06/15/2026
From the desk of Pastor George Balderrama Jr
Good Morning Brothers and Sisters ✝️🩸🕊️🔥🛡️🗡️🙏🙌
Just sharing a devotional from a dear friend that I pray edifies and encourages you as it did for me😇❤️
In his "One minute uplift," newsletter, Rick Ezell tells this story: "A university professor tells of being invited to speak at a military base in December and their meeting an unforgettable soldier named Ralph. Ralph had been sent to meet him at the airport; and after they had introduced themselves, they headed toward the baggage claim. As they walked down the concourse, Ralph kept disappearing - once to help an older woman whose suitcase had fallen open, once to lift two toddlers up to where they could see Santa Claus, and again to give directions to someone who was lost. Each time he came back with a big smile on his face. "Where did you learn to do that?" The professor asked. "Do what?" Ralph said. "To be so helpful and considerate to others.” "Oh," Ralph said, "during the war, I guess.” "Then he told the professor about his tour of duty in Vietnam, about how it was his job to clear minefields, and how he watched his friends blow up before his eyes, one after another. "I learned to live between steps," he said. "I ever knew whether the next one would be my last, so I learned to get everything I could out of the moment between when I picked up my foot and when I put it down again. Every step I took was a whole new world, and I guess I've just been that way ever since.” He finished by saying this: "A grace-filled life is living between the steps. It understands the remarkable gift of today.”
In other words, a grace-filled life recognizes that God is present not only in the destination but also in the journey. Many people spend their lives trapped between two thieves: Regret over yesterday and anxiety about tomorrow. One author wrote that life is what happens while we're busy making other plans. How many sunsets have we missed while worrying about tomorrow? How many conversations have we hurried through because our minds were somewhere else? God calls us to live in the moment, to live for today. Jesus said it this way in Matthew 6:34: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” The encouragement of Jesus here is to live in peace without worrying about the future and to stop borrowing trouble that is either real or perceived. If there’s something happening next week, month or year, why are we messing up today by worrying about it? God alone knows what will happen to us. We worry about things we cannot control. Worry cannot change the past and it cannot control the future. Worry only makes us miserable today. Corrie ten Boom said: "Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.” Unnecessary worrying and imagining the worst possible scenario will strangle and dry up our faith.
Each day there is just enough that God gives us to take care of and nothing more or less is expected of us. For those of us who deal with fatigue, burnout, weariness and worry, we must learn to live one day at a time. God wants us to trust Him for today. David writes in Psalms 56:3, "When I am afraid, I will put my trust in You." In other words, we will lean on, rely on, rest in, surrender to, depend on and relax in God's presence. God does give us grace and God does give us His strength, but He does so incrementally, as we need it. The prophet Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 3:22-23: "His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning." Every sunrise is evidence that God has not given up on us.
Every morning comes with fresh grace. Grace slows us down enough to see that God is already here. The miracle is not merely that God has a plan for our future. The miracle is that He is present in this moment, offering us the remarkable gift of today. Do we plan? Yes. Do we learn from the past? Yes. But are we called by God to drain everything we can out of every moment that we live in? Absolutely.
Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not yet here, which means that today is all we have. Let us commit ourselves to simply live for Christ using the the redeeming and remarkable gift we have for today. Let us pray: “Father, we believe in You to take care of today and trust You completely with tomorrow.”
https://youtu.be/C7BtGs1w6hA?is=TLAaqKH_bSt6nHSM
