Category Archives: Devotional

The Saturday Assortment #7

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The Saturday Assortment

The Saturday Assortment is a collection of unrelated and random things that I find interesting, challenging, motivating and sometimes quite out of the ordinary. It’s an assortment of things that caught my attention throughout the week. I bet you will find them equally engaging. Enjoy!

Family Devotion Ideas – threethirtyministries

Free! Easy! Fun! Family Devotion Ideas! You’ll find FUN theme ideas like Toothpaste Squeeze, Spoon Catapults and Izzy Dizzy Walking Wobble that will keep your kids wanting more family time! All devotions are based on a passage of scripture. You’ll discover clever ways to teach timeless truths in a relevant way.

Top 200 ministry blogs – Kent Shaffer 

Kent Shaffer and the team at Church Relevance has released their latest ranking of the Top 200 Ministry Blogs.

Self-Care or Self-Medication: Which path are you on? – Carey Nieuwhof 

When stress and life overwhelm you, you will either choose to respond to it in a healthy way (self-care) or an unhealthy way (self-medication).  Carey Nieuwhof shares five ways Christian leaders self-medicate and Ten healthy options for self-care.

Page CXVI

Page CXVI is a project started with the idea to make hymns accessible and known again. To celebrate their 7 year anniversary of making music, Page CXVI is giving away their entire catalog of music for the month of March. 11 albums, 74 songs, 2 bands. Go to http://www.pagecxvi.com/jubilee and get your FREE music!

Sunday Stillness

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be still

Photography by Donna Harris ❘ Remember the Year

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

(Jude 1:24-25 ESV)

In Pursuit of a Gospel-Centered Community

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The following is a few thoughts from my Sunday devotional: In Pursuit of a Gospel-Centered Community. Where is this community? Wherever I work, live and play. There is nothing deeper and stronger than the gospel on which to build community.

Let Love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Out do one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. (Romans 12:9-13 ESV)

Let love be genuine: True gospel-saturated community is authentic.

Abhor what is evil: A gospel-centered community will embrace people in their brokenness while making war on sin. Don’t abhor people but abhor evil.

Love one another with brotherly affection: A Jesus-centered gospel calls us to possess a deep brotherly love as we would for our own family, this is a familial affection.

Out do one another in showing honor: Affection for the Lord leads to affection for others, resulting in out doing one another in honor. [1]

Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord: Relationships go deep when arms are linked in a great cause that you are ready to lay down your lives for. Stir up zeal for God and for the cause of God and truth and life. Be passionate in your spirit. [2]

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer: When life is hard, we can either give up on hope or get it from joy. Tribulation drives the roots of joy down into hope  and fight to be constant in prayer, God acts when we pray. [3]

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality: Lavish mercy, give from your wealth, mentor others, teach a skill, open your lives and the doors of your home.

Being in pursuit of a gospel-centered community is a “forever journey.” The only way that we are able to do any of this is answered in Romans 12:1 (The Message)

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

[1] Matt Chandler, Creature of the Word, page 59  ❘  [2] John Piper:  Be Strong and Fervent in Spirit,  ❘  [3] John Piper: Happy in Hope, Patient in Pain, Constant in Prayer

Beloved: Be-Loved

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The God of the universe, the same God who paints a sunset, shapes a mountain and plans the waves at the beach, has chosen to love us, not because of who we are, but because of who He is. Our role in this is to BE-LOVED.  –Ron Edmonson

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.  1 John 3:1-2 ESV

I am beloved. I am overwhelmed by this love.

Here is a song by David Crowder (Oh How He Loves) with Matt Chandler and John Piper. Be encouraged. Be-loved.

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Five Minute Friday

 

Linking up with everyone for Five Minute Friday, where a remarkably encouraging and loving  community gathers to write for five minutes. This week’s prompt is: BELOVED.

The Saturday Assortment #5

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The Saturday Assortment

The Saturday Assortment is a collection of unrelated and random things that I find interesting, challenging, motivating and sometimes quite out of the ordinary. It’s an assortment of things that caught my attention throughout the week. I bet you will find them equally engaging.  Enjoy!

