Stuff

April 28

Don't sweat the small stuff. - Richard Carlson

Perhaps you, too, have heard the little addendum to Carlson's quote, "...and it's all small stuff." We are inclined to make mountains out of mole hills. We place great import upon things that seem to loom before us as if they are great obstacles to our progress. As we do that, we are forgetting that the Christ we love and serve is greater than all our mountains!

JESUS, is not only greater than our mountains, HE, JESUS HAS GIVEN US THE POWER TO THROW THEM DOWN! (Matthew 21:21, 22) Sometimes we forget that unchanging truth. Why we do is a mystery of the human psyche that seems to take satisfaction in sustaining its own misery. Certainly, if we rationalize away the Lord's matchless power in our behalf we can wallow in the down side of life. We can rationalize our depression, our anxiety, our sense of hopelessness. But if we allow ourselves to see our mountains as Jesus has given us authority to do, we can replace those negative mindsets with the up-lifting ones of optimism, and peace and confident expectation!

When we have been in the presence of people who perceive us negatively, we often come away with a diminished concept of who we are in Christ and what we are able to accomplish through Him. This word comes primarily to remind believers that we are NOT who the nay-sayers and accusers perceive us to be. We are WHO JESUS SAYS WE ARE!

In their petty little minds, we may be flawed merchandise. In their sphere of reckoning, we may be beneath their approval. In their self-righteousness, we may be beyond redemption—but to Jesus, we are not flawed, we are forgiven; to Jesus, we are not unacceptable, we are precious in the beloved; to Jesus we are not standing on our own failed goodness, we are established on HIS UNFAILING RIGHTEOUSNESS! (Romans 3:22)

So regarding them—whether they receive us with feigned delight or whether they turn their backs to us as though we are anathema to them—they are the 'small stuff' that we don't need to sweat. They are small people with small minds and very small hearts who have no room within them for the love and forgiveness Jesus holds out to whoever will receive His gifts, who recognize they have no love and forgiveness of their own but abound in those precious commodities when they allow Christ to truly reign within them.

Today—no matter what transpired yesterday—we must allow our minds and hearts and spirits to be filled with the hope and peace and truth and faith and joy and love that come with being open to Jesus. We must vow again today that we will never shut Him out, never exclude Him from our interaction with people nor from our perception of ourselves. Today—no matter what transpired yesterday—we must allow ourselves to be holy and wholly the Lord's so we may brush aside with ease the ‘small stuff’ and get on with perfecting the real stuff of life.