Daily Devotional – 5/10/13 “What about you?”

Have you ever stopped and wondered why you aren’t getting the things you need? Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you’re missing your blessing because you’re too busy letting folks get in front of you? Yea, you’re so busy praying for other folks that you don’t ever take the time to pray for yourself when baby, can’t nobody pray for you better than you can pray for yourself. Stop blaming folk for what’s going on in your life because if you stop putting it all on Facebook, stop gossiping with those loose lip friends, stop tweeting everything that’s happening and stop making text grams for Instagram no one would know about your problems anyway. Then you got the audacity to be mad because folk are talking about you but weren’t you the one that gave them all the information? Then why are you mad? All I’m saying is, sometimes you miss your blessing because you’ve either talked yourself out of it or you’ve allowed someone else to get it. Haven’t you realized by now that when you speak stuff like, “I’m broke, I’m tired, I’m sick, I’m depressed, I’m a drug addict, I’m an alcoholic or I can’t find a job;” you’re speaking those things over your life? Why not say, “I’m temporarily out of funds” which means your situation won’t last? Why not say “I’m not feeling my best but I’m living,” which means your greater is coming? Why not say, “I have a problem but I know God to be a solver,” which means your help is on the way? Why not say, “I’m without a job for the moment but I’m looking for my career,” which means you’ve asked and waiting on God to answer? Oh and stop trying to raise folk up because that isn’t for you to do because if you keep putting folks on a pedestal they may just be getting the blessing God is dropping on you. Right now is the time for you to lift yourself up. No, I don’t mean for you to brag on yourself all the time but speak some stuff into your own life some time! You don’t have to stop helping when you’re needed, encouraging whoever needs it or being a shoulder for folks but take a little time for yourself and be where you need to be in order to receive what God has for you.

Stop waiting on folk to encourage you, encourage yourself! Stop allowing folk to speak negative things over your life, who are they anyway? See, it shouldn’t have to take someone telling you you’re smart before you believe it. It shouldn’t take me telling you that you can be somebody before you know it for yourself and it shouldn’t take validation from a man or woman to know that you’re beautiful or handsome when you should look in the mirror and see all of this for yourself. Stop allowing the way the world thinks to corrupt who you are because Genesis 1:27 says, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” If God wanted you to look like everybody else, he wouldn’t have made different races, shapes, sizes and ethnic backgrounds but because of technology, media and reality TV, we’ve stop believing in ourselves and think the way things are on TV are the way things are supposed to be for us. Humph, those folks are having it harder because they have to put on a face every day to be something they are not when God proclaimed in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.” You are capable of doing, of having, of becoming, of being whatever you choose to be but you have to want it, believe it and then go get it! Stop being anything other than who you’ve been destined, designed and delivered to be.