I am a Christian, a retired teacher, a mother and a grandmother. I love to read and I love the Lord Jesus Christ! Unless otherwise specified ,all visual illustrations are from the YOU VERSION APP of the Bible.
What do you check on your device every day, just like clockwork and a habit you have formed? For me, it’s first text messages, then email, and maybe social media if I have time. But priorities dictate that I should be checking my heart every day and starting each day with time with God. That’s a habit that is easy to break because God doesn’t have a red circle above His head with a number on it impressing you to check in right away. What He does offer is peace, security, and His presence to calm you, along with answers to all of your questions.
Email tells me what friends and authors are up to. Texts tell me what’s on sale (gotta love that spam!) and how family is doing, along with some nice photos. But nothing there is going to affect my eternity like my time with God. Sometimes, my time with the Lord is abbreviated due to appointments that I have to rush to get to, but I always, always set aside time to be with Him. He is waiting for me, and I know it, even without the big red numbers that are my nemesis of attraction online.
I don’t ever want my time with God to be part of a list that I check off..done! No, rather, I want my time with God to be the most important part of my day, kind of like the necessity of taking a deep breath and feeling the cleansing it seems to bring deep inside. So, when you are just checking your device, how about putting it aside, turning the sound off so you aren’t distracted (I turn mine face down so the notifications don’t annoy me) and then just spend time with the One who created you, knows you best and loves you most? What is God going to tell you today? You won’t know until you check in with Him, will you?
Whoever tells you that you are too bad, too unworthy, too awful for God to forgive you…they are wrong. God is right. He is always faithful. Just as He was the One who clothed Adam and Eve when they recognized that they were naked, He is the One who draws us to Him so that we can have a relationship with Him through the free grace and mercy that He offers. Believe the truth, not the lies.
When I say I am trying something new, it is usually a new food, a new outfit or a new habit I want to form. When God says that He is doing something new, it is an unimaginable totally new thing. After all, He is the Creator and can create new things from nothing.
So while I am trying on a new pair of shoes, God is changing the world for the better. A pathway through the wilderness? Yes, please! How many times have I felt stuck in a wilderness (usually of my own making) and walk in circles trying to find the way out (an answer to my prayer)? Meanwhile, God is right there creating a pathway and I have to open my eyes to see it. That’s the problem…God is always working but I am not always seeing what He is doing for me.
God’s new thing may not look the way I expect it will, but it will always be exactly what I (and you) need exactly when we need it. So, I exhort you to be ready, to look for that new thing that is not exactly what you were waiting for, but it is the answer you have been anticipating.
Jesus said a lot of powerful, enlightening, and important things. But there’s one command that sums it all up…
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
John 15:12 NIV
It sounds simple, right? But when we look at Jesus’ life, how did He love? And how can we strive to love like He did?
Love compelled Jesus to give up His privileges. As Creator and Lord, Jesus can do whatever He pleases. But instead, the Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14)—temporarily relinquishing His rights so that we could be right with God.
Love compelled Jesus to prioritize people. The woman at the well. The man with leprosy. A Roman officer. A blind beggar. Peter’s mother-in-law. The widow’s son. A despised tax collector. Even the thief hanging next to Him on the cross. Jesus didn’t see problems—He saw and loved people.
Love compelled Jesus to serve others. He washed His disciples’ feet, pursued the marginalized, had compassion on the sick, weary, and broken. In the end, He gave His own life for us.
Love compelled Jesus to value truth and grace. In a world where many elevate grace while others only magnify truth, Jesus valued both. He was passionate about God’s ways and God’s Word while also showing great compassion to those who needed it most.
If we’re ever unsure about how to love others, let’s look to Jesus as the ultimate example. He lived selflessly, prioritized other people, served to the point of death, and valued both truth and grace.
And as we love like Jesus, we will become more like Him.
