The reason I opted for the human angle is because if I had asked you whether or not God could right a wrong in your life, you as a Believer would inevitably tell me, “Well, of course! That’s why He is God.” End of discussion.

But when we put the burden back on ourselves, it’s a bit different, isn’t it? We have to make decisions. We have to take responsibility for our actions. We have to think differently about what we are going through. No couch-potato living here if we truly want to expand our faith and live for God.

I am not trying to be Oprah-esque here. Making a bad situation good isn’t like pulling from deep within your soul. I am not referring to mustering up some “power within.” I am not talking about tackling issues with brute force of mind over matter.

I am really talking about seeing your life differently. It’s that whole making lemonade from lemons that I am referring to, only in the less secular vain. Instead of spiraling down deeper into your problems, switch that focus to the ultimate Solution, God and your relationship with Him.

This sense came to me last night while watching Facing the Giants. If you haven’t seen the film by director Alex Kendrick of Sherwood Pictures you really should. Here is this failing coach who is probably going to get the boot because his football team, the Eagles, have been on a losing streak for six years. Coach Grant not only feels like a failure, his team sees him as a failure and his school sees him as a failure.

Can you make a bad situation good? Yes, if you choose to trust the Lord, because He will do it in and through you. Let the Holy Spirit breathe life into the yucky stuff you see and feel and know in your not-so-great day or not-so-great season of life.

Before we let our feelings get the best of us, let’s try to take every thought captive for the cause of Christ. Let’s nip the negativity in the bud before it blooms and takes over the garden of our minds and hearts. Let’s choose to place our circumstances in God’s capable hands and rest assured that He will do what we cannot do on our own.

— Laura J. Bagby

Today, as I was hiking the craggy mountain path, now dotted by vibrant yellow wildflowers of spring, I began to think about that word again.

And God dropped several key points into my spirit that I believe might help you if you are called like me to be a catalyst for God to encourage, inspire, and empower those around you who are growing but need that extra push to activate their fruitfulness.

Pollinators are absolutely instrumental. This is the first key. Without them, lots of flowers would not get pollinated and would not bear fruit. Fruit is reliant on pollinators to do their job. You might think your gift of encouraging and bringing refreshment and inspiration into another person’s life is no big deal, or that everybody does it. But you are wrong. I am telling you, sometimes at those moments when you release God’s flow, you are just the lifeblood that person needs.

In order to do the job, pollinators must anticipate the season of fruitfulness. They must be ready and able to recognize the right time to get to work. Too early, and the work is a waste of time; too late, and the blossom has died and pollinating isn’t possible. There must be discernment of the correct window of time. Pollinators need to be alert for the coming harvest. If you are a pollinator in people’s lives, ask God to reveal when the skill sets, character, talents, maturity, attitudes are right in season. And then, don’t be afraid and don’t be lazy to be the catalyst!

You are going to be pollinating lots of flowers, not just one. It’s a season, not a one-day event. God will orchestrate it so you won’t just be speaking into one person’s life, but many. Be prepared. Seek God for wisdom and energy as you anticipate your next assignment.

Remember: you aren’t the only pollinator out there, so don’t get weary in that busy season when you are tasked many times to bring encouragement to many different people.Have you ever seen a flower garden in its peak? Bees and butterflies are all over those plants! One bee does not do all the work. There are no maverick pollinators in God’s plan. The work is done through the action of many bees with the same goal— releasing fruitfulness by dropping a morsel of truth and encouragement wherever those bees go.

God created a variety of different kinds of pollinators. God uses bees, birds, butterflies, and other insects to do the job. So, if you aren’t of the bee variety, it’s OK. Maybe you are more gentle like the hummingbird or more lighthearted like the butterfly. Perhaps you are even more hardworking like the bee. Whatever your personality and talent mix, God can use you in a unique way to deposit His life into other’s hearts. Don’t try to be a bee if you are a butterfly. Be yourself!

It’s not about you. Before you get a big head about being Mr. or Ms. Life Giver, just know that you couldn’t bring anything good and life-creating without your connection with Christ. It comes first from God and then to you. And it comes to you not for you, but so that it can get transmitted through you.

Flowers also have a responsibility. True, pollinators need to recognize when flowers are ready. But the flower has to likewise be receptive, open, and ready to be activated. So, once again, it’s not all up to the pollinator. You do your job of bringing encouragement, but if growth doesn’t happen as it should, know that the flower also has to take responsibility for some level of fruitfulness. It is not all up to you.

Bring the next level of life to what is already living. Don’t waste time on what is not growing. Pollinators don’t try to pollinate plants that are dead. If you have tried to bring life to someone who you thought God wanted you to encourage and there is no fruit in that person’s life after repeated attempts to minister, don’t despair. Leave it for the Lord to refresh that person. God is the one who brings life back from the dead. Pollinate living things, just as the bees and butterflies do. Pray for those who are enduring a dead season that God would breathe His life into them. And then perhaps He might use you or another pollinator to rekindle something.

