Daily
Devotional

My daughter got me started on Sudoku puzzles—the puzzles where you write numbers into a grid in a particular pattern. The grid is partially completed to begin with, so you use those numbers as clues to solve the rest of the pattern.  

At first it was frustrating; it did not make sense to me at all and I was not sure it was worth my time to learn how to solve them. I started at the easy level, but it was too hard! Finally, I decided I should read the directions and look over the suggested ideas for solving the puzzles. The directions said to simply use the process of elimination until there is only one possible number that could go in a particular square. Once you complete one section of the grid, it opens the door to figuring out the rest of the squares. What seemed so hopeless and discouraging began to make sense to me.

As I worked on my puzzle and started to see it come together, I got excited. I thought, I can do this! It reminded me of how, when we start out serving the Lord, there are many questions about what we should do and why. However, the Bible gives us the directions we need to be successful. It tells us that after salvation we are to move on to receive sanctification, which removes the sinful nature from our hearts. Then we are told to receive the precious infilling of the Holy Spirit so we can be powerfully used of God. As we simply follow these steps, victory is sure!

Our directions from God do not end with those three experiences. Problems come up every day, and God has a solution for them all. In our focus verse, James tells us that if we lack wisdom, we can ask God and He will give it to us liberally. That means we can have specific guidance from God for every “puzzle” we face in life. We also read in Matthew 6:33 that we are to seek first the Kingdom of God. The way becomes clear as we put God first, and once we have everything in the right order, God can bless us. God has many exciting plans in store for us as we stick to His directions.

When I finish a Sudoku puzzle, I look in the back of the book to find that I solved the puzzle correctly—I won! In a way, Christians can do that too. In the last chapter of the Bible, we read that we will win if we simply follow God’s directions: “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14).