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.
Many times, when we are trying to make a difficult decision, we choose to consult friends, counselors, those whom we trust and consider wise. But the best person to consult is God because His wisdom has all of the characteristics of leading to true success.
Look at all of the adjectives that describe the wisdom that comes from God as you read the verse again. Pure, peace loving, gentle, willing to yield. The phrases that lead to a good Godly decision include: full of mercy, full of the fruit of good deeds, shows no favoritism and always sincere. I need to practice asking God for His wisdom and then waiting for the kind of answer that is full of all of His promises for me and also not harmful to others.
May you be blessed today and every day with the knowledge of how important it is to seek wisdom from God.
Many years ago, my husband and I attended a Bible training school called Youth with a Mission. I don’t recall a lot that we studied there, but at least one truth we learned and book that we studied stuck with me through the years. The title was THE INTERCESSOR by Norman Grubb and it relates how to be an Intercessor like Rees Howells, a man of God who made a difference by praying for others. If you want to perhaps purchase the updated version, here is a link to do so:
The reason this book made such an impact and stayed with me is that this true story of a man who believed in prayer and made a difference with his petitions to God was amazing to me. Since then, I have strived to be an Intercessor for others, but I have never reached the heights of Rees Howells, not even close.
Today in my devotional, the verse that jumped out at me was about Jesus’s being my intercessor.
I cannot imagine Jesus sitting at God’s right hand and speaking up on my behalf, but that is what the Holy Bible says that he does. The tense used is one of the present ongoing tense, not past, not done, but rather still happening. I remember when I was a child that my father was my mediator with my mom. She had a heavy hand of punishment and I seemed to be always in trouble for one infraction or another. It was my father’s soothing voice that calmed her down and prompted her to think before she dealt out severe blows to my legs. I still got punished, but the punishment was not half as severe as when daddy wasn’t there to intervene. Now, I can put that into the context of Jesus speaking to God on my behalf and letting the Father know that I am His and the price has already been paid for my salvation. Yes, I still mess up, and there are consequences to actions, but Jesus’s intercession is there and the Father has shown me mercy and grace over and over again.
If you get a chance to read THE INTERCESSOR, remember to put it into the context of Jesus interceding for you, on a daily basis and every time you need it. He is right there, always ready to go to bat for each of us because He loves us so much. Yes, He is the King of Glory, He is the Lion of Judah, and He is also the Great Intercessor who speaks to the Father for us, always operating with unfailing love and forgiveness. I want to be like Jesus, in Intercessor for others, and I am thankful for His example and His sacrifice that makes Him the Intercessor for me and for each of His children who know Him as Savior.
May you be blessed today with the knowledge of how dependable an Intercessor Jesus is for you and be confident in His love, grace and mercy.
Many years ago, my husband and I attended a Bible training school called Youth with a Mission. I don’t recall a lot that we studied there, but at least one truth we learned and book that we studied stuck with me through the years. The title was THE INTERCESSOR by Norman Grubb and it relates how to be an Intercessor like Rees Howells, a man of God who made a difference by praying for others. If you want to perhaps purchase the updated version, here is a link to do so:
The reason this book made such an impact and stayed with me is that this true story of a man who believed in prayer and made a difference with his petitions to God was amazing to me. Since then, I have strived to be an Intercessor for others, but I have never reached the heights of Rees Howells, not even close.
Today in my devotional, the verse that jumped out at me was about Jesus’s being my intercessor.
I cannot imagine Jesus sitting at God’s right hand and speaking up on my behalf, but that is what the Holy Bible says that he does. The tense used is one of the present ongoing tense, not past, not done, but rather still happening. I remember when I was a child that my father was my mediator with my mom. She had a heavy hand of punishment and I seemed to be always in trouble for one infraction or another. It was my father’s soothing voice that calmed her down and prompted her to think before she dealt out severe blows to my legs. I still got punished, but the punishment was not half as severe as when daddy wasn’t there to intervene. Now, I can put that into the context of Jesus speaking to God on my behalf and letting the Father know that I am His and the price has already been paid for my salvation. Yes, I still mess up, and there are consequences to actions, but Jesus’s intercession is there and the Father has shown me mercy and grace over and over again.
If you get a chance to read THE INTERCESSOR, remember to put it into the context of Jesus interceding for you, on a daily basis and every time you need it. He is right there, always ready to go to bat for each of us because He loves us so much. Yes, He is the King of Glory, He is the Lion of Judah, and He is also the Great Intercessor who speaks to the Father for us, always operating with unfailing love and forgiveness. I want to be like Jesus, in Intercessor for others, and I am thankful for His example and His sacrifice that makes Him the Intercessor for me and for each of His children who know Him as Savior.
May you be blessed today with the knowledge of how dependable an Intercessor Jesus is for you and be confident in His love, grace and mercy.
