Simplifying the Process
Do you tend to overcomplicate things?
Verse of the Day
“Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”
Today’s Devotional
Praise God, profess his name, do good, and share. Is it really that simple?
In my experience, humans are good at making things complicated. Let’s take weight loss as an example. Eat less, move more. Eat fewer calories each day than your body uses for many days in a row and the weight will come off. Build muscle and the weight comes off faster. Oh, and drink water. (This is always one of my weaknesses. I like my water to be cold, brown, fizzy and say “Coke Zero” on the can.) But we tend to complicate this. Fad diets, weird work out programs, many varieties of shakes and supplements. Basically, we want the results faster and easier without the required length of time and simple discipline to achieve our desired results.
I see so many similarities in that last sentence with how I view my spiritual life. I want things to be fast and have very quick, long-lasting results. I want to pray about something once and have an obvious, God-given answer sometime that same day. Preferably with an outcome that I like.
What if we took the weight loss example and applied it to our spiritual growth? What if we decided that we would set an alarm on our phone to go off three times a day to stop and just praise God for who he is? What if we spoke out loud our love for God to someone every single day? What if we chose to do one simple good thing for someone each day. What if we actively looked for ways to share with others?
I believe that if we chose things like the list above instead of making New Year’s resolutions, our results would not be fast but they would be incredibly meaningful. I believe that it would change the way we see God and ourselves in the process.
Praise God, profess his name, do good and share.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
How can you do one or all of those today?
How can you ask God to help you simplify your relationship with Him?
How can you humble yourself before the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus?