https://abide.com/prayer/4x6tn0

Testimony Tuesday God Will Sustain You While You’re Still Waiting “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10 NIV It’s Testimony Tuesday and I just want to take a moment to thank God for all that He does. This first quarter was extremely slow. No real movement. No clients ready to move forward. Even the ones who said they were ready,went silent. Unresponsive. Still. Three months went by and I didn’t make a dime. But the bills didn’t stop. Personal or business. Everything was still due. And through all of that… God provided. Shelter still there. Food still on the table. Lights still on. Water running. Gas in the car. WiFi connected. Nothing missing. And beyond that… Strength. Peace. Joy. And I really had to sit with that. It’s so easy to focus on what’s not coming in…and completely overlook what’s still being covered. God didn’t just provide financially. He kept me. Gave me the strength to keep going. Gave me peace when things felt uncertain. Gave me joy when it didn’t even make sense. And every morning still gave me the opportunity to get on the prayer line at 5am. Monday through Friday. To speak. To pour. To share His goodness. And that alone has nothing to do with money. That’s grace. That’s mercy. And God continuing to show up in ways that don’t always get measured. Forgiveness. Peace of mind. A praise on my heart. All while things were slow. And that’s what I want you to catch. God doesn’t stop being God just because things aren’t moving how you expected. Provision doesn’t always look like increase. Sometimes it looks like everything still being there…when it easily could’ve fallen apart. That’s God’s sustaining power. So if you’re in a season where things feel slow, don’t overlook what God is doing right now. Because if you really look at it…you’ve been kept. Ask Yourself 1️⃣ What has God been covering for me that I haven’t even acknowledged?

Imagine it’s hot outside and you’ve been doing yard work all day. I walk up to you with a cold glass of water, and offer it to you. But before I hand it over, I take out a tablespoon full of arsenic and pour it into the glass of water. And with that, I extend the cold glass of poison-laced water to you. Would you drink it? Of course not! It takes less than a teaspoon of arsenic to kill an adult. In a spiritual sense, something similar happened when Adam took a bite of the forbidden fruit. That one “little” sin brought spiritual death and instantly injected depravity into the inborn nature of all humanity. From that moment on, things would never be the same. That’s why we don’t have to teach children how to be bad. We have to show them how to be kind and generous. But as we grow up, even our good acts become a cover up. In the words of spoken word artist Propaganda, “Even our good deeds are an extension of our selfishness.” Think of it this way... in Adam were the seeds of all humanity. From his children would come more children, and from their children would come more children, from the beginning of time until the end of it. When Adam was corrupted, then so were his seeds. These seeds, once planted into the lineage of all humanity through the act of conception, brought physical life mixed with spiritual death. The day that Adam ate the forbidden fruit, he didn’t physically die—though that came later. But he did spiritually die—immediately. And in a sense, on that day, so did we. So don’t be surprised when a child is selfish, and don’t be shocked when someone cuts you off or flips you off in traffic. As a matter of fact, don’t be surprised when you’re selfish yourself. The depravity gene is in our DNA. No, it’s not the new you in Jesus, but it’s the old you that you still cart around in your flesh. Only Jesus can deliver us from the depravity at work in this world and in our flesh. He is the key to “re-Adamizing” Adam and neutralizing the soul poison that’s been passed on to us spiritually.

There’s something about being naked that makes me blush. Even the word kind of makes me blush. One hot summer’s day in 1980, I went to the movie theatre with my friend. I was fifteen years old, and in that awkward stage of life where I was extra self-conscious. As we stood outside the theatre looking at the movie posters, I noticed a long line of high school-aged girls getting tickets. So I flexed my puny arms and tried to show them a little tricep as I pointed to our various movie options. Problem was, my friend, Art, who was a prankster at heart, was standing right behind me. I was wearing shorts, and in one swift motion, Art pulled my shorts completely down to the ground and I was standing there exposed. Instead of pulling my shorts back up, I tried to run…which turned out even worse for me and for everyone watching. Why do we giggle when we hear the words “nudist beach”? Why do we cringe at the thought of losing our swimsuit on a water slide? It all goes back to the Garden of Eden. Before the Fall of humanity, Adam and Eve were naked and loving it. They had nothing to hide, literally or figuratively. They looked at themselves as magnificent creations of an even more magnificent God. Adam loved Eve. Eve Loved Adam. Both of them loved God. This pure and utter transparency was God’s original intent for all of humanity. They experienced pure, unfiltered conversation from the deepest chamber of each other’s hearts and minds. I think we all long for this deepest level of honesty and openness with God and each other. In our best moments, we go naked before God, refusing to hide behind religion or excuses, letting down our defenses. But it’s just a taste…for now. Someday, Jesus will make all things new, and we’ll be back to that pre-Fall level of authenticity and transparency with God and each other. How do we begin to live like this now? We live in a daily declaration of dependence on the Holy Spirit. We take off the fleshly attitudes that we hide behind and put on new ones.