SURPRISES

And let fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for her, and leave them…  Ruth 2:16

 

 

I love surprises—the good kind.  And, actually, the difficult ones make us dependent on the Lord and add spice to our days.  Today I had a good surprise.  The mailman left a package on my front step, something I hadn’t ordered.  I brought it inside and discovered that my daughter had sent me a little gift.  It was a surprise for no reason at all other than our mutual love.

Have you ever had those surprises, handfuls on purpose, dropped in your path by the Lord just because he loves you?  A card comes from a friend you’ve longed to see.  You experience unusual courtesy in your routine of daily errands.  Someone thanks you for a past kindness during a difficult time.  You find something you thought you’d lost.  In your devotional reading a word or phrase says exactly what you need…

We can overlook and be blind to these small things or we can open our eyes each morning in anticipation of the “handfuls of purpose” that God drops on our paths.  It’s quite lovely to discover little tokens of good that remind us of his love and special care—as if we were his only children.

And think of the joy we can bring to someone else by scattering little handfuls of purpose along his or her way.  Little unexpected gestures of kindness and love.  Signs of our love and God’s.

 

Father, open our eyes to see you before, behind, and around us blessing and loving us.  Help us to be generous in sharing our tokens of love that others may see and know the love of our Father who is in heaven.  In Jesus’ name.  AMEN.

CONTENTMENT

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.  Philippians 4:11 (NIV)

 

For years my brother Jack and I had promised our dad that he could stay at home as long as his health permitted.  And then the time came when the doctor told us that Dad’s mental illness was endangering him, our mom, and his caregivers.  We had to find a safe place for him.

At the last minute, our consultant told us about family residential care in private homes with trained attendants.  Although we’d never heard of this option, we discovered that such a home was available in my parents’ neighborhood.

When Jack and I visited the family home, we knew it was God’s providential response to our promise and our prayers.  The family was Christian; one of the daughters was training to be a nurse; and we fell in love with them immediately.

Jack and I returned to our parents’ home to tell Momo the doctor’s recommendation and then to ask her a difficult question:  Would she move out of the house she and Dad had built together and had lived in for over fifty years?  We gently explained Dad’s mental condition and his need for more skilled care, and then we asked if she would be willing to go with him.  We knew he wouldn’t be able to leave his wife of seventy-one years.

“I’ll go,” Momo replied, “and I’ll like it even if I don’t like it.”  Her faithful walk with the Lord since childhood had shaped in her a willingness to be led (as Peter) in places she might not have chosen for herself.

When Papa left the hospital, Jack took him to his new “home” with rooms decorated just as they had been in the house he and Momo had shared together.  And Momo was there, full of love, full of care.

In an era when we so often are expected to think first of ourselves at the expense of those we love and who love us, I remember Momo’s “liking [her circumstance] even when she didn’t like it.”  Of her willingness to follow Christ when it meant death to her personal desires.  God’s grace and her selflessness empowered her to be the companion Dad needed for his last days, and her joy in the Lord sustained her.

 

 

Father, so many of us have wonderful spiritual heritages.  As we follow the examples of those who have gone before us, help to remember that others are watching us.  Glorify yourself in us.  In Jesus’ name.  AMEN.

EXCEEDING ABUNDANCE

 [He] is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us…  Ephesians 3:20  (KJV)

 

Our World Mission Department is rarely stumped with the requests that come from our international partners, so when Mama Phoebe asked about wedding dresses, Betty didn’t hesitate.  “When our girls in Uganda get married, they like to have white dresses, but they’re very expensive for us.  Can you help?” Phoebe asked.

Immediately upon her return from overseas, Betty went from store to store pricing dresses that we could deliver to the hopeful brides.  It didn’t take much shopping for her to realize that purchasing just a few dresses would totally exhaust our annual budget.  So Betty did what we always do when a problem seems to have no solution—she prayed.  “Lord,” Betty prayed, “there’s no way we can afford these dresses, but you told us to ask, and so I’m asking for your supply.”

Within a few days, Betty got a call regarding a parishioner who wanted to close her bridal salon and wanted to give away the merchandise.  Were we interested?  She was astonished but responded in the affirmative.  And within the week our maintenance director called Betty to come down to the loading dock where a sixteen-wheeler was unloading its cargo:  numerous bridal gowns, shoes, veils, prayer books, bridesmaid and mother of the bride and groom dresses—everything and more than she had ever asked.  In fact, after sorting out all the bounty, our Ugandan friends AND our Mexican friends were able to open up their own bridal salons, and a church on the Border was able to purchase a van with the funds they made by selling unneeded wedding items.

