Author Archives: jsjdevotions

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 27, 2015

Posted under

God's Plan, Holy Spirit, Obedience, Prayer, Wisdom & Guidance

DO YOU NEED A HEARING AID?

DSC01959WEB

Be careful that you do not refuse to listen to the One who is speaking. For if the people of Israel did not escape when they refused to listen to Moses, the earthly messenger, we will certainly not escape if we reject the One who speaks to us from heaven! [Hebrews 12:25 (NLT)]

As we’ve aged, many of us have increasing difficulty with hearing, especially in a noisy room. Some of us, no matter how good our hearing, have a problem with listening. More of us, however, even when we hear clearly and listen carefully, have difficulty understanding and heeding what has been said. Since we expect God to listen to us, perhaps it would be a wise idea to do a better job of listening to Him.

Lord, quiet our lives so we hear your voice, focus our thoughts so that we listen to your words, let your Holy Spirit guide us so that we understand and heed your message.

Your own ears will hear him. Right behind you a voice will say, “This is the way you should go,” whether to the right or to the left. [Isaiah 30:21 (NLT)]

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 25, 2015

Posted under

Bible Stories, Church & Worship, Love & Works, Obedience

LET US HONOR HIM IN ALL WE DO

When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel also brought a gift—the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected.

“Why are you so angry?” the Lord asked Cain. “Why do you look so dejected?  You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.” [Genesis 4:3-7 (NLT)]

best5-crop-vert

Sundays, I take photos for the church website. As I was editing pictures from last Sunday’s service, I wondered why I was doing it and bemoaned the fact that it is so much faster and easier to take 150 photos than to edit them all. Couldn’t I just upload them without the painstaking process of editing? Or, couldn’t I just take a quick look through them and just eliminate the really bad or unfocused ones? Why did I have to analyze every photo before deleting or enhancing and cropping it to make it good enough for posting? Why am I so careful to eliminate any that, if I were the subject, I wouldn’t want someone to see? Who really looks anyway? Then, I remembered that there were 9,000 hits on the church’s Facebook page the week after Easter so I suppose some people actually do look at those photos. I had an idea: what if I didn’t take so many? Couldn’t I get by with just a handful of the band, singers, pastor and congregation? Think how quickly I’d be done if I only took twenty instead of 150 or more! I say I wasn’t complaining, but really I was.

I paused in my tirade when I came to the photo of the lovely crosses given to our music team in appreciation for their service to the congregation. It brought to mind the hours the worship leader, band, singers and sound crew work to give us the music that makes our one hour of worship so joyful, entertaining and moving. I pondered the hours our pastors work each week to make that same hour so meaningful. I looked at the photos of the men setting up and taking down the thousand chairs that get carted to the park each week for our worshippers. I looked at my shots of the volunteers who pick up or serve the food, coffee, and juice. I saw pics of the teachers for our kid’s time and youth groups. I saw the friendly faces of the greeters who faithfully hand out programs and carry collection buckets every Sunday. There are other pictures of the many volunteers who make our church so special: the blood pressure checkers, the men in charge of our veteran’s outreach, the Bible study teachers and small group leaders, and the food pantry volunteers. Every one of these people give their very best every Sunday.

God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected Cain’s and it wasn’t because God didn’t like vegetarian fare! Abel gave God the finest he had to offer: the choicest piece of meat from the firstborn of his flock. Although he gave God some of his crops, Cain didn’t give Him the first of the harvest or even the best of his crop. It may have been the surplus yield or possibly blighted in some way. The best was accepted; the less than best was not. It’s clear that God expects the best we can offer; after all, he gave us His best when he gave us Jesus! I guess a few hours on Sunday afternoon aren’t all that much to offer. So, I’ll continue to take way too many photos at church tomorrow and I’ll probably grumble a bit as I edit them. I will continue to carefully look through them to delete the bad ones and enhance and crop the good ones so they are the best I can offer to God and my fellow worshippers.

What’s the best you have to offer?

