supernatural strength and courage and whatever else you need to live out God’s call on your life. By faith and belief in God’s son, you are no longer living on your own – He is in you!

In John 16:33, when Jesus said “these things” to the apostles, He was foretelling His death and resurrection, and providing assurance for them not to be afraid or worried – He would still be with them (through His Holy Spirit). His death on the cross meant taking on the sin of the world! He overcame Satan’s curse of death on our behalf. Because of this, we are righteous in God’s eyes and have the gift of eternal life with Him. This promise is as true today as it was then, and that is something for which to give all praise and glory. Jesus has overcome!

The short term pain of change is far better than the long term pain of staying the same.

I trust the next chapter because I know the author.