I can tell if a team or a person is going to be successful or not pretty quickly. Great teams and athletes show up prepared, they do their job with excellence, and they are connected. They do things the right way with the right attitude. They do things with excellence, they don’t cut corners, and they touch the line.
Being great is easy if you are on a great team and surrounded by people who want to do great things, and it can be hard if you aren’t.
How can you do the right things around people who don’t?
That was the plight Zephaniah and many in Judah found themselves in.
Zephaniah was a prophet in Judah during the reign of King Josiah. God told Zephaniah that he was going to destroy the land and everything in it unless the people started making better decisions and returned back to God. In Zephaniah 1, God said He will utterly consume everything from the face of the land, and He said He will bring distress upon men, and they will walk like blind men because they have sinned against Him.
But In chapter Zephaniah 2:3, it says, “Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth, who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden in the day of the Lord’s anger.”
Zephaniah 3:17 says, “The Lord your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”
We have two decisions to make: Follow God or don’t. Seek God or don’t. Make good choices, or don’t
When we seek and follow God, good things happen to us, through us, and around us, but choosing to seek and follow God can be hard depending on what we are doing and who we are doing it with.
Choose your friends and situations wisely, and choose to seek and follow God no matter what is going on around you. Most importantly, decide today what kind of person you want to be, and decide to do what it takes to become that person no matter who is around you.
SOMETHING(s) TO THINK ABOUT
1 - What is your biggest takeaway from Zephaniah’s message?
2 - Who is one person in your life who does things the right way? What can you learn from them, and how can you spend more time with them?
3 - Who do you want to be? What kind of person do you want to be? What do you want to do? What do you have to do to make this happen?
4 - What is the biggest obstacle in your way, and how can you overcome that obstacle?
My Prayer
Dear, God. Thank you for showing me that I can be what I want to be if I choose to seek You and follow You. Please put people in my life who will help me continue to seek and follow you, and please give me the strength and discernment to do things today that my future self will thank me for. When I fall off track, please help me quickly identify that, and help me get back on track by seeking and following you. In Jesus’s name, I pray. Amen.
For a printable PDF version of this post, click here: Zephaniah: The Two Decisions
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