“You Are My King (Amazing Love)” [Billy James Foote, songwriter]
Amazing love, how can it be
That You, my King, should die for me?
Amazing love and I know it’s true,
And it’s my joy to honor You, in all I do to honor You.
In all I do to honor You, in all I do, let me honor You.

It was by faith that Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God than Cain did. Abel’s offering gave evidence that he was a righteous man, and God showed his approval of his gifts. Although Abel is long dead, he still speaks to us by his example of faith. [Hebrews 11:4 (NLT)]

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 24, 2015

Posted under

Attitudes & Behavior, Family, Friends & Fellowship, Wisdom & Guidance

KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT

Take control of what I say, O Lord, and guard my lips. [Psalm 141:3 (NLT)]

P1100857webIn yesterday’s “Frank and Ernest” comic strip by Thaves, while admiring a large fish mounted up on the wall, one of the men says, “He wouldn’t be up there if he had just kept his mouth shut.” Wiser words couldn’t be said! If only I’d seen the comic a day earlier when a woman I’d just met earnestly asked me how old I thought she was. She was quite attractive and I assured her she didn’t look old to me, but she insisted I give her my estimate. Responding to that question is akin to answering, “Honey, do these pants make me look fat?” There just isn’t a good answer. I’m a woman; I know better than to fall into that trap (or bite that lure) but, foolishly, I opened my mouth. Looking about my children’s ages and having a very responsible job, I guessed her to be about forty-five (I actually thought she might be as old as fifty). Big mistake; she is only thirty-eight and not approaching forty gracefully! I spent the rest of my time reassuring her how good she looks (which she does) and that she will age beautifully. Let’s face it: by the time I left, I wished I’d never opened my mouth at all! “Open mouth and insert foot” – good heavens, I inserted both feet plus an arm!

Sometimes, we’re like the fish that gets caught; we take the bait. Heavenly Father, please slap your hand over our mouths and even seal them with duct tape, if necessary, whenever any of us are foolish enough to consider speaking when it is best to leave things unsaid! Show us how to tactfully and honesty avoid uttering words that might inadvertently hurt someone even though we have only good intentions in our hearts.

If you keep your mouth shut you will never put your foot in it. [Austin O’Malley]

Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. [Dr. Seuss]

Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent; with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent. [Proverbs 17:28 (NLT)]

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 23, 2015

Posted under

Attitudes & Behavior, Family, Friends & Fellowship, God's Plan, Love & Works

GOING TO WORK

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. [Romans 12:1 (MSG)]

When people asked me what I did, I’d often reply, “I’m just a homemaker.” But we’re never just a housewife or only a bus driver or merely a waiter. Do we ever demean the work God has given us simply because it lacks a large paycheck or status? Even those of us who are retired or unemployed have been given valuable work to do; we’re just no longer paid to do it. The work we do never defines us; how we do that work, however, does!

3-16-15-cropRWEBAll work is honorable, whether we’re saving lives as EMTs or wiping children’s bottoms and noses, designing skyscrapers or laying tile, teaching the ABC’s or preaching the gospel. There’s as much dignity in packing groceries as in managing the grocery store, in bussing tables as in being a gourmet chef, and in sweeping an auditorium as in conducting a symphony orchestra. Our work has importance whether we oversee the finances of a multi-million dollar corporation or manage to feed a family of five on a tight budget, whether we appease irate customers or calm a toddler in the midst of a melt-down, and if we teach calculus or help fifth graders understand fractions. To God, the pilot of a 747 is no more important than the driver of a mini-van doing car-pool duty. The song offered by a diva in a concert hall is no more beautiful to Him than the humming of a maid as she mops floors. Our work is not who we are; it is simply what we do. Work does more than bring a paycheck; our work is an offering to God. As His servants, we want to give Him our best. After all, He offers the greatest benefit package known to man!

Bless the work of our hands, O Lord. Guide us so that we are useful and industrious and give us joyful hearts as we labor.

And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us, confirming the work that we do. Oh, yes. Affirm the work that we do! [Psalm 90:17 (MSG)]

(Don’t worry! The photo is from a simulated rescue at a Swiss street fair.)