10 Resolutions for Mental Health  This is a wonderful and very encouraging post to read! John Piper is the author of  this article, based on a lecture given by one of his professors at Wheaton College. Here is a quote from #3 on the list:

I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities.

12 Essentials to Church Communications  The church is the hope of the world. As church leaders, we have the responsibility of communicating the greatest message known to mankind; the only message capable of changing a person’s entire eternity. The weight of that responsibility is both profound and incredible. It moves us to action, and demands we communicate it well.

A book to recommend:  Creature of the Word: The Jesus-Centred Church, Matt Chandler, Josh Patterson and Eric Geiger

We want to remind people that Christ is the head of the Church, and everything about how our church functions and operates should reflect the new life we are given in Jesus. -Matt Chandler

creature-of-the-word

A quote from the book:

 “If mission engagement is in the culture of a church without continual gospel reminders, the tendency will be to drift towards mission as a way to cleanse the conscience rather than a response to God’s mission for us. If expressive worship is in the culture of a church without continual gospel awareness, the tendency will be to focus on what is done for God rather than remembering what he has done. If transparency and honesty are in the culture of a church without continual gospel encounters, the tendency will be to discuss the sinfulness without repentance.” (page 102-103)

Intercessory Prayer ❘ The Mat Carrier

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Grandaughter,Grandmother, Great-Grandmother

Intercessory Prayer Through the Generations.
Grandmother, Granddaughter, Great-Grandmother

“Intercessory prayer is less about changing God’s mind and more about participating in His mercy” shereadstruth.com

“It seems the secret to real success is not found in a public place of power but in a secret place of prayer.” Jesse D. Lane

Have you ever been asked to join a prayer team? I was asked. I signed up! This is what I learned from years of intercessory prayer.

Please, don’t take that request lightly. Don’t think that praying for other people is easy and your participation on the prayer team will be the “piece of cake” action that makes you feel better about yourself and your “service in the church.” Intercessory prayer is not easy. If you think praying for others is easy and random, then you aren’t really experiencing the work of intercessory prayer.

Making a commitment to pray for others is arming yourself to work hard for people whom you may never personally meet.  Intercessory prayer requires a discipline of time, discipline to show mercy, discipline of thought…put yourself into their story…to envision yourself as their “mat carrier.”

A mat carrier is one that helped to carry a friend to Jesus. Do you remember the story in the Bible about a man who couldn’t walk and was confined to life on a mat? I’m sure he was a real likable guy because he had four friends that would do just about anything for him. I imagine they may have carried him to the temple to worship or perhaps the market to buy food. Perhaps they took care of his physical needs at home. The four friends worked together to lift up the four corners of his mat and carry him  from place to place. I imagine them struggling to fight fatigue and being surprised that interceding for a friend would beckon them to work hard…to get messy in the process.

The four mat carriers interceded for their friend…they would do anything to help him receive peace, grace, healing…they carried him to Jesus. They believed Jesus was the answer to satisfy the needs of their friend. They hoped Jesus would heal him. They knew Jesus would take care of everything their friend needed. The friends brought the needs of this man to Jesus (literally) and left him there…in front of Jesus. And Jesus saw their faith.

Do you know how this amazing chapter in the life story for this paralyzed man ends? Jesus, is compassionate and kind and changes the man’s heart with speaking the only words of truth that will grant real forgiveness. And then Jesus tells the paralyzed man to get up and go…walk out of the house and show people that he was completely healed inside and out…and “don’t forget to carry your mat, too!” (I embellished this story in my own words. Please read the full bible text here.)

I find this act of service and love by the four friends amazing. Wherever Jesus was, a crowd was sure to gather. The homes were probably small and it was shoulder to shoulder “standing room only” inside.  I imagine the over-flow lot was full of people too. Pressing in close and tight to one another just to hear Jesus, to see Jesus, to try to touch him. It was hard enough for one person with healthy legs to manage the crowd…much more harder for four people carrying their friend on his mat.

I appreciate the friends were also creative problem solvers. Their friend needed to meet Jesus right then and now! So they devised a plan to hoist and carry their friend up to the roof of the house. Then they started digging their way through the roof of the house, creating an opening large enough to lower their friend safely down to where Jesus was. The “mat carriers” were willing to get dirty and messy and take a risk. There were persistent to help their friend.

