Marissa Henley

Encouraging weary women to hope in Christ alone

The Lord Will Fulfill His Purposes for You {No Matter What Monday}

by Leave a Comment

psalm-138-8

Am I the only mom who hates Chutes and Ladders? It’s the board game that never ends! You finally get your cardboard kid up to the 80s or 90s, and then you hit that giant chute back to the bottom. You might get lucky and hit a ladder or two along the way. But those chutes are enough to make me crazy. It feels like there will never be a winner.

Do you ever feel that way about the Christian life? You start to make some progress exercising self-control over your thoughts or your actions, but then you mess up. You practice kindness and gentleness with your children for a couple of days, but it doesn’t last and your temper erupts. You dig into God’s Word or sit with Him in prayer for a few mornings in a row and then go back to hitting the snooze button.

Little ladders up, giant chutes down.

Psalm 138:8: The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.

Today’s Scripture brings comfort to our chute-like moments. The Lord will fulfill His purpose for you. Yes, there will be ups and downs. There will be mistakes with consequences. There will be successes that seem short-lived. But because of the Lord’s steadfast love for you, He will not forsake the work of His hands. And you are the work of His hands.

Each and every one of His purposes for you will be fulfilled. He can even bring purpose to us as we sit on our bottoms at the end of a chute. Even there, His grace will find us.

No matter what you face this week, the Lord will fulfill His purposes for you.

Share

God Will Never Leave You {No Matter What Monday}

by Leave a Comment

hebrews-13-5

I was halfway down the mountain and didn’t know what to do next. I was cold, tired and scared. And I was alone.

It was my first-ever ski trip, a church youth group trip during my sophomore year of high school. After a few runs down the bunny slopes, our college-aged chaperone took us up to the top of the mountain for our first real run. She paired up the new skiers with those who had experience, and she assigned me to the guy who had dumped me just weeks before. Perfect.

As you can imagine, he wasn’t too interested in offering words of encouragement as he skied slowly down the mountain beside me. It took him about five minutes to decide he was out of there, and off he went. I was on my own, forced to figure out how to get down all by myself.

We’re often tempted to view our grown-up trials in the same way. We want to believe God is with us. But sometimes it feels like we’re taking so long to work through our issues that we wonder if God will get bored and move on. Or we’re in the throes of suffering and can’t imagine why God hasn’t rescued us from our circumstances. We feel abandoned and alone.

But God isn’t like the 16-year-old boy who left me on the ski run.

Hebrews 13:5: {God} will never leave you nor forsake you.

Whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, the Lord is by your side. In Him, you have everything you need to face your struggles. His love for you will never waver, and His faithfulness will never come to an end. He will finish the good work He began in you.

No matter what you face this week, God will never leave you.

Share

God is For Us {No Matter What Monday}

by Leave a Comment

romans-8-31Do you ever feel like your life is you against the world?

You vs. The little people in your house whose behavior threatens to sabotage your sanity.

You vs. The co-worker who undermines your work at every step.

You vs. The slow driver in front of you when you’re already running late.

You vs. The fallenness of our world manifested in sin, illness, and death.

Who or what is your nemesis this week? Take a minute and fill in the blank. This week, it feels like you vs. _____________________.

Then draw your hope and courage from Romans 8:31: What then can we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

In this verse, Paul proclaims that God is for us as a response to the truth he’s just finished talking about in previous verses. He’s told us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That God works all things for the good of those who are called according to His purpose. That God foreknew us, predestined us, called us, justified us, and glorified us by His grace. (See Romans 8:1-30.)

If all this is true (and so much more!), there’s other conclusion to draw other than this: God is for us. And if God, the sovereign and powerful Creator and Sustainer, is for us, then who can be against us?

The answer is no one. People and circumstances come against us and appear to win sometimes, but the truth is that no one can successfully come against those who are in Christ. God takes what others mean for evil and use it for good in our lives, to sanctify us, refine us, and conform us to the image of His Son. (See Genesis 50:20 and Romans 8:29.) As Paul goes on to answer his own question, he shouts from the rooftops that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39). Your children’s misbehavior, your co-worker’s schemes, that driver in front of you, this fallen world—whatever your nemesis is this week—none of these can successfully thwart the Lord’s plans for you.

No matter what you face this week, God is for you.

Share

Perfect Peace is Found in the Rock Eternal {No Matter What Monday}

by Leave a Comment

Isaiah 26-3-4

We were two college freshman, thrown together into a tiny dorm room by the luck of the draw. After a rocky semester of figuring each other out, we were forced to inhabit each other’s space for hours on end with no escape. No classes, no meetings, no parties to separate us. Just one common goal: to pass our first set of semester final exams. Tension ran high in our hearts and in our third-floor dorm room.

One night, my roommate wrote out a verse and taped it to our wall:

“You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3).

This verse got us through those sleepless nights of studying, and it has comforted me during many anxious nights since. When the cares of my heart are more burdensome than college exams, my comfort has grown because of the verse that follows:

“Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord is an everlasting rock” (Isaiah 26:4).

What struggles, relationships or challenges are threatening your peace right now? Do you find it difficult to keep your focus on the Lord? I do.

When my peace is washed away by the waves of life, I can cling to the everlasting rock. My mind is not steadfast, and I struggle to trust Him. But the Lord is steadfast. He strengthens my faith and pours out His perfect peace into my troubled soul.

He is faithful, even when we are not. And as He pours out His peace over and over again, our trust will grow and our minds will be more steadily focused on the source of our hope and peace: the Lord, the Rock eternal.

No matter what you face this week, perfect peace is found in the Lord, the Rock eternal.

Share