When You Aren't Promised Tomorrow...

You learn that you have to live in victory today!

James 4:13-14, " Now listen, you who say,' Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." 

I was strapping on my shoes this morning doing my usual routine of submitting to the Holy Spirit and putting on each piece of the armor of God and the title of this blog hit me like a ton of bricks. What if tomorrow doesn't come for me? The answer, well, honestly I thought wow, all I have to think about is today and if that's the case, hey, I can do that. It's just one day, right? I know that seems morbid and weird but for someone who struggles everyday with questions like, what does the future hold, will I be able to walk tomorrow, will I even be able to get out of bed and function tomorrow...this is a HUGE relief!

When you look at the word of God there are so many scriptures pertaining to doing things daily. Submitting to the Holy Spirit, daily. Renewing our minds, daily. Putting on the armor of God, daily. This list keeps going and going. Every promise that was made if looked at in the light of today is in effect. If you really think about it, why did Jesus say to renew our minds daily? Why is submission to the Holy Spirit a daily struggle and commitment? Also, do you sleep in armor? I guess we could, but it'd be extremely uncomfortable! We let our guard down and take off our armor and so then we'd have to strap it back on the next day right?

A month ago, I was leading worship and my neck paralyzed right in the middle of me leading a song called " Lord Over All" crazy. I'll tell you what, when your neck paralyzes in front of 1,000 people and almost takes you to the ground multiple times, you'd better believe what you are singing! The next week we were told after 3 years of believing that God healed me of ms that there was an active lesion in the top of my spine causing all the problems. We were told that we'd better start looking at picking up meds for ms again etc, etc. We were also told our only option to stop the inflammation was to up the current steroid that I'm on for my adrenal glands in the hopes to get it to stop.

In the midst of that, a week later, after 3 years of taking the benzo drug that I am currently weaning off of, I completely forgot to take my morning dose and by mid-morning, while at church, I could barely get to the car to get home! I automatically dropped 10% of the meds and my body went into shock! So we thought it might be a good idea to try and stay at that level for week and see if my body would stabilize. If we did that, then I would gain about 10 weeks on this wean, awesome right??? Not so much. By Thursday, I could barely walk or function so we decided to just go up by 5% and my body has been stabilizing slowly but surely, praise God!

We asked God when we went to the neurologist that He would reveal truth that would set us free. Well, we got truth, but freedom is still in the fact that we believe that God has already healed me of ms despite what we see and have been told. So at this time we are not going back on medications for it. Our options were slim and we are doing some natural things and trusting in that word that was spoken so clearly almost 3 years ago.

Every day is a fight to keep our heads above the waves. BUT, if I know all I have to do is worry about today, then I can make a choice to submit and surrender and trust in God for that day and live it to the fullest instead of just trying to survive. When I start thinking about tomorrow, that all goes out the window because I don't have the strength for tomorrow. I only have the strength and grace for today because that is what God has given me. His mercies are new every morning, DAILY.

Matthew 6:34, " Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." 

Oh so very true! So let's take God at His word, submit, surrender, armor up and walk in His mercies and promises and grace that He has provided for today. Renewing our minds to the fact that today is today and we can choose to embrace what God is saying about us or not. Then we can lay our heads down tonight knowing that if tomorrow doesn't come, we lived in victory today.