Do you know enough to worry?

Let’s say I give you an apple seed. It’s a seed from a Washington Red Delicious. You love and have eaten bushels of them. You’ve even picked them. You know a tree-ripened apple from one picked early and sprayed to ripen. You make your own apple pies. You know just about everything there is to know about apples…

…except one thing. I ask you to look at that apple seed and tell me how many apples are in it. You can’t. And of course you can’t. You don’t know what the future holds. It’s reasonable to assume that seed contains bushels and bushels of apples in it, but it may hold none. You don’t know enough to say.

Just as you can’t look at that apple seed and tell me how many apples are in it, you don’t know enough about the future to worry. You can’t look at a life situation and tell what it contains. Sure, you can worry about a lot of possible outcomes, but you can’t with certainty say what will happen. 

When you start to worry today, remember: God knows. And God is in control.

What does God's voice sound like?

I walked into a restaurant recently, recognized someone and spoke to him for a moment. I moved on toward my table when someone called my name. I turned around and there was another friend. She said, “Even though my back was to you, I heard your voice and knew it was you.”

Some sounds are just more familiar than others, aren’t they? There are three trademarked sounds that I know you will recognize immediately: the NBC chimes, the MGM lion roar, and the Harley-Davidson engine sound. We hear and recognize these sounds quickly, like my friend did with my voice.

But there are some other sounds that we don’t recognize so quickly. What does God’s voice sound like anyway? God’s voice can sound like any voice, at any time, and anywhere. It sounds like goose bumps up and down your spine. Or a baby’s soft breathing. Or an “I love you.” God’s voice is more than a sound. It’s a feeling, too. So listen to life today for God’s voice with your ears, your eyes, and your heart as you make a life, not just a living.