JEWELS FROM THE WORD

Mama used to raise chickens and ducks. Oh, I loved those little babies in the incubator in the warm winter kitchen. The little ducks would flop around in the water, knowing instinctively that they should be swimming, while the baby chicks would do all they could to get away from the water, except to drink a little drop now and then. Somehow those chicks knew water would kill them, because they were not created to swim. Chicken feathers get wet and stringy, while duck feathers shed the water.

What kills one lifts the other to his destiny. What wounds one heart until it cannot be healed rolls off another heart.

Instead of grieving over the troubles that come our way, the insults of those who don’t understand us, we can learn to face them head on and let them roll over us and down our backs and off us—like water off a duck’s back. Those things can’t hurt us when we act that way.

As James 1:2 NKJV says, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.” The word ‘count’ is a mathematic term. So maybe it isn’t joy when it happens, but we can count it as joy. Act like it is and call it joy.

The very thing that was sent to drown us will lift us up by our “duck feathers” and float us to our destiny. The human reaction is to defend ourselves, argue, fight, complain about the injustices that life brings us, but the spiritual action is to rejoice.

Decide in advance that you are going to act, not react. If you have a plan of action in advance, when those trials come your way, you will instinctively do what you plan to do.

Let the trials of life float you to your destiny.