Hope this helps you as you continue on in the work of the Lord. Be encouraged today. Keep doing what you are doing in faith. Keep blessing others as the Lord blesses you. And what you can’t do, God will do. He will finish the work.

– Laura J. Bagby

If things still look dead in your life, if you are barely hanging on, recall that God was able to bring life from death. He did it through His Son, Jesus. And He does it daily with each one of us who is trusting in Christ.

Our hope is resurrected because Jesus lives! And I don’t just mean in some grand scheme kind of way. I mean it personally, too. Because our Lord lives, we have access to the same power that raised the Savior back to life. And that means we live, too!

Did you know that you have eternal life right now if you profess Jesus as your Lord and Savior? It doesn’t happen when you get to heaven. You have full access to life and life abundantly right now.

I am grateful that though we sometimes walk through valleys, we go through hard places, we slip into pits, God comes to life us up and out. He is the Lifter of our Head. He is our confidence and strength. He is our Deliverer.

When waiting drags on indefinitely and goals are placed on hold, when I wonder if things I have longed for will ever materialize, that’s when I find myself saying to God,  Come on already! What gives?  I am ready for my break. I am ready for my breakthrough. I am over the breakups and the breakdowns. What’s taking so long? You know I am all over that next plan you have for me, so bring it on!

But God isn’t impressed with my need for speed. He pulls up a chair and listens patiently. He just lets me beat the air. He lets me get it all out. And then He says with a certain firmness in His tone, Nope. It’s time you do the little stuff. Keep on keeping on. I know the beginning from the end. No worries. You just be faithful in the small stuff right now.

But God?!

Little things. Small beginnings. There is that verse in Zechariah 4:10 about not despising all of that. There is a reason that the word “despise” is clearly used. It’s because some of us hate the thought of doing the stuff that holds no glory.

You know what I mean… Those things that don’t get the praise and don’t get the raise. They are things no one sees. They are only things God notices. They don’t get you ahead. They aren’t all that fun. No limelight, no spotlight. They are the largely invisible tasks.

But according to the Lord, oh so very, very important. You know why? Because it’s in the little things that your true character is manifest.  Are you a person of integrity? Well, what do you do when no one is looking? Do you still continue to do a fantastic job even when the big boss could care less? When everyone else is favored but you, do you pout? It’s in that invisible, nothing-is-going-on-in-my-career-or-my-life season when you get to reflect on those things. And it can be painful.

I think so much about the life of Old Testament Joseph (Genesis 37-41) and how he had to taste years of humble pie before God gave him the spotlight that was promised in his God-directed dream. I reckon our buddy Joe used to think that dream he had when he was younger about those sheaves of wheat bowing to him was all about him. And there is the problem. MY ministry. MY job. MY gifts and talents. Me, me, me.

If you are a person of talent, of great skill and ability, you have to know that’s all from God. God gave it all to you; but God can temporarily take it all away if He chooses to in order to prune you for better service. God will give us favor at the proper time.

When is that? I am coming to understand that God’s time is usually when our egos can handle it. And when we think we can handle it is usually when God is just beginning to lead us down that humble path either for the first time or down the road for a second or third round because we forgot ourselves in some heady rush of fame, fortune, or popularity. It’s frustrating, but I have seen it played out many times in my own life.

But the good news is that all this humbling stuff has a purpose. And it’s not to make us miserable. It’s not to teach us a lesson. It’s not to change our personalities so that we no longer want to do anything that remotely looks like an upfront task that includes an audience.

Simply saying no to leading a Bible study, speaking at a women’s conference, or teaching at a business meeting for Fortune 500 entrepreneurs when God has gifted you to do so and has opened the door and called out your name to perform such a spotlight task is called disobedience. It’s no more right to work in the background, being all “humble” picking up trash after that conference if God is tapping you on the shoulder to use the gift you have publicly to present the keynote at that very conference. That “no” is not a sign of humility; it’s a sign of insecurity and perhaps missing the point entirely.

Look, Joseph had an awesome spotlight kind of calling ahead of him. He was going to be basically the prime minister of Egypt (Genesis 41:41-42). That’s high profile! And this mission and vision was directed by God. Let me say it another way: It was God’s idea for Joseph to be way up there in politics. Whoah!

He wasn’t meant to wash dishes all his life and sweep floors. Staying in that kind of line of work, the kind of work we often consider humble, was not God’s final intent. But it was God’s intent to present Joseph with a humble season, a very humble, quite long season called prison. I think prison pretty much seals it when it comes to being the lowest of the low, don’t you?