My Thoughts
Loving like Jesus is not just good advice or an empty platitude. It’s an expectation that God placed on us once we decided to follow His Son. How do we love like Jesus? The video that goes with this devotional makes a good point. We aren’t supposed to be a ☕️ to hold the love that the Savior gives us. We are supposed to be a funnel. Love in…love out, all the time. Not when we feel like it or have some extra time on our hands so we might as well use it to show love to someone. We are a funnel of God’s love all the time. We are supposed to love on people, not our electronics that are a pseudo-representation of the people with whom we communicate. Each person whose life crosses ours today deserves to know that God loves them and we do, too. Loving selflessly is hard, but Jesus showed us the example to follow. We are COMPELLED to love just as Jesus was and still does. Each time we make a choice to love, we are becoming more like Jesus. And the Father smiles.
Can we just be honest with each other this morning? We are all juggling balls…trying to keep things in the air and not let anything fall. And, of course, feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and not a little impatient at how long it’s taking for the balls to just settle and be still. Let’s be even more honest. Most of us put those balls in the air to begin with and now we don’t know what to do with them.
My balls include the following:
~Health issues. I am scheduled to have a spinal injection on Friday but first I have to get my asthma/breathing under control. My peak flow is way down even after two rounds of steroids and all of my other meds. I may be wrong but I don’t think I can have a needle stuck into my spine while having a coughing fit. So, there is that ball.
~The AC at home has not been working right (contributing to my breathing issues, of course). My husband got up before six this morning to go to the AC repair place and snag a repairman.
~My grandchildren have been celebrating all kinds of milestones and I haven’t been able to travel to be there with them. Elementary school graduation, play performances, dance recitals, so many things!
~Books to read and review…so many books! Authors ask and I say “yes” and the pile is taller than I am.
~Family issues. My sister wants me to visit, but I have been ill. My husband wants to visit his brother, but he doesn’t want to leave me alone without a car.
I could continue the list, but now let’s get to the answers to the juggling balls. Naturally, the first thing we do is try to figure it out ourselves. That will not work! We need God’s input. So, pause, worship, pray and then be still and listen. This is what I heard this morning when I took time to forget about the balls and focus on God.
Before worrying about all of the balls you’re going to drop, why not ask God to help prioritize those balls and for help figuring things out. He promises wisdom, but you have the responsibility to ask for it.
So, having prayed and asked for wisdom, here are what my balls are doing now:
~I can’t change timing or my health issues, but I can change my attitude and relax into my breathing treatments. That really does help tremendously. So, ten minutes of nebulizer means ten minutes of not thinking about my balls falling but about spending time with God. He can hold on to the balls for me or let them fall…it doesn’t matter. Turns out those balls are a manifestation of my need for control and I need to let go.
~Hubby found an AC repairman and I am trusting that God will use them to show us grace, mercy and restore the cool air we need. Regardless, God gave me the breath of life and He can keep me breathing.
~One book at a time, one review at a time and a determination not to say “yes” to another book until I have finished two. I want to keep commitments since God keeps all of His promises to me. I just have to be practical and not so easily led to just say “yes.”
~An easy solution to my husband’s traveling. He can go see his brother while our granddaughter is still living with us. That way I have someone with me who has a car and Harry has the freedom to see his brother. Why didn’t I think of that before? Because I was too busy juggling balls! God took that ball away and told me I don’t need to be at all concerned about it anymore.
What balls are you juggling that you need to just let them drop?
I confess that I have been uneasy about dropping any balls, but that is my firm desire to control things that are out of my control. So, I am letting go and being still and trusting God.
I don’t know about you all, but I am a planner. I make lists about everything: groceries, to be read, errands, household chores, etc. I even make lists for others who do not want them, just because I want them to know what they should be doing. (It doesn’t usually work for me to make lists for others, but I stubbornly try, anyway.) So, I am a planner. But do you know who the greatest planner is? JESUS!
From Max Lucado’s devotional, God Came Near, I read this today:
“Jesus planned His own sacrifice. It means Jesus intentionally planted the tree from which His cross would be carved. It means He willingly placed the iron ore in the heart of the earth from which the nails would be cast. It means he voluntarily placed His Judas in the womb of a woman. It means Christ was the One who set in motion the political machinery that would send Pilate to Jerusalem. And it also means He didn’t have to do it—but He did.”
