It’s been a challenging week trying to balance the kids’ school schedule with the Farmer’s Markets and delivering fruit to customers while looking after my ferocious 2 year old, Cruz. Another week of wrestling to find the time to sit down and blog. Actually, I wrote a post this morning, but have decided it’s too political so I won’t publish it. I don’t want to hash out politics, I want to encourage here. I find politics discouraging these days. John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” It sure would be great if we could all get back to that mentality in America. Kennedy also shamelessly asked the Almighty God to guide our country in his 1961 Inaugural Address. Kennedy wasn’t a perfect president, but he pointed to a Perfect God saying let’s follow Him.

Kennedy ended his Inaugural address this way, “Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

On this historical note, I’ve decided to share with you a devotion out of Springs in the Valley by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman first published in 1939. Many of you are probably familiar with Streams in the Desert, Cowman’s bestselling devotional, which is my favorite devotional of all time, but maybe you haven’t heard of Cowman’s follow up Springs in the Valley. Before I share the devotion, I want to tell you about this morning, how my 20 year old daughter had a job interview she felt didn’t go well. In tears, she called me from her car in the parking lot after the interview.

“Honey,” I told her, “You love the Lord and He will order your steps. You’ll get this job if God wants you to have it so let’s say a prayer together.” I prayed with her, then hung up the phone thinking about all the closed doors I’d run into in my life, and the few open doors I’d walked through. Doors meant for me.

Sitting down for my afternoon moment with the Lord a little while ago, I opened the Springs in the Valley devotional by chance to the Sept. 1 entry that reads: “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD” Psalm 37:23, which is the very same scripture I prayed this morning with my daughter! I love it when God does that.

The rest of the entry reads:

We often make a great mistake thinking that God is not guiding us at all because we cannot see far ahead. But He only undertakes that the steps of a good man should be ordered by the Lord; not next year, but tomorrow; not for the next mile, but the next yard, as you will acknowledge when you review it from the hilltops of Glory.

“The stops of a good man, as well as his steps, are ordered by the Lord,” said George Muller. Naturally an opened door seems more like guidance to us than a closed one. Yet God may guide by the latter as definitely as by the former. His guidance of the children of Israel by the pillar of cloud and of fire is a clear case in point. When the cloud was lifted the Israelites took up their march: it was the guidance of God to move onward. But when the cloud tarried and abode upon the tabernacle, then the people rested in their tents. Both the tarrying and the journeying were guidance from the Lord– the one as much as the other.

I shall never be able to go too fast if the Lord is in front of me; and I can never go too slowly if I follow Him always, everywhere. It is just as dark in advance of God’s glorious leading as it is away behind Him.

You may be trying to go faster than He is moving. Wait till He comes up and then the way will no longer lie in darkness. He has left footprints for us to follow. Make no footprints of thine own!

So I encourage you today, don’t get upset about the closed doors. Just keep step with God until He opens the right door for you.

p.s. our daughter got the job!