Ever find yourself “people pleasing” again and again? Mad at yourself for falling into that trap again? “Man’s approval of you is neither required, requested or relevant!” Hold onto that thought. You can only please the One who designed you with a specific purpose in mind. The world doesn’t have a clue what God wants to do with your life!! So quit asking for its approval!

It’s important in the world we live in to remember that “The devil is a liar and the father of all lies.” Did you know that the enemy will always defeat you in your mind first before he defeats you in any other area? Do you remember Mohammed Ali, the famous boxer? Well, Ali believed in psyching them out before knocking them out! When facing George Foreman, he said, “ Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see. Now you see me, now you don’t. George thinks he will, but I know he won’t.” That had a way of messing with his opponent’s mind. That’s exactly the way the devil works in our lives. He psychs us out by hitting on the one thing that we’re already afraid might happen. Caution: Don’t believe the devil on any level. Especially stay away from the “never” lies. We’ve all heard them because they run through our minds on a daily basis. They sound something like this: You’ll never have a better job, never have enough money, never have a “happy ending” or you’ll never fall in love, never save your marriage or never…

Feeling inferior? Battling low self-esteem? You are God’s masterpiece, hand designed by Him. Stop looking at your weaknesses, your faults and failures. You are incredible and you serve a God who doesn’t make junk. He sees you with total love and He created you with value that the world can’t take away!

When the disciples asked Jesus how they could do the works of God, He said their work was to BELIEVE on Him. The kingdom of God just doesn’t make sense to us. Too much of the time, we want to DO the things of God instead of BE with the One who loves us dearly, building a relationship where we sit and hear his directions before we jump and run! As we sit with Him and He begins to reveal where He’s working, that’s when we need to bump our believing to “expecting”! Faith walks ahead of what it can see with the natural eye. Faith moves into excitement knowing that what we’re believing for is on the way. It’s great to believe God and then move to a place where you start to expect! You’re watching and waiting for the answer to appear! When I order a pizza, I have faith that it’s going to be delivered in a short amount of time. Once I place that order, then I move to “expectation”. I’m at the window, turning on the porch light, watching like a hawk. I HAVE even been known to chase down the driver when he missed…

God’s clock is way different than the one we use! If you’ve ever had to wait on God, you know He seems to way till the very last second before making a move. And from our perspective, the last second seems “way too late”. Let’s face it, His timing is perfect but we have to get a little further down the road to figure that out! For now, we’ll just accept it by faith.

Whatever you’re going through today, I want you to remind you of a verse in Psalm 118:24…”This is the day that the Lord has made: I will rejoice and be glad in it!” You may be thinking that it’s a little difficult to go around rejoicing when you just don’t feel like it. For some of you it’s difficult to praise God because you find yourself “dwelling” in a place of REGRET, always looking back and wishing you could change what you said, what you did, and the choices you made. Regret has a way of always messing up TODAY! It’s like a black cloud that hangs over us all the time. So…it’s time to move to a new dwelling place. You can’t change what happened. It’s done, finished, OVER! God has laid out this amazing day ahead of you. It’s full of all kinds of opportunities to grow, to laugh, to see the wonderful gifts that He has given you. Now you may be thinking that I don’t know what it’s like to regret something. Oh, yes I do. But I learned the hard way that if I stayed in that place and rehearsed the regrets over and over…