KICKSTART DEVOTIONAL
EVERY WEEKDAY AT 11 AM CST ON FACEBOOK LIVE
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On every Mission Discovery trip, we begin the morning together in God’s word. One speaker is chosen to give the word of the day so that everyone else can meditate on the Scripture. Our hope is that volunteers engage in group discussions throughout the day and in their small groups.
Since the way ministry is being done has shifted, our goal is to serve by creating resources that will help others focus on God throughout the day, and influence family and small group discussion.
Join us every weekday as we explore God’s word together. We will have speakers from all over the US and the world. Here is today’s Kickstart Devotional.
Video: Kody Woodard // While We Wait
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While We Wait
Hey my name is Kody Woodard, the lead pastor at Renovation Church in Gallatin, Tennessee. Just honored that I get the opportunity to share a little bit about what God’s been putting on my heart during this season. I love Mission Discovery. I’ve been a partner and a friend of Mission Discovery now for quite a few years, going back to even when I was a youth pastor. We got to have the opportunity to go to Port au Prince, Haiti together, and then also to Tecate, Mexico, which was a life changing experience. What I wanted to talk to you about this morning was really, a part of a message I gave a few weeks ago about what to do while we wait.
The truth is that we’re in this waiting season where we’re literally quarantined and we’re just waiting to get back to our normal routine. And what I would say is that I would wish that this would never happen again. And there’s been a lot of devastation around it. I do believe that God is using it and God can teach us some things in this season. So today, I just wanted to talk about the first thing I think we do while we wait, and that’s pray. Not to be cliche, but I think it does start with prayer because frequently, prayer becomes our last resort rather than our first response.
So today, I’d like to read to you from Philippians 4:4-7:
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
So, he says to not be anxious about anything but in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present our request to God. So here’s what I want to encourage you with in this situation: if you’re feeling anxious, if you’re feeling worried, pray. What do we pray about we pray? About everything, because if it matters to us it matters to God.
Jesus asks us to cast our anxiety on him because he cares for us. So in this situation, one of the first things God calls us to do is to pray because prayer is a reflection of trust. Prayer is the moment where you and I say God we are not in control. We are believing that you are in control. So God we need you in this moment. And so we start with thanking God for all that He’s done with thanksgiving. It says we thank him for what he’s doing now.
And then we ask God. We present our request to him knowing that he is faithful to hear our prayer and when we seek Him with our whole heart as Jeremiah 29 says, we will surely find Him. Then it says that the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ. You know one of the things God’s been teaching me about peace in this season is that peace isn’t found in the absence of fear. Peace is found in the presence of Jesus.
The story that comes to mind here is when Peter is out in the boat and there’s a storm going on. A lot of times the reason why you and I don’t have peace is because we attach our peace or understanding to knowing what’s going on, or when something’s gonna happen.
But what God’s taught me in this season is that if I really want to have peace, I will not find my peace in what I know but in who I know. God says that we find our peace in Him.
So it’s not about what. It’s not about knowing when or knowing where or even understanding how. But when you don’t know what to do when you’re feeling anxious, it’s about focusing on who.
Prayer shifts our perspective. See you and I, we process information from the bottom up. When you and I find ourselves in a season like this one, we process it but based upon what we see, what we know, and what we understand. But, prayer will flip your perspective on its head. What prayer does is it allows you an eye not to see things from the bottom up, but the top down. So this is what it means in Colossians when it says to fix your eyes on Jesus, not on earthly things, but on Christ who is seated on the throne.
So prayer allows us to be reminded that even though we’re out of control, God is still in control. He still sits on the throne. So, now we can view things from a heavenly perspective instead of from an earthly perspective. So that’s my hope for us today; that we would invite God into our lives, into this situation and say: God when we’re out of control and when we’re anxious, we trust you.
We trust that you’re still in control. We trust that somehow you will take what the enemy meant for evil and turn it for good. We trust that you are going to use this time to help us focus on you.
So today I just wanted to encourage you to start with prayer. Pray about everything. Thank God for what he has done and what he is doing. Prayer causes us to be grateful. It’s to be grateful for everything he has done. So I just wanna encourage you with that today.
What do you have to be grateful for? What has God done in your life in the past that you need to apply to the present? This is the key: when you don’t have peace, focus on who God is, not what we know. What we can do then is borrow God’s faithfulness from the past and apply it to the present, believing that if he was faithful, then he will be faithful now.