OK, so what is the point of these humbling times if it isn’t our personal misery, loneliness, maybe even jealousy of those who have what we want and don’t currently have?

God’s letting us come to the end of ourselves—the end of our schemes, our egos, our need to be noticed, our need to be right. Then we can do the job we have and handle it. We won’t be crushed by the weight of responsibility that inevitably will follow our noble task. We won’t we distracted by the temptation to bend when those around us want us to please them instead of God (remember Potiphar’s wife with Joseph). We won’t be out for ourselves, trying to control our own kingdoms for fear someone else will take it all away. We will be generous in the powerful position God has for us. We will use our influence for good.

I know. I know. You think you would be doing that now. You don’t need humbling. I thought that, too. (As a side note, those struggling with pride issues typically think this way… so, note to self.) Many times I have though I was ready for the task ahead, only to realize in some brief moments of glory just where my heart was. Was I centered on God? Was I centered on my fellow man? Mostly no. And… no.

Oh, God, grace us to handle the great things ahead!

But before you get too down on yourself and self-absorbed by all your faults that are so glaringly obvious, recall that God’s end goal is our good. That’s because He is good. And when others see the good that results, He gets the glory.

I love these two verses in the Bible. I think they will help you, too, so I am going to leave you with these Scripture passages. I hope you take them to heart if you are currently eating humble pie:

“Before his downfall a man’s heart is proud, but humility comes before honor” (Proverbs 18:12).

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time” (1 Peter 5:6).

God will lift us up. God will bring us out from the shadows into the sunshine again. And when He does, we will be better for it.

— Laura J. Bagby

So many thoughts have been swirling in my brain this month as I adjust to a new place and to often perplexing and sometimes unpleasant circumstances. And though writing has typically helped me in the past to plunk those difficult musings on paper as something tangible and therapeutic, lately scribbling anything about my pain and sorrow—even in a journal no one will read—has been something I have been avoiding at all costs.

Why is that? Why do I want to escape from my thoughts? Why do I run away from the pain? Why is it so hard sometimes to face the dross I see God pulling out of me?

Before I came to this season of wilderness, I was excited about change, excited about new, excited about great things God was going to do in and through me. But that was before the realization that change meant I would have to change—not my circumstances, not frustrating people around me, like the slow driver ahead or the thoughtless person in line at the grocery store. No, it meant I would have to change.

I was excited until I realized new meant I would have to endure discomfort, watch my weaknesses bubble to the surface, and listen as my often negative thoughts got the better of me and others around me.

After such a positive and brave and courageous push to get to this new season with Holy-Spirit driven encouragement from a slew of God-centered friends to help me not to faint in the process, it made no sense to me why it seemed like God wasn’t meeting me on the other side.

Practically once I stepped over the threshhold and arrived in a new place, it felt like all hell had broken loose and Jesus was sleeping in my boat. Where were the cheers for having made a difficult initial journey? Where were the rhema words from the lips of God? Why was I experiencing the most fearful panic attacks of probably my entire life? Why was my heart breaking in two over this move? Where was God’s power to combat the devil’s schemes?

It made no sense to me then. But it is starting to now.

No, I don’t have it all together. I can’t say I have gone through my trial and come out on the other side more blessed than stressed. I would say that I am still leaning toward the stressed side of things. I am still in the fiery furnace. I am walking out my trial by fire even as I write this.

But I do believe that God has a plan. And that is biblical, since I can clearly point to Jeremiah 29:11 for a hope-filled account of what God has in store for me, as well as you.

I don’t get why that plan currently must come with pain, but I daresay Jesus didn’t get that either before heading to the Cross. Otherwise, why would He have hesitated briefly in the Garden of Gethsemane with this quick thought toward Heaven, “If You could take this cup away from me…”. Suffering without purpose is simply pointless. Pain with no hope beyond is really death—maybe not physically speaking, but certainly emotionally speaking.

I have been thinking a lot about Jesus and His own desert experience, when the Holy Spirit ushered the Son of Man into the wilderness to be buffeted by Satan before He started His earthly ministry. That was 40 days of hardship. He was alone, thirsty, hungry, and being accused and harassed in His mind, His will, and His emotions. No friends were there to lessen the pain or encourage our Lord. It was Him and God and a relentless devil. He was a prime target for a sly devil.

The difference between the way He handled His desert experience and the way we typically deal with ours, if I can use myself as an example on the human end, is that Jesus spoke life and truth over His uncomfortable and harassing circumstances, whereas we have the tendency to grumble, complain, cry, get angry, accuse God, and lay down and die in some dramatic, Jonah-like display of martyrdom. And, frankly, none of that stuff works.

The Bible tells us to submit to God first. Then we need to resist the devil, and when we resist the devil, he will flee from us.

