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.
From the Holy Bible
I love my husband, my children, my grandchildren, and my friends. But I don’t even begin to touch the depths of what love is until I ponder God’s love. His love is all-encompassing, forgiving, sacrificial and always there. His love has sustained me through difficult times in the valleys and highs on mountaintops. God’s love is consistent, insistent and exists whether I feel it or not. His love is faithful and never wavers even when I stumble or fall. His love is forever!
Whenever I am walking on uneven ground, I instinctively reach out for the arm of my husband. I know that he will help me not to fall and to reach the place where the ground is even again so he can let me go. I have been on uneven ground a lot lately, with all kinds of medical tests going on and with them the unknown answer to the question of what is going on with my body. But I am holding on tightly to God, knowing that He is faithful to take me back to a place where I can be more sure-footed. I did not arrive at this assurance of His faithfulness overnight; rather, this assurance has come through many trials and much dependence on Him.
God promises that He will take care of me, so I believe it. That is a promise that is settled in my heart. Thus, I can hold tightly and not waver, not allowing the seeds of doubt to be sown in the soil of my mind and heart.
God is always the same, never changing and not breaking His word. He said it. I believe it. That settles it. Yes, the doctors are assailing me with one test after another and offering little in the way of answers to my queries. But God is there with me, faithfully calming me and comforting me and speaking to me words of wisdom from His Holy Word.
God continues to accomplish wonderful things in my life and He is not finished with me yet. How do I know? Well, I’m still here, so that tells me that God still has things for me to get done. I’m excited to see the outcome of all of these tests, knowing that no matter what, God will get the glory!
When I woke up this morning, I had a prayer on my lips and a bad attitude in my heart. Once again, I had slept badly and was tired, but I knew that I had to get up to begin my morning routine so that we can go to church. I know I grumbled to myself and sighed deeply more than a few times, but I made it through the preparations to start the day. Then, I sat down with my devotional and all I could think is how grateful I am to be alive, to be able to go to church and to worship the King, my Savior and my Creator. Once my focus changed from me to Him, so did my attitude.
Proclaiming God’s love to others is what we are called to do, but this morning, I just needed to speak about God’s love into my own heart. Sometimes we have to be ready to receive before we can give out to others and this morning was a time when I needed to receive. If you are having a tough time with circumstances in your life, just sit back, focus on God and His love for you. It puts things into a new perspective, one that is manageable and not so overwhelming. God is there, all the time, ready to hear and answer, but He really loves it when we come without a list of requests, just ready to worship.
As part of the Body of Christ, we are brought together for one common purpose: to spread the Gospel and to support each other during trials and tribulations. God did not create or ordain denominations and divisions in the body. He wants us to all get ourselves where we are supposed to be and to fulfill His purpose where He has placed us. Like a puzzle, once it fits together, it is beautiful and totally worth the time to assemble it.
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play&pid=1d0e1a6f2b71
Just follow the link and put the puzzle together. You will find this picture once you have finished it.
We are all part of this Body of Christ and need to work together, to get along with each other and to find what we have in common (Jesus) instead of focusing on differences.
I hope that you enjoyed the puzzle and will think about what your role is and should be in the Body where God has placed you. You matter to God and to others and we all need each other!
Have you ever watched a new infant and how intently he/she watches you? The eyes are fixed on you, following the sound of your voice as you move around them. As the child grows older, their attention may be momentarily called away to another object, something shinier or more interesting to them. But if you say the child’s name, like magic, their focus returns to you. At least that is the way I have noticed things happening until the child is about six or so and then all bets are off about whether you can get and hold their attention or not.
What is our focus when we are talking about our spiritual walk? As a new Christian, I was eager to learn all I could about God and His love for me. I didn’t want to miss a single minute of His guidance or plan for my life, so my eyes were fixed on him. Then, as a child maturing, my focus was captured by other “shiny” things, this pastor or that evangelist and a new message that they were giving. Or sometimes, my focus was captured by friends, family, trials and sicknesses. In other words, as I aged, I took my eyes off the One who created me and started paying more attention to the creation. God has reprimanded me and let me know that is the wrong path to take and I am working on forming new habits.
Another reason to come to the Lord as a child is the total trust we have in Him and the way we don’t let Him out of our sight. No matter what room I moved to when my children were young, they were right there beside me. I called them my shadows because they kept their eyes on me and when I moved, they did, too. That is the way I think we should keep our eyes on God. A steady looking at Him for our guidance and for direction for what our next steps should be. When we keep our eyes on Him, all of the problems we have seem to fade into insignificance because we know that they are temporary but He is eternal.
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus-Hillsong Worship
Many years ago, when my husband and I had only been married about five years, he was in the navy and spending a lot of time at sea. In fact, the year that I found out I was pregnant with our second child, he was at sea from the time I told him that I was pregnant until the new baby was almost two months old. I had to move from off base to on-base housing alone. Well, actually, I had our two year old daughter with me and a host of friends from the new church I had started attending. Anyway, it was a lonely period of time for me, but that is not the topic of this post.
When my husband came home, he told me that we had the “opportunity” to have a guest in our home, a young man who had been terminated from the navy and needed a place to stay until he could get back on his feet. Harry presented it as an chance to show Christ to someone who was searching, so I reluctantly agreed. Remember that we had been apart for the better part of a year when he arrived home with the news that he was bringing a stranger to live with us.
