The NIV 365 Day Devotional

Hope in a Higher Power

God offers us the hope we need along our journey.

Our Higher Power is the one and only true Higher Power—and he has a name: Jesus Christ. In the past you may have believed in Jesus’ existence and even attended church. But have you had a personal relationship with Christ? Jesus desires a hands-on, day-to-day, moment-by-moment intimacy with us. We’ll begin to understand that he can do for us what we’ve never been able to do for ourselves. That’s what Romans 11:36 is telling us.

We can’t complete anything unless we start. Jesus informs us in Matthew 17:20 just how much faith we need in order to get going: “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

It’s reassuring to know that we don’t need a heaping helping of faith to begin our relationship with him. We need only a smidgen—“faith as small as a mustard seed”—for God to get busy effecting change in our hearts. If we’re only willing to utilize whatever faith we can muster in Jesus, our lives will be changed. We’ll find the courage to reach out and take hold of Christ’s hand, so that we can face the present with confidence and the future with realistic expectancy.

Taken from the NIV Celebrate Recovery Study Bible.