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 22, 2015

Posted under

Attitudes & Behavior, Challenges & Difficulty, Peace of God, Prayer, Today: Make it Count

IT’S BEEN ONE OF THOSE DAYS!

Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again – rejoice! … Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. [Philippians 4:4,6-7 (NLT)]

4-22-15rupside down- CSS3257V-vertwebYesterday was a day of frustrations and I had difficulty keeping things in perspective. Starting at 5:00 AM, my perfectly planned day turned upside down. After discontinuing personally emailing my messages to sixty people and reassuring all of my readers they would continue to receive these daily devotions if they signed up to receive them directly from WordPress, they didn’t (at least not for several hours)! After waiting for an answer from “Help” and never getting one, I eventually figured out what to do. Needless to say, I was not a happy blogger!

While your project may not be writing a blog and you may not have encountered unexplained “technical difficulties,” we’ve all had those days when nothing, absolutely nothing, goes right. You read the directions three times and they still make no sense, you wait all day for the cable man who never shows up, you realize an essential ingredient for dinner is missing minutes before the guests arrive, the new sweater with the directions “lay flat to dry” gets tossed in the dryer, you fruitlessly search all day for the receipt you need for the accountant, you forget the 20% off coupon when shopping, you burn the brownies for that night’s meeting, you get stuck in traffic when you’re already late, there’s a plumbing disaster in the bathroom, mud gets tracked onto the new carpet, the tire is flat, your phone goes dead in the middle of an important call, you delete rather than save, or the traffic cop doesn’t believe in giving you “five miles over.” It’s days like these, filled with relatively small annoyances and frustrations, that can so easily rob of us peace and joy.

Paul was in chains in a Roman prison and facing the very real possibility of execution. That certainly makes for a bad day and he had every reason to be depressed and discouraged. Yet Paul told the church at Philippi to rejoice. Moreover, he seems downright contented, peaceful and filled with thanks. If Paul could find joy in the direst of circumstances, why should we allow the unimportant aggravations of everyday life ruin our day and rob us of peace?

I pray that today will not be another “one of those days” for you or me. If it is, however, I pray that we, like Paul, will find peace, serenity and strength in the power of Jesus Christ.

We think we know what will make us happy. Seldom do we readily accept that painful moments are often the price tags for peaceful, happy times. Nor do we appreciate that happiness lives within each of us; never is it intrinsic to the events we experience. [From “Each Day a New Beginning” by Karen Casey]

Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. [1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NLT)]

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 21, 2015

Posted under

Bible Stories, Forgiveness, God's Grace & Love, Obedience

UNCONDITIONAL FORGIVENESS

If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you. Do not take interest or any profit from them, but fear your God, so that they may continue to live among you. You must not lend them money at interest or sell them food at a profit. [Leviticus 25:35-37 (NIV)]

If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest. [Exodus 22:25 (NIV)]

birdsfoot trefoil--LkGenWI14webIn the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelites to give help to one another freely and not to expect a profit from their assistance. The purpose of a loan was to help a person in need, not to increase one’s wealth. Avarice, of course, killed that concept. People being people, greediness quickly replaced concern when loans were made. Although the lender was to give out of love not out of hope of gain, rates of interest became exorbitant and poor debtors became helpless. Sound familiar?

In the New Testament, debtors and creditors were often used to illustrate the concept of forgiveness of sins. Sin is a debt that must be paid or canceled before man can be free. Jesus taught us to ask God to forgive our debts (or trespasses) as we forgive the debts (or trespasses) against us. Sometimes, however, we want something more before we’ll forgive. Often, as a condition of forgiveness, we want an apology from the offender; we may want him or her to eat some “humble pie” or we may want them to make amends. We want them to pay for their offense! Not that the offender shouldn’t apologize or try to make things right but, as the forgiver, we are not allowed to demand or expect it!

Jesus freely repaid our debt on the cross. God doesn’t expect us to grovel and beg for His forgiveness; he readily hands it out to all who repent. We are to be as equally forgiving of our fellow man!

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. [Matthew 6:12 (NIV)]

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. [Matthew 6:14-15 (NIV)]