Taking a cue from one of my favorite Beatles’ songs, I wanted to share a couple of snippets from my life today – and how God met me at various times.

5:30 am – The alarm goes off! Ugh! I am still tired. My sleep was restless. No wonder! I test my blood sugar and I am LOW. I am going into a mild insulin shock. I gulp down some apple juice and make a half a peanut butter sandwich. “God, diabetes is hard. Always a battle and always a balancing act.” But it has taught me so much and made me more disciplined.

7:00 am – After working out at the gym, I get ready to take a shower. Letty is playing her daily Scripture verses on her phone while doing her hair. I recognize the verse. Colossians 3:23 – “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as if you were serving God, not man.” Good reminder. I’m not serving a man or “the man” or this man (me), but God. Also, “serving” is one of the words for “worship.” Serving and worshiping God is one life act at a time. We’ll see how this pans out today.

7:50 am – I’m getting on the freeway and it’s backed up on the on-ramp! I wish I could get off, but I can’t. Tine to make a choice: I can either whine and weasel my way into the fastest lane (which there isn’t one) OR I can use this time to exercise a spiritual discipline to get closer to God. The Spirit wins this time! I choose to enter into Silent Prayer after praying the Lord’s Prayer. It’s hard at first, but after a few moments I sense Presence. A thought comes into mind, “Where you are going is less important than where you are.” That is so right! I’m with the Lord. There’s no better place to be. After 10 minutes, the traffic opens up and I get to where I’m going in ample time – but with a good attitude because I had a God-moment.

9:00 am – I’m having my personal worship time. Just read Isaiah 20. But nothing really sticks out, except some thoughts how the prophecy of Is 19 was fulfilled: the once proud dynasty of Egypt falls to the Assyrians. But in my journaling time, I feel moved to pray: Lord, I need to get some major things done this week. Please help me!

10:15 am – One of those major things is getting fitted for a black suit. I need to have it in time for a dinner with the President of South Korea next week. And it can’t be too expensive. I go to a discount suit shop. They find me a suit that fits me perfectly (just the pants need to be taken up). It’s on sale (70% off) and they can have the alterations done by … tomorrow!! Wow – my spirit was just lifted up. Thank you, Lord!

2:30 pm – Another major task is making 15 copies of my unpublished book (“Whole Life Worship”) for a Worship Leader’s Training meeting. So I make copies (it took awhile) and I head over to the binding machine at the Children’s Ministry office. The Children’s Ministry Team teach me how to use the machine – they are so gracious. But the machine is temperamental. As it makes the holes, it doesn’t easily give up the paper. It takes a half an hour just to do one copy! At this rate I won’t be done until 2am! And I’m sure it looks funny looking in and seeing a 55 year old man wrestling paper out of a little machine – and losing! I am reminded of a verse Letty quoted to me yesterday from James 1: “and perseverance must finish its work so that you might become mature and complete, not lacking in anything.” Ok, ok, I need God’s grace and I need to persevere and become more mature about this! After the 3^rd copy, I begin to see how the machine works and why it tends to hold on to the paper. By the 7^th copy, the machine and I are not “fighting” as much and we are getting into a rhythm. I finish the task in 90 minutes – the last 10 copies take less time than the first five.

It’s 5pm now. I was dead tired 30 minutes ago when I started writing this article. But remembering how God was at work in my day has revived me! I can rejoice in today and what God has done in me and through me.

It’s so good to live for Jesus 24/7!