Half-Time!

I love football, especially my Denver Broncos.

Like a lot of sports, football has a period during the game called “half-time.” It’s where the players and coaches go back to the locker room and huddle and set strategy for the second half of the game to either put it away or figure out a way to win.

Yesterday was my 40th birthday. I spent the evening with family who welcomed me to this new decade of life.

The past six to twelve months have been turbulent at times and also the best of my life yet thus far. I was laid off last year. I was trying to go back to work for a former employer and manager, but instead God lead me to a competitor. The job has been a struggle and for a long time I wasn’t sure I made the right decision. Yesterday morning I found out that that former employer was just acquired. I know what that usually means: layoffs. And so it would seem that I needed to thank God for unanswered prayers.

And yet, as I enter this new phase of my life, I’m trying to stand back and go into “half-time.” I need to get back into that locker room with God and let Him tell me what He wants me to do in the second half. He has been putting things on my heart that I have forgotten about. He also allowed me–and maybe pushed me into–a few things that would seem to be practice for something yet future in my life.

My wife has a book by Billy Graham called Day by Day with Billy Graham which are little daily devotionals. She handed it to me yesterday morning and told me to read the one for that day, my birthday, April 22.

Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything; tell God your needs and don’t forget to thank Him for His answers. –Philippians 4:6 (TLB).

Historians will probably call our era “the age of anxiety.” Anxiety is the natural result when our hopes are centered in anything short of God and His will for us. When we make anything else our goal, frustration and defeat are inevitable. Though we have less to worry about than our previous generations, we have more worry. Though we have it easier than our forefathers, we have more uneasiness. Though we have less real cause for anxiety than our predecessors, we are inwardly more anxious. Calloused hands were the badge of the pioneer, but a furrowed brow is the insignia of modern man. God has never promised to remove all our troubles, problems, and difficulties. In fact, sometimes I think the truly committed Christian is in conflict with the society around him more than any other person. Society is going in one direction, and the Christian is going in the opposite direction. This brings about friction and conflict. But God has promised, in the midst of trouble and conflict, a genuine peace, a sense of assurance and security, that the worldly person never knows.

May He Increase!