All of my life God has been good to me and I’m sure that if you look back over your life, you have the same testimony. I’m reminded of what David said in Psalms 37 “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging for bread.” In other words, God never changes! He took care of the generations before you and will do so even after you are gone all because He’s the same yesterday, today and forever!

God’s reason for blessing you down through the years is not just for you alone, but that you might be a blessing to others. He gives us favor when we don’t deserve it and He withholds from us what we really do deserve because of our sin nature. He protects us from dangers, both seen and unseen. He works out for our good the situations that we put ourselves in due to disobedience. The goodness of God is everlasting and it is immeasurable.

If you are young you have so much to look forward to. If you have been walking with the Lord for a long time you know without a shadow of a doubt that God is faithful. You know how important it is to wait on the Lord because God might not come when we want Him to but He’s always right on time. Over and over again you have seen how God takes our setbacks and miraculously turns them into set ups that propel us into our destiny. You have seen God open doors  that no man could have opened on their own. God is known for making a way out of no way. He is the one keeping us alive. He did it for that great cloud of witnesses and He is still doing it for you and for me. That is why David could speak of the goodness of God in the past and present tense. God has been God for a very long time and that is why it doesn’t matter if you are young or old, every child of God will have a personal testimony to share about the love and grace of God.

The righteous will never be forsaken. That will never change. Therefore, when the enemy of your soul throws fiery darts at you don’t give up – don’t quit. “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world!” (1 John 4:4). I believe as David did that goodness and mercy will follow those who believe in God all the days of their lives. This promise covered not only those who came before us, but it is true for this present generation and every generation to come. Stop and give thanks to God today for what He has already done in your life and for what He has promised to do for those who will come after you. Remember the words of 1 Corinthians 2:9 “Eye has not seen nor ear heard neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love him.”

There is the story of two buckets. One bucket was an optimist and the other bucket was a pessimist. One day the two buckets were walking to the well and the pessimistic bucket said “There has never been a life as disappointing as mine. Even though I always come away from the well full, I always return empty.” The optimistic bucket said “There has never been a life as happy as mine. Even though I come to the well empty, I always go away full again.”

As we look back over the days of our lives, we can look at life as being something positive or as something negative. We can look back with regret or with rejoicing. It all depends on what we focus on. There are those who see the glass half full and others who see it half empty. There are some people who look at their life and see only the negative, while there are others that choose to see the positive. You can look back and see all the trials you experienced and become bitter that your life’s path was so difficult, or you can look back at the trials and be blessed by how the trials strengthened and matured you and were used of God to bring you closer to Him.

Satan likes to make the most of our misery and cause us to doubt God. Our questions of “why” may lead us to distrust the love of God and wonder whether God cares about us at all.   In this state you are seeing life as half empty.  We will never know all the answers to our questions, but there should be no doubt about God’s love, mercy and compassion for us. In the middle of a tough time you might not always see it or appreciate it, but be assured that God will never leave nor forsake you. There are some things and some situation in life where you are just going to have to trust God. It doesn’t matter how good you are, bad things happen to good people sometimes to enable us to understand that God can make a way out of no way for you.  This revelation will cause you to see life as full.

Is your faith in God pessimistic or optimistic? Would you describe your life as disappointing or happy? Do you see only the troubles or the blessings? Have your encounters with God left you empty or is your spirit so full that you can’t help but share the good news of Jesus Christ wherever you go? I pray that you are optimistic, happy, blessed and full of the spirit of God. The world needs your light to shine like never before. Share your testimony. Lift up the name of Jesus and God will do the rest.

Sunday, June 19^th is Fathers Day. I want to honor all of our fathers, step-fathers, grandfathers, uncles, teachers and family friends who fill the role of ‘father’ in someone’s life. I salute you. Many of you grew up knowing the love and security of a present father; a father who provided and protected you and was there when you needed him. You have a lot to be thankful for. Yet, there are those who lived with the pain of an absent father or had a father in the home who fell short of being the father they really needed. Hopefully, you were able to find the love, guidance and support from another family member or had someone in your life that filled in the gap and made a difference in your life. Be thankful for that person because children can live without many things but love is not one of them. That is what Father’s Day is all about – giving honor to those who treated us like they were our father.

