Have you noticed that things wear out? No matter how durable, nothing is immune to the test of time. Along with time, weather, friction, repeated or misuse, are also causes of things wearing down or wearing out. After constant exposure to sunlight, that beautifully painted flowerpot on your front porch isn’t quite as colorful by summer’s end. Your air conditioning unit needs to occasionally have coolant added in order to work properly and efficiently. The tempered steel lawnmower blade gets eventually needs sharpened, even if all it touches are blades of grass. The brake pads on your car need replaced every 50,000 miles or so. Milk in your refrigerator lets you know when it has gone bad.

Our bodies wear out with age as well. I work hard to stay in shape but even so, I just cannot do what I did even five years ago; not just physically, my energy level is less too. Every one of us does, or will, come face to face with age-imposed physical, emotional, and cognitive decline, and sadly, for many people, there is not much golden about their Golden Years.

Almost everything known to man declines or decays with age. Many wines improve with age but even with wine, there comes a point when it is not longer as good as it was yesterday.

As we get older, we regularly need to rely on other people or other things more and more. However, as I just mentioned, we live in a world that wears out over time, so even those people or things we need to rely on more and more at some point begin to fail us as well. However, we serve a God who never wears out, who never fails us, who never needs refilled with refrigerant to work properly. In Psalm 73:25-26 we find these words – “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

Psalm 73 is one of twelve psalms (50, 73-83) known as the “Psalms of Asaph.” Asaph, the son of Berechiah (1 Chronicles 15:17) and a descendent of the royal family of Judah from the tribe of Levi, is thought to be either the author or transcriber of these psalms. 

Just what does it mean that “God is your portion?” That is not language we typically use in modern society. The Hebrew word for “portion” simply means “allotment” or “inheritance”.

If God is your portion, then He is your unsurpassed provider. Romans 8:32 tells us – “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” If God is your portion, then He is also your greatest inheritance. It is not heaven, even with all its precious stones, pearls and gold (read Revelation 21), that is a Jesus-follower’s greatest inheritance. Rather, the greatest inheritance is the One who dwells there. We read this in Revelation 21:3 – “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” And if God is your portion, He is your never-ending hope. Read Lamentations 3:22-24.

So, God is your permanent allotment, your permanent inheritance, your permanent hope. He is enough. He is all you need. He is your portion.

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Do you find yourself running after one thing and then another, always looking for the proverbial carousel’s brass ring, which offers you some sort of prize, temporary peace, temporary contentment? Let’s be honest, we all tend to look for peace and contentment in a variety of places, many of which if they provide any satisfaction at all, it is only fleeting. What do we do when the satisfaction is gone? Likely get back on the carousel ride and hope to grab the brass ring again.

God offers a calming peace to those who trust in Him. It is not a brass ring kind of peace; you know, grab it, rejoice in it for a few moments, then give it back to the ride operator. Instead, He offers a peace that flows like a river. Picture a continually flowing river that brings a perpetual source of nutrients, abundance, and freshness to the land around it. Now let’s read Isaiah 66:12 – “For this is what the LORD says: I will make peace flow to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flood; you will nurse and be carried on her hip and bounced on her lap.”  

NOTE: Isaiah 66 is a chapter about rejoicing in Gods ultimate victory. It is the book’s final chapter and in order to get the context of v.12, I encourage you to take time to read all 24 verses. Click here to read Isaiah 66 in its entirety.  

I believe some background for v.12 is found in Isaiah 8:6-8 and 9:7.

Isaiah 8:6-8 – The prophet pictures Assyria, the cruelest enemy Israel (Northern Kingdom) and Judah (Southern Kingdom) ever faced, flooding the entire kingdom, the Euphrates River deluging the land. In v.8, the metaphor seemingly changes from an overpowering river (rebellion) to some sort of predator in the sky. However, I don’t think the prophet was implying another predator. Instead, how about the outspread wings belonging to the Lord and despite repeated rebellion, He continues to offer protection.

Isaiah 9:7 – The promise of increasing peace because of the Messiah’s never-ending rule and reign.

So, in 66:12, the picture shifts to the overflowing river of God’s protection providing peace and prosperity.

As a rebuke of stubborn Israel, and a warning to you and me today, we find these words in Isaiah 48:18 – “If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea.”

I see the takeaway as this – trusting the Lord and obeying His commands offers you and me God’s enduring peace and nurturing! Look at 66:12 again: “For this is what the LORD says: I will make peace flow to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flood; you will nurse and be carried on her hip and bounced on her lap.”  

God’s faithfulness to His children is never-ending, despite our continuing rebellion (our sinful nature). Will you right now, even if you do not feel worthy of it, accept, and embrace the “peace that flows like a river” offered by a God who cares for you? Will you also dedicate your life to following God, worshipping Him and not the endless gods, the brass rings, offered by the world in which we live?

