February 13, 2020
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First, our kids couldn't feed themselves. Then they slowly began to learn to do it themselves. Right? Yeah. And then they got really good at it. But in those very early days of teaching them to feed themselves, we didn't just hand them this big slab of meat to eat and say, "Go for it kid." Every parent knows the drill: you cut the big piece into bite-size chunks so it's manageable. I got so used to doing it, it was kind of embarrassing when I'd got out to lunch with a businessman and I started cutting up his meat up for him!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Big Issues - Bite-Size Chunks."
I love our word for today from the Word of God in Zephaniah 3:5. It's just seven reassuring words, but in those words, God points us to the way He wants us to handle this "big piece of meat" called our life. It simply says, "Every new day He does not fail." Come on, isn't that great? God says instead of trying to do weeks and months and years, would you do life in these 24-hour increments that He's obviously wired us for? Do days.
We try to drag yesterday, with all of its baggage and its failures into today, we start to sink. We try to drag tomorrow into today, with its worries and its fears, we run ahead of His resources, which are issued each new day for that day. I've got Thursday's resources for Thursday's needs. When I start worrying about Friday, or a week from Friday, I'm on my own and I'm going down.
There has never been and there never will be a day that our Lord has failed us. On different days our spouse might fail us, our family might fail us, our boss, our friends, our coworkers, the folks at church, our income, even our health. But "every new day, He does not fail." That's called days without fear.
And here is your Lord's guarantee for each new day. He's promised new mercies for every battle. Surrounded by the collapse of everything around him, Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 3, "I remember my affliction and my wandering" In other words, on many new days, he had failed - just like you and me. But then he goes on to say, "I remember the bitterness and the gall ... my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." Wow!
God knows how to balance the grief with His goodness. He knows just when you need to have an encouragement, and He sends it. He knows just when you need a hopeful sign, or some comfort, when you need some rest, an extra shot of strength, or even a miracle. And He sends it right on time.
God knows when you've had all you can take and He raises His almighty hand and says, "Enough! No more!" He's promised to never let you have "more than you can bear" (1 Corinthians 10:13). "Because of the Lord's great love," you are "not consumed." You serve the God of daily bread, the God of what the Bible calls the "strength that will equal your days" (Deuteronomy 33:25). The God of whom you can say every new day, "This is the day my Lord has made" (Psalm 118:24). Not the day my condition has made, or my boss has made, or my frustrations have made, or my spouse has made. My Lord made this day and He's promised me everything I'll need to live it. Hallelujah!
Don't even try to handle that big piece of life you've got in front of you right now. Your Heavenly Father cuts it into bite-size chunks so it's manageable, and those bite-size chunks are called "every new day"!