AUGUST 2, 2026

  “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” 

― John Wooden

"Don't blink, just like that your six years old and you take a nap...trust me, friend, a hundred years goes faster than you think, so don't blink..."

- Kenny Chesney

PSALM 68-69

 32The poor will see and be glad—

you who seek God, may your hearts live!

33The Lord hears the needy and does not despise his captive people. (69:32-33)

ROMANS 3

5But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6God “will repay each person according to what they have done.”^a 7To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11For God does not show favoritism.

JOURNAL 

Before the day begins, I want to treat it as a blank canvas. Rather than filling it with my plans, expectations, worries, ambitions, memories, or regrets, I want to empty my heart before God and submit everything to Him. None of those things are necessarily wrong. Many of them are good gifts from God. But they are not meant to become the voice that directs today. They may or may not be what God has for me in this moment. So I release them, trusting that if they belong in today, His Spirit will bring them back in His timing. In that surrender, the clutter begins to fade, and I become more aware of reality as it actually is. My attention returns to the present, and it is here that I experience God most deeply, because this moment is where He has promised to meet me.

The older I get, the more songs like "Don't Blink" remind me how quickly life passes. It feels like yesterday that I was six years old, then playing football in two-a-days before school started, and now decades have slipped by almost unnoticed. The next ten, twenty, or fifty years will pass just as quickly if I am given them. That realization does not make me anxious. It makes today sacred. I do not want to waste it by living in yesterday's regrets or tomorrow's fears. I want to seek God's direction for this day alone, trusting that obedience today is the only place where life can truly be lived. Like an artist approaching an empty canvas, I want God to paint today's masterpiece through me rather than trying to force my own design upon it.

Romans reminds me that God looks not at grand intentions but at the persistent direction of the heart. Psalm 69 promises that those who seek Him will truly live. Jesus says that fruit reveals the tree. That fruit is not produced by striving to control life but by remaining connected to the One who gives it. My prayer is simply that today I would empty myself enough for His Spirit to fill me, guide me, and shape every conversation, every decision, and every ordinary moment. If I can do that, then regardless of what tomorrow holds, I will have done my best to become the person God created me to be, and this single day will not have been wasted.

 16By their fruit you will recognize them. 

MATTHEW 7:16