I wish I could say that I was a totally good sport about the situation, but from the beginning, I was resentful and not a little upset that Harry had already told the young man (I will call him Tim although that is not his real name) that he would be able to stay with us. When Tim arrived, the deal was supposed to be that he would look for a job and would stay with us while he did so. He would attend church with us and would be open to talking about God. Well, he rarely attended church, having one excuse or another about why he couldn’t go. He slept or watched TV most of the day, not looking for employment that I could tell. Harry was at work every day, so I was stuck alone with Tim and two small children. The most annoying thing was that I had a new baby and Tim followed me around and watched me nurse Scott. I talked to Harry about the problem but he offered no solution, so I finally ended up going into my bedroom with both kids, locking the door and feeding the baby because Tim made me so uncomfortable. Suffice it to say that Tim was the topic of many heated discussions between me and Harry. We ended up agreeing on a deadline for him to have a job; he didn’t get one, of course, and we told him he would have to leave. We gave him money to go back home, wherever home was for him. When he left, he said he was going home and getting a job and moving on with his life. He thanked Harry for letting him stay and then Harry took him to the bus station.
Now, the topic. I am thoroughly ashamed that I was not able to show hospitality to Tim. He may or may not have been a good guest, but he was a guest. He was not a Christian and as far as I know, he never accepted the Lord or changed his life to become productive. Nevertheless, I needed to be hospitable, but I was hurting from having a stranger thrown into my life so I reacted accordingly. Not an excuse, just the truth. I let the humanity in me overtake the Christ in my heart.
I grumbled plenty, at Harry, to God and even within Tim’s hearing. I was not a good hostess! If I had the whole scenario to do again, I would insist on written rules (a contract, if you will) and a deadline from the beginning. The fact that Tim was with us for about four months stretched the limits of my patience which were already very thin. I am not proud of how I acted, but looking back on the situation, I can see that God could have used me if I had been more willing and open to be used. One of my deep regrets from that time is the lost opportunity to show someone Christ’s love instead of my own bitterness.
We all suffer from the past and missed opportunities. I will not ever be able to get back those days with Tim, nor would I wish to do so because they were so hard for me. He complained about the food, the lack of channels on the TV, the noise the baby made, etc. But his lack of being a good guest did not allow me to be a terrible hostess. I confess today that I was a terrible hostess and pray that I have grown into someone more accepting now. I have forgiven Tim and pray for him when I think about him, not knowing what happened to him when he left except he didn’t go right home or get a job as he said he would. Mostly, I pray for forgiveness for my bad attitude and that I did not follow the scripture and show hospitality. When this verse was in my devotional this morning, it brought to mind the time with Tim and so I have shared it with you.
Have you ever had the opportunity to show Christ’s love to someone and blown it? It’s not a good feeling, is it? But you have to learn from the mistakes and move forward and that is what I have spent over forty years since then doing. Learning and moving, learning and moving.
We take Communion at our church every Sunday and I never want it to become a rote, automatic thing. I want to really think about Jesus’s sacrifice and all it meant for Him to give His life for me. But I do remember that in the Garden of Gethsemane, His prayer was for God to take away His cup of suffering. Oh, my! How often I have prayed to God to take away my troubles, sorrows, sickness and pain! But then I forget to go on to the next part that Jesus prayed. He sincerely prayed for the Father’s will to be done, not His own. That is the kind of prayer that we should be praying when we cry out to God for Him to release us from our suffering. We need to recall that God knows best and is in control of not only our lives but the lives of all on earth. In my little corner of the world, I may be egocentric, but I should not lose focus on who is in control of my life, even in the midst of suffering. My trials, “suffering” if you will, do not even begin to compare with that of Jesus. But He was willing to go through death on the cross in order to fulfill the Father’s will and save all of mankind. Does anyone want to suffer? Of course not! However, some suffering is a natural part of life; things happen and you just have to get through them. But, following Jesus’s example, I want to be able to say to God that I’m not liking the suffering but I am willing to go through it because I want His will to be done in my life.
If you look carefully at the image of the fortress, you will see that it appears to be built among the rocks. That large structure is not moving! It isn’t going to go anywhere any time soon. That’s why when we call on God to be our fortress, we need to run to Him. Then He surrounds us with His protection, but first we have to go into the safety that He has provided for us. God rescues us when we run to him for the protection He already has available for us.
God truly desires to show us His love and compassion, but He is waiting patiently for us to come to Him and admit that we have a need. Knowing that God is a faithful God, once we take our needs before Him, then we must wait. But we know for absolutely certain that God’s help is on the way. It may not be what we expected but it will always be just what we needed just when we needed it.
I don’t know about you but when I was in school, I often heard teachers say, “Write this down.” Those who were half asleep usually perked up because they realized that what the teacher was saying would be useful information for a future test or quiz. I even used similar words with my own students, drawing their attention to what I was saying so that they would not miss it.
God inspired John to write the Book of Revelation and in this verse, He specifically tells John to “Write this down.” What is God drawing our attention to? What does He not want us to miss? The fact that He is going to make everything new…everything! God is totally truthful and trustworthy and if says it, it will happen. So, when He says to “write it down” He is making sure our eyes are open, our ears are listening and that we are ready to receive an important message. We can worry and fret over all of the events in the world, over all of the godlessness of mankind and over all of the challenges we have in life. But when we read and meditate on this verse, it all becomes inconsequential. One day, God will make everything new. He said it, I believe it and I’m looking forward to that day!
Vickie's Book Nook and Meditation Corner 