A person I know has experienced setback after setback, and he is very confused why he can’t seem to get ahead in life. He is the kind of man that will literally give a person in need the shirt off his back, and he tries to treat everyone with respect. “I’m doing the best I can!” he said despondently, as he was facing a disappointing situation yet again. Many of us have experienced seasons where life feels this way. It’s a condition that exists when there’s a cycle that continually engulfs the circumstances of our lives, and we can’t seem to break loose from it. The question this gentle soul and many of us must ask ourselves is whether we really honestly and truly believe it’s possible for things to change. If we do believe this, the next thing we must ask ourselves is whether we believe we can change with them.

Romans 12:12(NLT) tells us to “Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying.” We are to be happy about our everyday lives specifically because of our hope in God. Our responsibility as believers is to trust and believe God’s Word! Period! If God says it, then it must be so. This should be our attitude, but it is very challenging to have this attitude and to feel happy when you are constantly in fear of disappointment; when you feel like you’re always taking one step forward, only to be knocked two steps back. A person might suspect this is the way their life is supposed to work. They may not feel as though they were born with a purpose and that they have it within themselves to impact the world with this purpose in a very positive way. Instead, they feel a bit like a punching bag, just waiting to get knocked down in the next round.

The truth is that each of us has a purpose that is meaningful and impactful to God’s plan for the entire universe. Our lives were not created to be punching bags. We are here upon this earth to be fulfilled, happy, and to spread this brand of joyous hope through Christ to everyone we meet!

Deep within all of us is a huge testimony waiting to come out. It is the testimony that speaks the truth about who God created us to be and what He created us to do. It tells the story of the rewards we’ll receive as we journey forward in affirming who we are and whose we are. This is a fundamental truth. In other words, this is a truth that adds to the foundation that will support your destiny. So, when a person makes the statement, “I’m doing the best I can…”, what they are really saying is “I’m doing the best I can with the knowledge I have right now.” When we know more about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we can do better; but we can’t do better if we don’t know more.

The mind must be renewed, and not only this, we must spend more time with Heavenly Father. If life makes you feel like a perpetual punching bag, this is a calling card to know more about the Lord Jesus Christ, so that you can walk with his authority. We can’t gain authority if the knowledge of God’s Word is not deeply anchored in our hearts and minds.

Philippians 2:10(NLT) tells us, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” Talk about authority, this is it! There’s no greater name in the earth. It has no equal, and Jesus has given us the authority to use his name and to live by the power of the Holy Spirit that backs it. But we must trust and believe in his power, and we also must recognize that sometimes our minds tell us we’re believing when something completely different is going on in our hearts.

Take the Book of Malachi for instance. It’s the last Book of the Old Testament, and many biblical scholars refer to it as the Biblical Years of Silence. There were over 400 years between the Book of Malachi and the Book of Matthew, and there wasn’t a peep—no record of anyone who lived during that span of time that did anything of significance for the Kingdom of God. The people abandoned the very disciplines and statues that God instituted to protect, prosper, and cover them. And the crazy thing about this is that they didn’t see where they had done anything wrong.

God told them in Malachi 1:6(NLT), “A son honors his father, and a servant respects his master. If I am your father and master, where are the honor and respect I deserve? You have shown contempt for my name!” Their response to Heavenly Father was, “but we’re doing the best that we can. How are we showing contempt for Your name?” God had given them specific instructions to follow about offering sacrifices, but they stopped paying attention to details and began to offer blind, crippled, and diseased animals, something God had told them specifically not to do.

They weren’t offering God their best but had convinced themselves that they were. This is the question that is before many of us today, are we truly offering God our best? He knows when we’re not spending quality time with Him, and He also knows how much this hinders our ability to walk with His strength and power in our lives. He tells us in Psalm 91:1(NLT), “Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” To live in His shelter requires us to stay in His shadow; we must stay close to His presence. He will bless us when we’re doing the best we can, but He desires us to recognize that through Him, we can do more than we think. When we take the limitations off our potential, we will also take the limitations off our rewards.

BELIEVE HIS WORD!■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

“I’m Doing the Best I Can!”, written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2019. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.