In conclusion, this is what I learned about intercessory prayer:

  1. Don’t take prayer lightly
  2. Intercessory prayer is hard and it requires discipline
  3. Ask God to help you to show mercy and love through prayer
  4. Put yourself in their story
  5. Imagine their sorrow or anxiety or loss
  6. Talk to God about their needs.
  7. God is never annoyed by “debris”
  8. Trust God to do what God will do
  9. Celebrate the answers of prayer
  10. Be a mat carrier. Period.

Created to Dance: Again

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Again

Photography by Donna Harris ❘ Remember the Year

Again…

A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again….

What has been is what will be,

and what has been done is what will be done,

and there is nothing new under the sun.

Solomon ❘ Ecclesiastes 1

Everyday is a repeat. We do the same things again.  Redundant. Necessary. Think of something different to do again.

Let’s Dance! We are created to dance!

Rise up, O Lord, in all your power.
With music and singing we celebrate your mighty acts. You give us joy in your presence!

Psalm 21

Let’s dance again and again!

“In Christianity God is not a static thing…but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama.

Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.”

~C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“God must have created us to invite us into the dance, to say: If you glorify  me, if you center your entire life on me, if you find me beautiful for who I am in myself, then you will step into the dance, which is what you are made for…

You are made to center everything in your life on me, to think of everything in terms of your relationship to me…

That’s where you’ll find your joy. That’s what the dance is about.”

King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus by Timothy Keller

God has invited me to dance. Filled with joy…for the glory of God. Created to Dance!  Again!

Five Minute Friday

God Happenings

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God Happenings

Talking about God with your children and noticing his handiwork in the smallest details, such as a blade of grass or the melody of a bird’s song should be as natural as walking together or kissing them on the cheek as they head off to school. Be encouraged and motivated to share with your children how God helped you get through the grind of your work day. Share the “wins” of your day and honor all of that to the glory of God.  Thank God for those wins. Every good thing and even the troubling ones can be used to show your children more of God’s grace. Let your children hear from you about the many ways you experienced the “God Happenings” in the small and big details of your day and they will soon begin to notice their own “God Happenings” where ever they are.

“Don’t walk around with your head down, trying to ‘just get through’ your day so that you can get up tomorrow and do it all over again”. *  God wants everyday to be a delight as you live in His presence and discover His blessings. Model to your children the true kind of delight and joy that only comes from knowing Jesus and the way to know Jesus is to know what God says about Jesus and to know what God says about Jesus is to read His Book…the Bible.

I appreciate this simple acrostic as a guide for my personal bible reading and it’s proven helpful for my family too. We use the word:  P-R-A-I-S-E

Here is a simple summary Adapted from The Journey by Randy Pope, Perimeter Church.

PRAY: Begin with talking to God. No need for eloquent words. Just tell God what is on your mind and ask him to help you see  “God Happenings” through the reading of his Word.

READ: Chose a passage of scripture. Perhaps a chapter from Psalms, Proverbs, or begin reading the book of John. You may want to read from a devotional book  with your children.

ASK QUESTIONS: What does this mean? What should I do? How do I see  “God Happenings” in the verses read? What did God do? How should I respond?

INTERPRET: If you don’t know the answers to your questions, then use an online resource to find the answer or ask someone more knowledgeable about the Bible to help you. Write down the question to remember to investigate later and share the conclusions with your family.

SUMMARIZE: Wrap up the bible reading with a brief summary of what was read. This is the best time to recount the “God Happenings” discovered and responses to the some of the questions asked. You may want to make a few notes to remember the comments family members say.

ENGAGE with GOD: You begin with prayer and you end with prayer. Talk to God and thank him for showing you more of himself. It is a beautiful thing when families pray together. It’s a beautiful thing to experience the “God Happenings” with each other.

I hope this acrostic is helpful for you. Be watchful and expectantly looking for those “God Happenings”!  I would love to know what you find!

**  Jesus Calling: 365 Devotions For Kids by Sarah Young; page 236; Enjoy Life!