Wednesday... What we long for can be a good thing.

But it can also be something that can hurt us.

I'm sitting in my Starbucks writing this and a guy asked me if the Honda motorcycle out front was mine and I said it wasn't. And he then said that he was just getting back to work after an accident on his motorcycle that he had totaled but he was longing for his next one. There can be something that we long for that can be dangerous but it is still what we want.

Now I'm not saying that motorcycles are bad but they can be dangerous. So what are you longing for?

David in Psalm 42:1 (NLT) says, "As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for God." Now a deer needs water to survive. That is a longing that is of great benefit to the deer and the same is true of our longing for God. He then says in verse 2a, "I thirst for God, the living God."

Now what we long for has a way of controlling us. It is where our battles for control come in.

I love donuts but I found that for me to be healthy meant that I had to control my longing for donuts. People ask, "What do you want to eat?" and I say, "I can't have what I want to eat. I want donuts."

What is happened is that I have a deeper longing for being healthy and living a long life than I do donuts. I have let another longing control my first one.

Now David says in verse 11, "Why am I so discouraged? Why is my heart sad?" Somehow he was longing for something that he couldn't get and he was discouraged and sad. We do that, don't we? But then he said, "I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again - my Savior and my God!" He reevaluated his longing and his hope and put them in God.

So are you discouraged, are you sad? Maybe we need to reevaluate our longings on a regular basis, especially when we are always discouraged and sad.

Verse 11 in The Message paraphrase says, "Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul? Why are you crying the blues? Fix my eyes on God - soon I'll be praising again. He puts a smile on my face. He's my God." Now that is a longing that is a very, very good thing. Yes, yes! #todaysbeginning

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Tuesday... It is so worth it. It really is!

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Todays Beginning

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