Oftentimes, life seems OVERWHELMING!  Not only does the peace we find in maintaining the status quo of our lives—change—but then the very ground we seem to stand upon SHIFTS, causing our life-equilibrium to trip and even cause us to fall to the ground.  Let me explain this through an image of walking down a normal, perfectly flat surface, and finding ourselves tripping, as if we have just stumbled over a large boulder that blocks our path.

Imagine you have dressed for the day, and it’s a day of jeans, t-shirt, and tennis shoes, “a dress-down” kind of day.  You dress, selecting your favorite t-shirt and jeans (easy choices), and then you look at the array of tennis shoes waiting on the floor in your closet, calling out to you, “Wear me, please.  Let me go with you today.  I won’t fail you.  I will protect your feet, surround your feet, and serve as “comfy” platforms for your entire day.”

(Now, I know that shoes are inanimate objects that cannot think, speak, or move without our help, but in my analogy, they can.)

We look around the closet, eyeing our many choices of tennis shoes:  black ones, brown ones, old ones, Chuck Taylor’s, comfy ones, and even the less-often worn ones.  Why we have so many choices is beyond us, but that is a conversation, a purging, for another day;  today, we just need to decide, so we do the best course of action:  We take an un-matching pair of shoes.  That’s right.  We take a left shoe and a right shoe that are not a married pair, and we place them upon our feet, thinking, “I’ll just wear these around the house, getting a feel for which pair I wish to wear.”  Now, maybe this is just a “girl” action, but it’s still part of our day—the deciding.

(Now, I know that our shoes have not changed since the last time we wore them, so there is no reason to temporarily ‘wear’ them to ‘get-a-feel’  of how they feel today, but we do wear a mismatched pair for a time as we finish dressing for our day.)

Time slips by as we finish dressing and preparing to leave the house.  We feel dressed and ready to go.  T-Shirt—check;  Jeans—check;  Satchel of supplies—check;  Lunch—check;  Filled Water Bottle—check;  & Shoes—check.

• We leave the house, and drive to our place of work.
• We leave, ready to face the day.
• We leave, prepared, and dressed in our most comfy clothing.
• We leave, wearing two DIFFERENT pair of tennis shoes that do not match:  one right & one left that belong to two different pairs.
• We leave, UNAWARE THAT WE MADE A GRIEVOUS ERROR OF WEARING MIS-MATCHED SHOES!
• We leave, UNKNOWINGLY CONFIDENT, TRUSTING OURSELVES, NOT REALLY LOOKING AT OUR ‘LOOK,’ HAPHAZARDLY TRUSTING WHAT WE ‘THINK’ IS TRUE!
• We leave, unknowingly wearing two un-matching shoes, ones we do not notice until we find ourselves tripping over something that seems to block our path.

In the Old Testament book of Psalms, we find a passage that nails this thinking.  Please see with me what God’s Word says about our personal confidence, our preparedness, and our God.

• Faith Triumphs Everything!
• Faith Provides!
• Faith Does Not Give Some But ALL!
• Faith Tells Us to Let Go of the Known for the Unknown!
• Faith Tells Us to Not Love Our Habits But to Embrace the New!
• Faith Will Follow Through!
• Faith Leads Us to Go & to Do—Something We Were Not Prepared to Do!
• Faith Endures!
• Faith Gives Us ‘Staying Power” When We Face Trials!
• Faith Makes Us More Like Jesus As We Go!
• Faith to Follow Jesus Is NOT a Leap of Faith But a Walking According to His Will!
• Faith Is Serving God Wherever He Leads Us to Go!
• Faith Is Being the Hands & Feet of Jesus!
• Faith Is the Confidence About the Unknown!
• Faith is Following God’s Plan for Our Lives!

“Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

FOR YET IN A VERY LITTLE WHILE,

HE WHO IS COMING WILL COME, AND WILL NOT DELAY.

BUT MY RIGHTEOUS ONE SHALL LIVE BY FAITH;

AND IF HE SHRINKS BACK, MY SOUL HAS NOT PLEASURE IN HIM.

But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

(Hebrews 10: 35-to-11:1)

Sharing Jesus Christ & the gospel message of God’s Salvation IS THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK IN THE UNIVERSE!

Shane & Shane sing the melody “Worthy of It All” that speaks the truth of “WHO” is most worthy of all we have & are!

Let us ALWAYS REMEMBER—