Nevertheless, every believer has a heavenly Father who loves us unconditionally. God truly is the most wonderful Father of all! The fact that He would love us, save us by His grace, and adopt us into His family proves this. Our adoption was made possible because of the sacrificial blood that was shed by His Son, Jesus Christ, on our behalf. It’s because of Jesus that we became part of His family and that is why when Jesus taught us how to pray He used the words “Our Father.” Our Father is our protector, our provider, our teacher and the one friend who has promised never to leave or forsake us. Almighty God is the only one who can be all things to all people all of the time. Isn’t that wonderful?

If you are a father, my advice to you is – it’s more important for you to allow your children to watch you live a godly life than it is for you to tell them how they should do it. I want my children to see what I believe to be right and true. Proverbs 20:7 says “The righteous man walks in his integrity; his children are blessed after him.” God, our Father in Heaven, is the perfect model of what it means to be a father. Love as He loves. Forgive as He forgives and show compassion to everyone that you meet and your fingerprint will be remarkably like His. Happy Father’s Day!

What do you do after you have done all that you can when facing adversity? First, let me answer that by telling you what you don’t do. You don’t give up. When your back is against the wall you are to ‘fear not.’ The Word of God tells us over and over again to fear not. God repeats this command because He knows that the first thing we will be tempted to do is to become fearful. In other words we are to let the peace of God rule our hearts and this requires faith.  Remember, faith without works is dead.

Secondly, after doing all that we can is to be still and let God be God. If you think that ‘fear not’ is difficult, standing still is not an easy command either. You will be able to stand still only if you focus on how big God is and not how big your problem is. Nor are we to focus on our own ability because we are limited in what we can do, but nothing is impossible with God. We are not to allow our emotions to overshadow the promises God has made to us and that is that He will never leave or forsake us. God is with us today and He will be with us even to the end of the earth.  Psalms 46:10 says ‘be still and know that I am God.’  Hold onto that promise.  If God said it, He will do it!

God will deliver you from the Red Sea of your situation if you trust Him and obey His commandments. Fear not and stay right where you are. Don’t worry about how things might look. God has a plan of deliverance no matter what position you find yourself in. As believers, we need to put our confidence in God and realize that God positions us where He wants us, not where we want to be. Sometimes the only way we can recognize our own inadequacy is for God to position us to where we have to trust in Him. When opposition comes, it is good to know that God is our refuge and strength … a very present help in the time trouble.

Any time that you are trying to go to a new level in your life, you will find that two things are true: The enemy will fight you for your destiny and you will have to win the battle in your mind.  If you are going to get anywhere in reaching your God-given destiny, you must understand that you will encounter some battles. No one gets to where God wants them to be without a fight – nobody! It must be understood that you cannot come out of a battle without a scar. Your scar will be either emotionally, mentally or physically. And after you have lost a battle, you must do everything you can to stir up your faith again so that you have the mind set to charge forward one more time. It will be easy to just give up, but you are a winner, so says the Word of God, and every time you get back up from being knocked down, you have won a major fight – the battle of the mind. Your mind will tell you what can’t be done but if you have the mind of Christ you will know that there is nothing impossible with God.

Are you prepared to keep fighting no matter what? The question is – how bad do you want it?  You already know that you are to expect some battles on your journey, but what about fighting the battles that you don’t expect – the ones that just creep up on you just when you think everything is going to be all right again? Better yet, are you prepared to fight a battle that you thought you had won a long time ago but it has somehow showed up once again? The most important thing to remember is we have powerful spiritual weapons that we sometimes forget to use. Prayer, worship and meditating on God’s Word must become a lifestyle. Why? Because they are the bridge over troubled waters. Being in God’s presence will hold you steady until your victory comes.

You must have a pit bull type of mentality that will show Satan you are in it to win it. There is no giving up or turning back no matter what he does to try and stop you. Show Satan what a winner looks like. God has given you everything you need to be the one standing when the last bell has rung. Seeing your dreams come to pass depends on your ability to hold fast to the truth that God is for you and not against you. That great cloud of witnesses is cheering you on. They have already succeeded and so will you!