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We live in a society where odds are placed upon almost everything. Sporting events. Lotteries. Casino games. Is it a boy or a girl? Odds are nothing more than a numerical expression, often in the form of two numbers, which gives the likelihood that something will or will not occur. We might say something is 2:1, meaning there is twice as much chance of something not happening than happening, thus only a 33% chance of winning.

We see odds in weather forecasting every single day. You turned on the television this morning and might have heard, “There is a 40% chance of rain today.” Those are the odds placed upon the probability of rain by the forecaster, using several factors, namely confidence (likelihood of rain) and coverage (how much of a given area will see measurable rain).

Other times, we see odds, sometimes not even recognizing it, since they are not expressed in numbers. Opening a new restaurant might be considered a roll of the dice, meaning the odds could tilt in either direction as to whether the venture succeeds. Or how about, against all odds, she beat breast cancer. After bumping into a neighbor who moved away years ago, you get home and say to your spouse – “Bet you can’t guess who I just saw,” meaning you see it as unlikely (odds are low) they will know.

Sometimes we are just happy with any chance of success, no matter how small that chance might be. In the movie Dumb and Dumber, after Mary tells Lloyd that there is only one out of a million chance that they will end up together, he says this – “So you’re telling me there’s a chance. Yeah!!!”

Right now, with so much attention centered on England’s Royal Family, people all around the world are placing odds on whether or not Princes William and Harry will kiss and make up or the brotherly feud continues.

Maybe right now you face some obstacle that seems insurmountable – the hole is too deep, the pain is too great, the mistake is too big, it is as if the “odds are stacked again you.” You just don’t see any way out; fear leads to despair which leads to hopelessness.

In the midst of what you are facing, no matter how big or how small, we have a God who gives strength to the weary and power to those who are weak. He gives hope to those who find themselves without hope. You might be familiar with these words – “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:29-31).

Throughout Scripture, in times of real doubt, when the odds were stacked against someone or a people group, God asks them, “Is anything too hard for me?” Two examples – to Abraham after Sarah questioned how an old lady could have a son (Genesis 18:14) and to the prophet Jeremiah as Jerusalem and its inhabitants were about to lose everything (Jeremiah 32:27).

So, today, maybe against what seems like insurmountable odds, when you feel as if the odds are 100 to 1, or even 1000 to 1, against you, you can have confidence, you can rest assured, that you have a God who is bigger than the odds, a God who promises to be with you every step of the way, through good and bad, thick and thin, when the odds are in your favor, and when they are stacked against you. He says to you right now, Is anything too hard for me?

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In a world of perpetual change, there is one constant every morning. You wake up tired. You need the jolt that comes from the first cup of coffee. As part of the circadian rhythm, your body temperature reaches its lowest point in the morning, usually around 4 a.m., then rises throughout the day. Your body’s stress hormone, cortisol, increases as you wake up, after having been suppressed during the night by melatonin, your sleep regulating hormone.

While all those might be true, I am thinking of something else, something even more constant. You might not always be able to see this event, but it happens every day, regardless of what day of the week it is or whether is it spring, summer, fall, or winter. It happens whether you are awake or asleep. Nothing stops it, nothing speeds it up or slows it down. Sometimes people even wake up early just to witness this event. That constant event … the sunrise.

Technically speaking, although the sun appears to rise from the horizon, it is actually the motion of the earth that causes the sun to appear. And astronomically speaking, sunrise only lasts for a brief instant; that moment in time when the upper edge of the sun’s disk (called its upper limb) appears tangent to the horizon. While sunlight is actually a blending of all colors, as it is low on the horizon and travels through the atmosphere, the shorter wavelength colors (blues and violets) get scattered out, leaving more of the longer wavelength colors like yellow, orange, and red, which are then reflected off clouds and other particles, creating a beautiful sunrise.

Who doesn’t like to watch the sun rise in the morning? To see the sun pop up over the horizon is always such a beautiful sight. When the sun comes up a new day is dawning. A fresh start. Yesterday is in the history books and tomorrow is still another sunrise away. So, don’t let the troubles from yesterday or the worries about what may or may not happen tomorrow steal the beauty and joy of today. Ask God to provide all that you need for today. Accept what He gives you as your “food” for today. See Exodus 16 to read about how the Israelites were grumbling to Moses and Aaron about what they perceived as a lack of food as they journeyed to Sinai, and how the Lord responded to them.  

In the Lord’s Prayer, when Jesus teaches us these words, “Give us today our daily bread,” He is telling us that we should pray for our needs and not our greeds. Jesus taught this in the context of the workers of that day often being paid one day at a time, so they truly knew the meaning of living hand to mouth. 

And in the third chapter of Lamentations we find these words – “The LORD‘s unfailing love and mercy still continue, Fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise.The LORD is all I have, and so in him I put my hope. The LORD is good to everyone who trusts in him” (22-25).

Lamentations is a series of expressions of grief (laments) regarding the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. I believe the heart of this book is found in those four verses, challenging us to be devoted to hope in the Lord, standing strong amid a crumbling world around us.   

