Each day is a new opportunity to align our direction with our intention. The prophet Jeremiah says in Lamentations:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
— Lamentations 3:22–23
Because of the Lord’s great love for us, we get to wake up each day and decide if we are going to continue to let our sins rule our lives, or if we are going to let this day honor the God that gave it to us. What is even better is that, like the movie Groundhog Day, we get to experience the mercy of God’s love every day, again and again, because he is faithful. This means that no matter how far our intentions were from our direction yesterday, today is different if we choose to lean on God rather than ourselves.
I know that this is good news for me. Often, I let my schedule or checklist for the day derail my direction. When I let the world begin my day rather than spending precious time studying, praying and worshiping, then by 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon I am lost. My head is swimming in worry, fear and doubt. The things of this life seem bigger than the people around me, and I forget to count others more important than myself, as Paul tells us in Philippians.
In the past few months, I have been stopping several times each day to realign my direction with my intention. My intentions are to live this life lifting up those around me, spurring them on to better things, and showing them what it means to live life in grace. I have learned that the only way for me to live out those things is to begin the day with my Lord. The Lord has been more than faithful to help me begin noticing during the day when it is time to stop and realign a bit before continuing one more second. Recently, I have begun working on ending the day with my Father and allowing him to show me all of the gifts that he has blessed me with during that day.
Trusting God to satisfy the needs in your life, rather than trusting the world takes minute-by-minute alignment of direction and intention. The only way that you will be able to align your life is through the Father. Paul tells us in Philippians 4 that we should keep our thoughts on purity, holiness, honor, honesty and kindness focusing on the good works of our God, and then, he will give us peace. Our human nature can make this task seem monumental, but we have a good Father who loves us. He will help us focus our thoughts when we ask him to do so. I pray that each of you begins to do the good work of realignment and focus on the God of peace.