Trusting God, One Day at a Time – God’s Pattern for Our Lives

Back in the early 90’s I had a lot going on. I was working 60 hours a week at my full-time job and anywhere from 30-40 hours a week at a part-time job. I had student loans to pay off, I had credit card debt to pay off, I had the typical monthly bills you can never get rid of (lights, gas, water, rent, etc.) and it was just me, no one else to help make the payments. I had a lot on my mind, I had a lot on my shoulders, I had thoughts constantly clouding my mind of how I was going to be able to do this all by myself. Back then, when I had a lot on my mind, I would just bury myself in work to help keep my mind off the situation I had and needed to address. I always knew God was there with me, but I had not yet learned a valuable lesson on how to rely on Him for everything, I mean EVERYTHING!

I was raised in a small Baptist church where I was saved at the age of 8. I knew that day when I was saved God had something special planned for me, but I didn’t know what it was or how to seek after Him for revelation of it. All I ever really learned there was I wasn’t supposed to sin, I was to keep the 10 commandments, go to church every time the doors were open, and bring some money to church and put it in the offering plate (I never remember hearing a sermon on why I was to do this, but was told I was supposed to do this every Sunday).

When I was 17, I knew there was more to church than what was being presented to me and I started asking the pastor questions, which he quickly told me I didn’t need to be questioning him, just to obey what he preached. I politely told him he was an “Idiot” and needed to go back to school and learn to be a pastor of God.

I soon left that church and started on my own research over the next 10 years or so into who God was, what He had planned for my life, and the answer to all the questions I had that no one seemed to be able to give me a Biblical answer for. I visited many Baptist churches, a few Church of God churches, a few Pentecostal churches, and a few Methodist churches. I never seemed to find what I was looking for in any of them. My questions were not being answered.

When I wasn’t working, I was reading books trying to learn the answers to all my questions. Some days I just felt so overwhelmed with all the “unanswered” questions. One thing I found kind of strange through all of this is when I would get that “overwhelming” feeling, I would get this “other” overwhelming feeling to go to the Christian bookstore. I had been there so many times, the people who worked there knew me and knew, after our greetings, just to let me be. I would walk the isles of the store just looking over the books and when I would come to the book God had for me to help me through whatever it was He was ready for me to work through, to deal with, I would have this overwhelming feeling of warmth flow throughout my body and I would know it’s the book to get and start reading.

On this day the book God brought to my attention was “One Day at a Time” by Christy Lane (she also has a song birthed from this book). When I got home and started reading it, it was one of those books I just couldn’t put down. I stayed up most of the night reading. I didn’t put it down till I had finished it. Christy faced a lot of trials in her life and she talked in her book about how she learned to do it “One Day at a Time” with God’s help. There were so many things in this book I could relate to and I knew God was trying to teach me, with His help, when I laid all my troubles at His feet (and learn to rest-more about that in another post), He would help me deal with them “One Day at a Time”.

What does the Bible teach us about trusting God one day at a time? In Matthew 6:34 (AMP) we are told, “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” When Jesus was asked how we should pray, and he was teaching the disciples how to pray in The Lord’s Prayer, in Matthew 6:11 (AMP), He said, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

In the Old Testament, when the Israelites were in the wilderness, God provided them “daily” manna (Exodus 16). Even Elijah, during famine and extreme danger, trusted God daily for his provisions.

In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus gives us the “Cure for Anxiety”, “25 “Therefore I tell you, stop being worried or anxious (perpetually uneasy, distracted) about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, as to what you will wear. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow [seed] nor reap [the harvest] nor gather [the crops] into barns, and yet your heavenly Father keeps feeding them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27 And who of you by worrying can add one hour to [the length of] his life? 28 And why are you worried about clothes? See how the lilies and wildflowers of the field grow; they do not labor nor do they spin [wool to make clothing], 29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory and splendor dressed himself like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive and green today and tomorrow is [cut and] thrown [as fuel] into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31 Therefore do not worry or be anxious (perpetually uneasy, distracted), saying, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’ 32 For the [pagan] Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; [but do not worry,] for your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But first and most importantly seek (aim at, strive after) His kingdom and His righteousness [His way of doing and being right—the attitude and character of God], and all these things will be given to you also. 34 “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Jesus tells us to stop worrying about everything in our lives no matter how big or how small it is. That if God provides the food for the birds, who don’t even work for their food, why do we doubt that God can provide our every need, whether we work for it or not. STOP! I am not saying we are to give all our worries, concerns, etc., to God and then just go sit on our butts and do nothing or go our merry way and do what we want to do instead of what God wants us to do.

In Genesis 2:15 (AMP), God tells us, “So the Lord God took the man [He had made] and settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.” In Genesis 3:17-19 (AMP) God tells Adam how he will work, “17 Then to Adam the Lord God said, “Because you have listened [attentively] to the voice of your wife, and have eaten [fruit] from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’; The ground is [now] under a curse because of you; In sorrow and toil you shall eat [the fruit] of it All the days of your life. 18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 “By the sweat of your face You will eat bread Until you return to the ground, For from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”” Even Paul, in 1 Thessalonians 2:9 (AMP), talks about us working, “For you remember, believers, our labor and hardship. We worked night and day [practicing our trade] in order not to be a [financial] burden to any of you while we proclaimed the gospel of God to you.“

Then Jesus goes on to say that when we don’t rely on God for our every need each day that we are lacking faith in God. How do we build our faith in God, Jesus tells us in v33, “But first and most importantly seek (aim at, strive after) His kingdom and His righteousness [His way of doing and being right—the attitude and character of God], and all these things will be given to you also.”.