Dear Father, we look to You today as our Provider for all that we need today. I will have faith that today’s bread is all that I need today and that tomorrow You will give me that day’s bread. Thank you for being my Loving Father, a love that is as sure as the sunrise. Amen  

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Think of a time when you said yes when you really wanted to say no. Or maybe you said “no” to someone or something when the best thing to do would have been “yes.” After a long week at work, you want to come home and prop your feet up. But a neighbor invites you to a cookout. You really want to chill at home, but they’ve asked you several times before and you turned them down. You don’t want to send the wrong message, so you say yes when you really want to say no. Your coworkers frequently gossip about the new hire. You know what they are saying is both mean and not true. But, to stay popular in the office, you remain quiet. Instead of saying “yes” by squelching the gossip, you say no(thing).   

We regularly push back against doing or saying certain things because we don’t particularly like the probable outcome. It is also true that we sometimes push back on what God is asking us to do because we do not like what that outcome might be. The story of Jonah is one such instance. God asked Jonah to visit the wicked Ninevites, who were a constant threat to the Jews. The opening two verses found in the Old Testament book of Jonah read like this – “The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittal saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me’” (Jonah 1:1-2).

Jonah despised the Ninevites and did not want to go. He really wanted them destroyed (4:2). If Jonah visited them and they repented of their wicked ways, what if merciful God showed favor to the Ninevites. So, instead of heading to Nineveh as the LORD asked, Jonah headed in the opposite direction, to Tarshish – “But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD” (1:3). Jonah said no when he really should have yes.

You know the story. On the way to Tarshish, Jonah’s boat encountered a great storm, one that his shipmates blamed on him (vv.1:4-15). Jonah got tossed overboard and was swallowed up by a great fish – “And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of vthe fish three days and three nights” (1:16-17).

While in the belly of this great fish, Jonah has a change of heart. He agrees to go to Nineveh (Chapter 2). The fish vomits him up. Jonah says yes (probably reluctantly) when he likely really wanted to say no once again. Chapter 3 of the book of Jonah tells us that the Ninevites did repent, causing God to hold back the calamity which he had declared he would bring on them. This displeased Jonah. Chapter 4 is God rebuking Jonah for his displeasure.

Even though Jonah did eventually say yes to God, he seemingly did so with a reluctant heart. God is not interested in reluctant hearts. He is desiring us to have obedient hearts. He is desiring us to say “yes” to Him and “no” to any reluctance that will keep us from obeying.

Say yes to God and leave the results up to Him. What are you right now saying no to that you should be saying yes to? Just say yes. 

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We are a society that tends to cheer someone only for the good they do, not necessarily cheer them for who they are. We are also quick to show disapproval of that same person, often simply because they failed to do something good. Think of a football game. We cheer wildly when a receiver outleaps the defensive player in the endzone for a one-handed highlight reel touchdown catch, but later in that same game, when the football glances off that same receiver’s fingertips for what would have been the winning touchdown, we are quick to voice our displeasure. One minute we consider that receiver the best player on the team, minutes later we want him benched. We like (cheer) the player when he is “good” and we dislike (boo) him when he is “bad.”  Admit it, we are fickle; changing our affections frequently.  

We don’t cheer God because life is necessarily good or because our health or finances are good, or even because our current circumstances or the world around us are good. No, instead we offer our cheers to God simply because He is good. And because God is good, so too is God’s Son good. And because God is good, so too is God’s Spirit good.

The gospel writer John, who was a friend and cousin of Jesus, who saw Jesus hung on a Cross, who looked into an empty tomb, who saw a lifetime of struggle, who saw Paul and Peter persecuted and killed because of their faith, whom himself was persecuted and imprisoned for his own profession of faith, who saw a world filled with reasons to not believe Jesus had been who He said He was, who saw a world filled with division and hatred, said this in his old age… God is love (1 John 4:8). To read these words in context, vv.7-21.

And if God is love, if God is good, then Jesus must also be love, He must be also good.

How do we know? We know because Jesus tells us so. In the early part of His Farewell Discourse (John 14-17), Jesus said this in answering Thomas’s question of wanting to know how to get where Jesus was going- “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him” (John 14:6-7).

Philip, probably dazed and confused (like we often are), might have said “Say what?” In v.8 we read – Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”

Jesus then questioned Philip – “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip (v.9a)” Has Jesus ever asked you that question?

Now back to my original premise and question. If God is good, then Jesus must also be good. How do we know?

I am sure Jesus looked Philip right in the eyes when He gave him a very clear answer- “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (v9b).

Any further questions Philip?

Life and life’s circumstances change, but God and God’s love, unchanging! –“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

So, today, make it enough to praise and worship (cheer) God, to fully trust Jesus, to be guided by His Spirit, not because they do “good” things for you, but rather, simply because they are good, they are love. Don’t be fickle about God!

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