UCB Word For Today

Some of the world’s greatest achievers went through life with physical disabilities and overcame incredible adversities. Sir Walter Scott was disabled. John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, was imprisoned. George Washington, America’s first president, almost froze and starved to death in the snows of Valley Forge. Abraham Lincoln played a critical part in ending the scourge of slavery in America, yet he was raised in abject poverty and died prematurely from an assassin’s bullet. British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was subject to bitter religious prejudice. Franklin D. Roosevelt was struck down with infantile paralysis. Ludwig van Beethoven became deaf. Glen Cunningham, an Olympic runner holding many world records, had his legs badly burned in a school fire. Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, Marian Anderson, and George Washington Carver were born into a society filled with racial discrimination. Enrico Caruso was from a large, poor Italian family where only a few children survived past infancy. Itzhak Perlman, concert violinist, lost the function of his legs at age four. In the eyes of his father and family, biblical David wasn’t considered worthy to be Israel’s next king in the place of Saul. Moralists and legalists would surely have disqualified him because of his violation of Bathsheba. Yet God referred to him as ‘a man after my own heart’ (Acts 13:22 NIV). And here’s what David said about God: ‘My flesh and my heart fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever…I have put my trust in the Lord GOD’ (vv. 26, 28 NKJV). The word for today is: with God’s help, you’ll succeed.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

The contemplative pathway. If you relate to God best through the contemplative pathway, you love large blocks of quietness and uninterrupted time alone. It is very likely that when you were a child, your parents would tell you to go outside and play with other kids more. Reflection comes naturally to you. You often feel like an observer in life. Here are some Scriptures you easily identify with: ‘Meditate within your heart on your bed and be still. Selah’ (Psalm 4:4 NKJV). ‘Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him; do not fret’ (Psalm 37:7 NKJV). ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10 NKJV). ‘Truly my soul silently waits for God; from Him comes my salvation.’ God is most present to you when distractions and noises are removed. Images, metaphors, and pictures help you as you pray. If you get too busy or spend too much time with too many people hanging around, you begin to feel drained and stretched thin. You do not require much external stimulation. Making time to listen to God in silence and solitude is vital to the health of your soul, and it’s necessary for you to experience a deepening sense of His presence. You need regular, protected, intense, undistracted time alone. But here’s a word of caution: the Bible says, ‘If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another’ (1 John 4:11 NKJV). And love takes time and effort. Sometimes it requires sacrifice. One of the best ways to show your love for God is to show it to the people around you whom God loves.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

The activist pathway. When you’re on this spiritual pathway, you have a high level of energy. This may be one of your favourite Scriptures: ‘Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.’ But one of the dangers of relating to God best through the activist pathway is that a big chunk of your motivation can be self-fulfilment and self-satisfaction. Hence Paul wrote: ‘Since you are so eager to have the special abilities the Spirit gives, seek those that will strengthen the whole church’ (1 Corinthians 14:12 NLT). When you are an activist, you love a fast-paced, problem-filled, complex, strenuous way of life. At the end of the day, you want to be able to say, ‘I ran really hard. I used every ounce of effort and zeal at my disposal, and it’s all for You, God.’ One biblical example of an activist is Nehemiah. When he heard that the walls of his beloved Jerusalem were in ruins, he wept, he prayed, he petitioned the king for the resources to rebuild them, and then he rolled up his sleeves and went to work. If you are an activist, you need a cause. Without it, your spiritual life will stagnate. But here is a word of caution: don’t get so excited about your cause that you run over people or exploit them. And here’s another word of caution: if you are an activist, you may have a hard time discerning God’s true calling from your own strong impulses to action. If that’s the case, take added time to pray and hear from God and have a qualified friend in your life whose counsel you trust.

The worship pathway. When you’re on the worship pathway, you resonate with the psalmist: ‘I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go into the house of the LORD.”’ Something deep inside you feels released when praise is given. Your heart opens up and you come alive. You find yourself in tears, sometimes in moments of deep joy, because God seems so close. But here are two cautions if you’re on this pathway: 1) Don’t judge people who are not as outwardly expressive as you. Some of them grew up in churches where no one raised a finger, let alone a hand in worship. 2) Guard against an experience-based spirituality that has you always looking for the next ‘worship high’. C.S. Lewis wrote about the fatal sin of saying, ‘Encore!’ by demanding that God reproduce an experience or an emotion. He said that of all prayers, this may be the one God is least likely to grant because it can lead us to worship an experience rather than the God to whom our experience points. Music, for instance, can be a great gift to worship. But because music affects our feelings so powerfully, we can grow dependent on it to produce a certain emotional response. In this case, you may need to spend some time worshipping God without music, so that your worship is based on who God is and not a matter of getting swept up in certain sounds. Also, you may need to engage more in Bible study so that your heart is deeply rooted in the knowledge of God.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

The serving pathway. On the serving pathway, you find God’s presence seems most tangible when you’re helping others. You identify with the words of Jesus: ‘Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to Me’ (Matthew 25:40 NKJV). And you may find that you are uncomfortable in a setting where you don’t have a role to play or a service to perform. An example of this would be Dorcas, whom the Bible says ‘was full of good works and charitable deeds’ (Acts 9:36 NKJV). Gladys Aylward could be considered a more recent counterpart to Dorcas. A humble housemaid from London, she didn’t let hardship or rejection by a missionary society silence Christ’s call on her life. In China, she cared for orphaned children, protected the vulnerable, and faced danger to help people in need. Her life was marked by humble service, obedience, and joy in serving God. President Jimmy Carter has probably inspired more people as an ex-president than he did while he was in office because of his passion for servanthood through such channels as Habitat for Humanity. People on this pathway find that if they’re just attending church but have no place to serve, God begins to feel distant. They need to be ‘plugged in’. Two dangers faced if you are in the serving pathway are: 1) You will be tempted to judge others who don’t seem to be serving as much as you do. 2) You can get caught up in being God’s servant and forget that you’re His beloved and redeemed child. Hence you have to stretch by learning to receive love as well as to offer it.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.