I’m not going to say that seeking God each day is easy, as we strive to become closer to God, Satan will start a war against us (even our family) to keep us from growing closer to God. God wants us to live a full life, one day at a time, totally relying on Him to provide us all our needs, physically, financially, spiritually, relationally, etc. Life can distract us and keep us away from the moments & blessings God has for us. Each day, one issue after another, urgent things popping up, demands from work & family demand our immediate attention, important things are left for later and we end up in a “survival mode” where all we want to do is just “get through” the day. We seem to kick into “survival mode”, our survival mode, not God’s survival mode.

Many people even choose to live each day in their past, remembering “the good ole days”. They feel as if they will never see those days again. They can tell you about them, when they happened, and how precious they were. You can look in their eyes and see their sadness that these “good ole days” are gone forever. It’s like they are taking their dead baggage from the past and dragging it along with them into their present and future. Yes, we all have “precious moments” in the past, but that’s where we need to leave them. Did God not tell us in Isaiah 43:18 to, “Do not remember the former things, or ponder the things of the past.” Yes, we are to remember them, thank God for them, but leave them in our past where God put them, don’t drag unnecessary things into the present or future. With God in our lives, navigating our lives, “the best is yet to come”!

Then there are those who live each day in their future. When I finish my degree…when I get a better paying job…when I get married…when I have children…when I go on a well-deserved vacation…when I get a better car…when I buy a house…when I, when I. Everything they do strive for has to do with their future…when they achieve a goal. They have so many goals to meet they will never rest. They are so wrapped up in “when I” that they don’t see “today” and don’t know how to thank God for “today”. They just don’t understand that the future is completely unknown to us and has NO guarantees. People who live in “tomorrow” have nothing to put their hope in, they are pulling tomorrow’s concerns into today and the result is they live in fear. They have no understanding of how to place their petitions, their wants, their needs, in God’s hands and walk away from them and let God do what God does best. They don’t understand that if we are working on or worrying about something that God can not take care of it. Think of it this way, as parents, when our children are sick, we want to take care of them. What if your child was running a 103 fever and they were not allowing you to give them medicine you know will bring the fever down? They don’t want our “help”, they want to do it themselves to show us they are growing up because it’s easier for them to do it this way (they are being stubborn). All we can do is sit there and wonder when will they ask us for help, give it all to us to take care of them. They know we have the answer to their discomfort, but they are being stubborn. This is how God feels. He knows we have troubles He can easily take care of, but we as his children are not giving those problems to Him. We are trying to take care of them ourselves without Him.

In Exodus 16:1-34 God provided Manna for the Israelites on a “daily” basis. He told them not to save any for the next day, except for the day before the sabbath they were to gather enough for that day and the day of the sabbath. The sabbath was a day to remember and rest. When they tried to save today’s portion for tomorrow, when the sabbath was not involved, the next morning it had worms in it and it had rotted.

In Psalms 68:19 (AMP), we are told how, “Blessed be the Lord, who bears our burden day by day, The God who is our salvation! Selah.” The original Hebrew tells us that the benefit comes daily. Day by day! Our benefits for relying on God on a day by day basis is His kindness, goodness, provision, and God Himself! There are no limits to His benefits. God provided manna in the desert and opened the sea in front of His people, so they could safely cross. The Lord knows of ways of doing things that we haven’t even thought of, even swifter than we can accomplish them ourselves. Nowhere in the Bible does God tell us he will provide for us weekly, monthly, or even yearly, He says He will “provide our daily needs”.

In Genesis 1:5 it says, “And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” I mean, in the beginning, He tells us he works on a “daily” basis, a daily need. Each sequence of creation was on a day by day basis. Each day has a beginning and an end, then God would see that what was done that day was good.

Each day when you get up, it’s a new day for God’s mercy, a new day for God’s grace, a new day for God’s forgiveness. Each day is a new opportunity to rise early, seek God’s mercy for that day, His wisdom for that day, everything He has for us for that day. Give God all your troubles, your worries, your anxiety, your depression, your addiction, your needs, lay them at His feet and say, “They are all Yours Father. You know better than I what to do with them better than I do. Give me the knowledge I need this day to do Your will for my life.” and walk away from what You have given God to take care of.

We live in a world dominated by addictions, depression, anxiety, fear, and stress. Each and everyone of these things relates to the future. We have enough requirements, pressure, grief, needs, etc. each day. We don’t need to add the future to our day. Give each day to God, for He will provide us with all the strength we need for that day and for all He places us in each day in His purpose so that His plan will work all things out for our good.

Want to live a happy and faith filled life? Live it “One Day at a Time” with God as your pilot!

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Trusting God, One Day at a Time – God’s Pattern for Our Lives

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