Week One Part 2 - Day Two: End of Day

At times in my own journey, doubt has been chronic. If there is such a thing as a tendency toward belief, I don’t have it. In fact, the main reason I have such a high view of God’s sovereignty and control is because of my personal experience with doubt.

When I was a young man, I tried to let go of my faith. My doubts had simply gotten the best of me. They got the best of me ... but they did not get the best of God. You see, I learned that even if we try to let go of God, He will not let go of us.

My exploration of my doubts actually led to a deeper, richer faith – a faith that was all my own and not inherited from my parents; a faith that was tested and tried and could withstand life’s real difficulties; and a faith that made a real difference in the way I live. It is exactly this kind of exploration that I am advocating.

1. Survey your day today. Were there times of impatience, worry or blatant doubt today? Register those feelings and thoughts with God. Ask Him to help you.
2. Read Psalm 139:1-18 as a day ending exercise.

   (1) O LORD, you have searched me
         and you know me.
   (2) You know when I sit and when I rise;
         you perceive my thoughts from afar.
   (3) You discern my going out and my lying down;
         you are familiar with all my ways.
   (4) Before a word is on my tongue
         you know it completely, O LORD.
   (5) You hem me in—behind and before;
         you have laid your hand upon me.
   (6) Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
         too lofty for me to attain.
   (7) Where can I go from your Spirit?
         Where can I flee from your presence?
   (8) If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
         if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
   (9) If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
         if I settle on the far side of the sea,
   (10) even there your hand will guide me,
         your right hand will hold me fast.
   (11) If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
         and the light become night around me,"
   (12) even the darkness will not be dark to you;
         the night will shine like the day,
         for darkness is as light to you.
   (13) For you created my inmost being;
         you knit me together in my mother's womb.
   (14) I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
         your works are wonderful,
         I know that full well.
   (15) My frame was not hidden from you
         when I was made in the secret place.
         When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
   (16) your eyes saw my unformed body.
         All the days ordained for me
         were written in your book
         before one of them came to be.
   (17) How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
         How vast is the sum of them!
   (18) Were I to count them,
         they would outnumber the grains of sand.
         When I awake,
         I am still with you.

   – Psalm 139:1-18

3. End your day by praying this: “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.”Lights out!