How many of you love to take tests? When I was in school, I used to almost have a panic attack each time I had to take a test. It wasn’t because I didn’t study or wasn’t prepared. I just always had test anxiety. That lasted all the way through college. After college, I accepted Jesus as my Savior and continued my studies with a Master’s Degree from Oral Roberts University. When I took those tests, I was calmer and was able to focus more because I always prayed before my tests. I recall our young son in kindergarten and his attitude towards testing. As I drove him to school one day, I asked him if he had studied his spelling words for the test that day since he had not asked me to call them out as usual. He calmly told me that he had not studied, but it would be okay because he planned to pray before the test, and Jesus knows his “abc’s and 1-2-3’s”. That’s a good thing to remember, isn’t it? I chided him, though and told him that God wants us to put effort into the work that he has given us to do and to always do our best. I’m not sure my lesson to him really had any effect on him since he got a perfect grade on the spelling test that he admitted he didn’t study for.
Sometimes as I ride next to my husband down the road, I get frustrated with the other drivers and will say things like, “That foolish person is going to kill someone if he isn’t more careful!” My husband reminds me to pray for his safety. And God reminds me that I need to do a self-test and check out my attitude.
No matter what circumstance I find myself in, I am carrying Jesus around in me and like a battery that needs to be checked occasionally to see if it’s fully charged, I need to check and make sure that I’m “in the faith” and not “of the world.” When I respond the same as others would with churlishness or selfishness, I know exactly where I am and that I am not passing the self-test. Time to reign myself in and get myself under the control of God again!
The good news is that once we have examined ourselves, we have the opportunity to take the test again and pass the second time around. Same test, same questions, same everything. But passing is possible the second time because my heart has changed and I have plugged back into the Lord and His view of the situation instead of my own.
Jesus is not ever going to leave me hanging, without hope and without knowing for sure that He is still working in me. That’s why the Word tells us to examine ourselves, to test ourselves and see whether what we are doing or how we are acting lines up with God’s Word. I don’t get nervous when God reminds me to do a self-check because I know He is reminding me of how much He loves me and how He wants me to become more and more like His Son by making the choices that are best for me and others. When Jesus returns, all of the testing will be over, but in the meantime, I have to examine myself daily, sometimes more than once a day and sometimes over and over again, to make sure that what I am doing and saying passes the test of representing Jesus to a world that needs to see Him and His love, not His judgment.
May all of your tests today be ones that show God’s mercy in your life, extended to others, knowing that as you pass each test, you are getting closer to God.
As humans, we have a tendency to wake up each day and hope for a good day with good things to happen in our lives. God wants that for us, too, but more importantly, He wants us to realize and to tell others that the only hope we have is in Jesus.
God spoke the world into existence and Jesus was right there with Him. Then, when God sent His Son to earth, He did not come to save us because of our own worthiness. Rather, we are saved only because of God’s great mercy. He sent and He saved.
We cannot overcome the sin in our own lives by just hoping that it will go away. We have to believe that Jesus delivered us from that sin on the cross and that we don’t have to bow to sin any longer. We are children of the Most High God, not slaves to sin as we once were. There is where our real hope lies, for today and for eternity.
If we awaken and have hope in things or events coming to pass, then our hope is misplaced. We need to fix our hope on the grace that Jesus gives us each day and the grace that will be ultimately revealed when He returns and takes us to be with Him. That is our real hope.
When I awakened this morning, I was thankful for a new day and hopeful for what it would bring. With my devotional completed and my meditation on the word “hope”, God has shown me that He is my hope and things that happen are just circumstances that change from moment to moment. But His love, grace and mercy in my life stand forever. Real hope!
May each of you know the real hope that is only found in the person of Christ Jesus. God bless you!
One of the habits that I have tried to cultivate is to count my blessings before I get up in the morning. Of course, I have to be alert enough to do this, but I have found that it starts my day off on a positive note. It only takes a few minutes to tell God how grateful I am for His blessings and for being able to be alive for a new day.
One of my greatest blessings is being able to read and memorize God’s word, hiding it in my heart so that the verses and sometimes scripture songs go through my mind as I fall asleep. This morning was one with this verse front and center. God gives me counsel daily and that is a blessing. He orders my steps, helps me organize my busy days and to take time for Him first every morning. The best news is that after all of my life is done, He has a big plan for me. He will take me to be with Him in glory! I didn’t and couldn’t do anything to earn his mercy and grace, but I am so grateful for it and for His unconditional love for me. Before you head out today, I hope that you will take a few minutes just to reflect on God and His goodness and blessings in your life.
May your day be blessed with the knowledge that you are blessed to be a blessing!
It has been seven plus years since I grabbed a salt shaker and liberally sprinkled it on my food. Any food I ate was doused with a few shakes of that magic shaker that made things taste better, even brussel sprouts. But, alas! After my stroke, my sodium intake is restricted, so I don’t add salt to anything these days. In fact, I read labels to make sure that there is little sodium in anything that I eat or drink. It makes for a bland palate sometimes but it is also keeping my blood pressure down and hopefully saving me the grief of another stroke.
