Back to School

Pause

Every person’s life tells a story. Sometimes our lives—quite unexpectedly—become part of God’s larger narrative.

The potential is there at any time, in any moment.

Prepare yourself now for what you may least expect—for the voice of God to join with yours in telling the story that is your life.

Listen

By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith.

Hebrews 11:7

Think

Dear Diary,

Do you ever feel like you’re the only one trying to please God? You’re surrounded by people who just don’t seem to care about what’s right. Maybe they’re even openly hostile to your faith. Worst of all, sometimes you even get pressure from friends whom you thought had your back! It seems like you’re standing in the ocean with the tide getting higher and higher.

Noah knows how you feel. Surely he was ridiculed for building a ridiculously large boat nowhere near the water and without a storm cloud in the sky. But Noah stayed faithful to his mission, sawing, nailing, and hammering on a huge ship—with no water in sight.

Noah is a very good example of what it means to be faithful, and we’re reminded again that God calls us to stay faithful, too, even in the face of overwhelming odds. That’s what faith does.

Steve Cothran

Pray

God, when I feel dry and dusty, refresh me. When I’m flooded with peer pressure, preserve me. And when I’m trying to please you and insults are raining down on me, remind me you are reigning over me. Amen.

Go

It’s easy to think you are alone, that no one else experiences life like you do.

But go now into your day knowing this: God has not left you alone, and your struggles are much the same as those of everyone you know and those you don’t know.

God understands. God accepts you. And God is leading the way.