TODAY IS…

the ideal day to start a fire.

“I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.”  Psalm 16:7 NIV

Here is a little prayer that might help to put us all in a fire-starting mood:

If it is God’s will,
I will!
If it is His desire,
It will be my fire!

Determining what God wants us to do isn’t as difficult as some of us make it. All that is required is to ask Him.

“Yeah, right,” you say. “I do that all the time, and am still never sure if what I am doing is what He wants me to be doing.”

Reading the Bible, meditating on what we read and listening with our hearts for His answer are important. Far too often we ask questions and immediately get wrapped up in our busy lives, never taking the all–important time to look, and listen, for His response.

Many times we set off with the intention of carrying out plans we have already made and then, as an after-thought, take a moment or two to ask the Lord to bless those plans. Horses do not push carts, they pull them, so we mustn’t put the cart before the horse. We must ask God what He would have us do, and then make the plans and ask for His blessing.

By placing God first in our lives, we will learn to identify what His will is, and if we are doing His will, He will give us all the help we will need.

After teaching a crowd while standing in Simon’s boat, anchored a little off the shore of Lake Gennesaret – also known as the Sea of Galilee – Jesus instructed Simon to go out in deep water and drop his nets.

“Simon answered, ‘Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because You say so, I will let down the nets.’” (Luke 5:5 NIV).

Of course we all know that the result of doing the Lord’s will was nets so full that they began to break. They needed to get help from another boat and both boats were soon so full, they were on the verge of sinking.

Even in the middle of all that water, the fishermen were on fire!

They were rewarded for doing what the Lord wanted them to do. When the lives we lead are led by the will of God, the excitement we will experience will have a combustible quality to it; we will feel as if we will burst into flames of joy at any moment, so intense will be our desire to do God’s will.

Perhaps it will never be as easy for us, or as clear as it was for Simon. The Lord may not be physically standing in front of us, but He is there, calling us forward, and He is in our hearts. It is there that our ability to “hear” Him resides, and it is important that we always listen.

Pray, meditate, and listen and then make today the day you light the fire of your passion to do God’s will.

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Taken from “TODAY IS….A Gift From God”, (C) 2013 Tony Casson