7 but you give us victory over our enemies,
you put our adversaries to shame.
8 In God we make our boast all day long,
and we will praise your name forever. Psalm 44:7-8

To rewrite what former Senator Alan Simpson once said:

“With God on your side, nothing else matters. With God NOT on your side, nothing else matters.”

For most of us reading this, God is the sustaining force in our lives. We all know we can have victory and that we should praise His name early and often, but unfortunately life tends to bear down on us equally as often. So, what to do?

Throughout the day today (I write these posts usually the night before you read them) I was thinking of James 4:8 and I kept rolling the main phrase around in my head: “Come close to God and He will come close to you.” While on a 3-month assignment in Harrogate England in the late 1980s, the preacher in the base chapel began and ended every worship service with those exact words.

In fact, as I thought about those words, it occurred to me that they are perhaps the foundation of Christian living. If we practiced that one task daily, our marriages would be better, our children would be happier, we’d be happier, and people would notice a difference in our lives. Then when they ask about it, it would give us an opportunity to boast about Him yet again.

I know it seems like a simplistic “formula” for the Christian life, but if practiced, it can only yield positive results.

Let me repeat the phrase so you can burn it into your memory: “come close to God and He will come close to you.”