This was eye-opening to me because I had never considered all of the planning that went into the sacrifice that Jesus made for us willingly and obediently. Sometimes my lists seem to overwhelm me, but God did all that He did with a purpose in mind…our salvation. He did not waver and I don’t think He needed a checklist. All He needed was the knowledge that one day His plan would bear fruit and the sacrifice and all of the planning would be worth it.
Most of us would prefer quick, efficient, and—when possible—instant results and answers.
But waiting is a part of life.
We must wait for seeds to grow into food, for one season to fade into the next, for babies to mature into adults, and for trees to stand tall enough to finally offer shade.
Like it or not, waiting takes patience.
We can wait days, months, years, or even decades for a prayer to be answered, for an overdue apology, for the timing to be right, or for a dream to finally come to pass.
Waiting requires courage.
King David lived nearly 3,000 years ago, but he knew what it meant to wait for God’s timing, to wait to be king, to wait to be rescued from his enemies. He wrote:
“Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.”
Psalms 27:14 NLT
If David thought waiting on God was important enough to write it twice in one verse, we should probably pay attention. But waiting patiently for the Lord isn’t an excuse to do nothing.
We can proactively wait on God by staying in communication with Him, by looking for His fingerprints in ordinary moments, by reading about His story and His plans in His Word, by worshiping Him no matter what’s happening across the globe, by serving the people both inside and outside of our circles, and by thanking Him for the gifts He’s already given us.
Just because a specific door isn’t opening, or a particular opportunity isn’t available at this moment doesn’t mean that God isn’t moving.
Even when we are waiting—God is working.
Noah spent decades building an ark as he waited for God to do what He’d said. Ruth journeyed with her mother-in-law and worked in the grain fields while trusting in God’s provision after her husband’s death. Joseph stayed faithful in prison for several years before his promotion to second-in-command of Egypt. John trusted God’s ultimate will for his life, and wrote several books of the New Testament while sentenced to exile on the island of Patmos.
So, no matter what you’re facing today, you can ask God for patience and trust that He is in control of your future. No matter what uncertainty lies before you, when you rely on the Lord, you can be someone who waits well.
My Thoughts
I will be honest and confess here that I don’t wait well. I don’t necessarily expect instant answers from God, but I don’t like saying the same prayers over and over and not really seeing any change. Two examples come to mind immediately: my health issues and a job for our grandson Isaac.
I pray for my health. Others join me in prayer. Yet, I don’t improve. Or not yet, anyway. I saw my pulmonologist yesterday and she said that the steroids I am taking should have kicked in and I should be breathing better, but I’m not. So, what to do? More steroids at a higher dose. Back to waiting with the added prayer that the meds will work or God will just take over and release my breath.
I pray for Isaac daily, sometimes several times a day. He graduated last year with a degree in computer science and mathematics. The economy has been in a mess because of the government delays on passing a budget, so that caused waiting. Now, it seems that AI is interfering with Isaac’s ability to get a job since AI can do a lot of what he is trained to do. Isaac is discouraged but still plugging away with applications and an interview occasionally. I try to encourage him about waiting for the job that God wants Him to have, but inside, I am having difficulty waiting myself. I am frustrated that this sweet grandson who has had surgery for cancer, has to have scans every few months because it’s so aggressive, and now he has problems finding a job. God keeps whispering to me, “In my time.” Yet I continue to ask, “When, God?”
So, waiting is hard, but it is necessary. I love the paragraph in this devotional about being proactive while you wait. I put that part in bold, so go back and read again what we should be doing while we wait. Most important to me is communication with God, continuing to worship and being thankful.
God is good all the time… and He is not on my timetable. So, I wait and pray.
Are you waiting on something from God? How can I pray for you today?
When I say the name God, what comes to your mind immediately? For me, it is a peace and a calm that goes beyond anything that I can imagine. It’s blue sky, white clouds, birds singing and butterflies fluttering in a beautiful garden. It is complete and total serenity in the presence of the One who knows me best and loves me most.
Vickie's Book Nook and Meditation Corner 