On the other hand, I am called to BE salt, and so are you. I never realized how much flavor salt added until I wasn’t allowed to use it. So in being salt, you don’t know what you are adding to the world because you are just there, doing what you are supposed to do, sprinkling the presence of Jesus into the lives of those who need to see Him.
We are called to show others Jesus’s love, mercy, grace and encouragement. In so doing, we are liberally sprinkling Jesus from our hearts to the hearts of others, hoping that change will happen in their lives. Just as you sprinkle salt on your food and it “magically” tastes better, so your salt in the lives of others should be making their lives better in some way. A smile of encouragement, a thank you that is heartfelt, a blessing in the lives of people who go unnoticed from day to day and have lost their sense of purpose in life. We are the ones Jesus told to “go and be”. He did not say to stay at home and hope that everything turns out okay for the rest of the world. Each time we go out into the world, we are supposed to sprinkle it with truth, love, hope and His greatest attribute of forgiveness. Think about it. What can you do to be more like salt to a dying world? They are dying from spoilage, the spoilage that comes from having sin take over their lives. Whether you call it being “woke” or whatever, the same fate awaits them. They will die in their sins without the hope of salvation unless the salt that we are meant to be sprinkles the truth and stands firmly knowing that we are changing the world, one dash of salt at a time.
My blessing for you today:
As a former pastor used to tell us at the end of each message, “May the Lord bless you real good.”
Just a short encouragement today to do what God says and to show mercy and compassion to all that we meet. We don’t know what others are going through, but we know that everyone is facing something new every day. Instead of looking at ways to get back at someone who offended you, how about looking at the ways that you can show love to them. After all, isn’t that what Jesus told us to do?
May your day be blessed with others who will show mercy and compassion to you just as you extend it to them.
I know you have heard it, that lie from the pits of hell that Heaven is not hard to get into. You just have to do good, be good and God, because He is good, will take you to Heaven when you die. I have heard this falsehood from friends and family. “What kind of God would send someone to hell?” The reply is that God does not send anyone to hell; they choose to go there because they did not choose to believe in the only way to salvation that God provides, His Son Jesus. Don’t be deceived. God is a God of love and mercy, but He is also the great “I Am,” the God of Justice. He wants to set things right in the world that have been wrong for so long and the only way He can do that is to banish sin. There will be no sin in Heaven and no one can be good enough to earn their way there. No confessions to a priest or last rites will guarantee your way through the narrow gate. Only Jesus! It seems so simple, yet so many are perishing because they choose to keep living in sin and ignorance rather than accept truth and life. Since none of us knows when we will die, we need to live like it may be the next moment or as though Jesus is coming back imminently. God provided a way for us, narrow though it may be. We have to find our way back to Jesus and then stay on that pathway for the rest of our lives. God’s desire is to save all, that no one would spend eternity in hell, but He is a God of justice and He will allow us to go there if that is what we choose. Choose and live wisely…the narrow way leads to life!
May you be blessed with the knowledge of God’s great love for you and may you stay on the narrow path until He calls you home.
I have read a lot of commentaries and different Biblical versions about putting on the whole armor of God. But what goes under that armor is also important. Did you know that the Bible tells us how we are to clothe ourselves?
I have read the book of Colossians numerous times, meditating on its verses. But this verse somehow escaped my attention until our Bible study group met on Monday night. I pondered it then and today this same verse was in my daily devotional. God does want us to put on the whole armor of God, but underneath that armor, He wants us clothed with mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. If we are clothed in something, that is what people see when they see us, those qualities that make Jesus’s presence evident to others.
The chapter continues with this verse about forgiveness. How can we be clothed with Godly characteristics if we don’t forgive? The answer is that we can’t. It’s like going out in public with a shirt that is ripped down the middle and expecting no one to notice. Lack of forgiveness causes a root of bitterness inside the person who chooses to hold on to it. The person you are not forgiving is either not aware of it or chooses to ignore it. Either way, it doesn’t hurt them as much as the lack of forgiveness hurts you. The very important word in the verse is “as”. A tiny little word that means so much…the same way the Lord forgave you is how you should forgive others. He forgave each of us of everything, so we should do likewise to others. Grudges are not an item of clothing that we should be wearing around our shoulders.
Finally, there is love, the binding agent. I vaguely remember my chemistry class in which we were making a glue-type substance and we were told that one of the elements we were using was the binding agent, so we had to be careful to add it at the proper time. Love has to always be added to all of the other clothing that we are wearing because it is the seam that holds the clothing together on our bodies. Without love, we can’t exhibit the other qualities in any way that creates unity. In this divided world, love is an absolutely necessary quality for Christians to put on daily. You don’t like someone’s politics? Love them anyway. You don’t like someone’s selfish actions? Love them anyway. Someone is rude to you, in traffic or in a store or at work? Love them anyway. Love is the one thing that will draw people to you and to your witness about Christ. Once they see love, they can look at the other “clothing” that you are wearing and examine the gifts of His character that God has put on you. But first they must see love.
Have a beautiful and blessed day in the Lord, making every effort to put on the right clothes before you venture out into His creation.
Vickie's Book Nook and Meditation Corner 