It’s not enough to try to fight the devil if you don’t trust God. If you don’t believe God is good, if you don’t believe God is for you, if you don’t believe God is stronger and that He hasn’t left you or forsaken you, then you can’t stand against Satan when he attacks. That’s the flat-out truth.

You can scream till you are bright red. You can quote Scriptures up and down while standing on your head. It won’t do a bit of good. Distrust, lack of faith, doubt—these will all rule you and me, unless we run back to the God who we may have originally felt betrayed us because He didn’t do life the way we expected or wanted.

If you are tracking with me on this, I suggest you do what I have been doing lately: repenting majorly. We have to repent of our anger and bitterness toward God. We simply got it all wrong. God is not the enemy, friends. Let me say that again: God is not the bad guy in this equation. He is the answer to every situation, every trial, every hurt, every plea for help that escapes our lips. So, humble yourselves and submit yourselves once again to God. Decide to trust Him again, even when there still isn’t money in the bank, the illness hasn’t gone away, the children are still being rebellious, and you don’t “feel” any closer to God. In fact, trust Him even when your prayers seem to lead to the reverse of what you prayed.

It’s one of Satan’s tactics. I can pretty much guarantee it. We pray big, faith-filled prayers, and instead of getting our miracle, we get a bigger mess than we had before we prayed. Does this sound familiar? For me it does. The whole point in this supposed reversal of fortune is to get us to stop praying, stop believing, and quit.

If we focus too much on our problem, that wind and those waves angrily swirling around us, and not enough on the very present and very powerful God that we serve, we can quickly conclude that God didn’t answer us. We think God didn’t show up. Sometimes we can even wrongly think that the devil is stronger, so why try anymore.

But the Bible says that what Satan tries to use for our distress, God will use for our good. In Him, distress becomes deliverance. Evil becomes good. Why? Because God is good and He knows just how to orchestrate everything—even the yucky stuff—to grow our character and make us shine despite the shadows we have been walking in.

And I say a hearty amen to that!

You with me? Let’s take a minute and talk to God about all this.

God, thanks for growing us up in You. It isn’t fun. A lot of times, change and growth are painful. We don’t understand what you are doing and why. We want to stay comfortable. Yet you call us onward to be more and more like you. Help us not to chafe under your molding power. Help us to stay calm even while we are in the crucible, being refined. Encourage our hearts by Your presence so that we don’t lose heart. Give us a revelation of Your love and of Your truth. Help us to stay fastened to You, to continually submit to your process while we are going to the desert, knowing that when the time is right, we will emerge purified, full of Your glory.

In the name of Jesus Christ we pray,

Amen.

— Laura J. Bagby

She has learned to concentrate on the crosswalk signs. Here in the city, those crosswalk signs count down to zero. When the red number gets to three and she is almost at the intersection, she speeds up to make it through before the yellow light.

While seeing this demonstrated in an evening outing with her, I laughed as I rode shotgun, dubbing her technique “driving by number.”

I have since put her technique into practice and can proudly say that it really works! I would have never thought to look there had she not mentioned this secret to me.

Let’s universalize this lesson for a minute and apply it to our faith: Where we focus our energies will determine whether we sail through a litany of obstacles in our lives or get bogged down with delay after delay toward our future destination.

I know I can get tunnel vision on the road of my journey and completely not see the solution, because all I am focusing on our those traffic lights that are hindering my progress. If I could just avert my eyes to the solution—Jesus, or in our previous illustration, those crosswalks— then I would have a smoother ride.

Won’t you pray with me?

God, please take my blinders off so that I can see You in front of me at each intersection of my life. Let me be fully aware of Your signals along the way, beckoning me forward. And, God, if I need to ‘gun it’ to get through to the other side in Your timing, make me sensitive to that leading so that I don’t delay. Let me always see my life from Your perspective so that we can road trip through life together at the right speed. Help me to look beyond my circumstances to Your solutions.

In Jesus Christ’s name,

Amen.

— Laura J. Bagby

That concept was on a sign at the base of the trail I had just finished hiking out here in the desert valley. It was meant to spark a spirit of conservation among fellow park participants like me. But I saw it more in spiritual terms.

Do you feel like your life and your heart have been trampled on this year by unwelcome trespassers? Do you sense an erosion in your soul as people have ripped through the pathway to your spirit? Do you wonder when the broken ground in your life will be fruitful again—if ever?

I know I do, and I am guessing many of you do as well.

During times when our life is hard, when everything seems like it is against us, when we feel like a barren wasteland, stripped of our energy, our purpose, our worth, it is very difficult to see the Lord trying so patiently and so passionately to conserve our very lives with His love and care.

It’s so gradual sometimes that we don’t see it. But He is restoring the ground of our souls, planting good things in places that have been torn up.

We might still look dry and cracked, but new life is on its way. It’s just a matter of time.

— Laura J. Bagby