Anytime we begin to think in our ministry (or our personal lives) that the need is too great or that it would be presumptuous to ask God to answer a particular request, we remind each other of the Wedding Dresses.  We might have thought it was frivolous—for God it was a way to demonstrate his love and his abundance.

You have not for you ask not (James 4:3).

 

Father, thank you that you love to pour out your blessings on your undeserving servants.  Give us great faith to ask great things that you may be glorified.  In Jesus’ name.  AMEN.

TRUTH

“What is truth?” retorted Pilate…  John 18:38

 

Do you remember the old story about the blind Indians and the elephant?  The king was discussing the nature of truth, and someone suggested he bring in all the men born blind from a certain province.  After touching various parts of an elephant, the men were asked to describe the elephant.  Those who had touched the head described the elephant as a large round jar; those who had felt the ears said it was like a winnowing basket; those who had felt the tusks said it was like a plow; those who had touched the body said it was like a granary; those who touched the feet said the elephant was like a pillar; those who touched the back said it was like a mortar; the tail was like a pestle to others; the tuft was like a broom.  Then began a great dispute among them all, and finally a wise man said, those who “perceive only one side of a case disagree with one another.”

Jesus defined himself with one of his “I AM’s”:  “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6).  Truth as in reality, actuality, factual.  An absolute, universal, non-variable Truth.  But have you ever considered the possibility that you do not yet know all Truth?  That you possibly only understand “one side of the case?”  Paul said, “Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!”  (I Corinthians 13:9)

I could barely make it to my car before the tears began to flow after I’d just concluded teaching a Bible study.  Our topic had been God’s love, and my students had the temerity to suggest that God’s love was more than intellectual and spiritual acceptance of us as his children.  That God’s love could touch our emotions and soul and could wrap us in his warmth while healing our brokenness.  I was so frustrated with their lack of understanding God’s majesty and position of authority over us.  How could they be so frivolous and bring God down to our level?

And that’s when I began studying and learning about the incarnation:  God becoming man, experiencing and understanding humankind, touching and loving us with eternal love, living and dying for us to bring transformation unavailable in any other way.  That Bible study with those ladies whom I thought were so unlearned revealed to me another “side of the case” that I’d not even considered.

So, how about your truth?  Is it all locked up in a box and secure against any fresh revelation, any new work of the Holy Spirit?  I am NOT talking about compromise with God’s written Word.  I am speaking about arrogant, close-mindedness in which we think we know it all—like Job’s friends.  When you are confronted with “another side,” can you listen with love and patience thinking that this might be a fresh ministry of the Spirit to reveal even more of God’s precious Truth?

 

Father, you are so infinite that we will never be able to grasp more than a fraction of your truth until we meet you in eternity.  Guard our minds against deception, but keep us always open to hearing your Truth even through the mouth of a little child.  In Jesus’ name.  AMEN.

COMING TOGETHER

Can two walk together, except they be agreed?  Amos 3:3  (KJV)

Winston Churchill said that if two people agree on everything, one of them isn’t thinking.  On the other hand, Ruth Graham loved to quote Dale Carnegie who said, “When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.”  If that’s the case in our current environment, we must be doing a lot of thinking and needing each other because there seems to be very little agreement on anything.  However, only a blind and deaf person would say that’s true today.

How can we possibly walk (or live) together without unity?  Paul tells us that we should do all we can to live at peace with everyone (Romans 12:18).  He doesn’t suggest that we compromise our beliefs but that we should be agreeable with all people.  We can determine that we will agree to disagree (if it’s possible).  We’re told to “have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; … they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone…”  (II Timothy 2:23).  God holds his children to a higher standard.

Is it necessary to be right in a discussion or to win an argument?  “…love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered…”  (I Corinthians 13:4, 5).  What difference does it make if our viewpoint isn’t praised?  If we’re not recognized as having Solomon-like wisdom?  The highest law is that of love, and love doesn’t fail.

Let us put aside our petty disagreements and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us.  Let’s put aside our ego-centrism so that we start putting God and others first.  This world would be a much more pleasant place, and I’m certain the Lord would be pleased.

Father, the rancor is getting out of hand.  Convict us to love and care for each other just as you love us—unconditionally and despite all our flaws.  In Jesus’ name.  AMEN.

TURNING THE HEARTS

And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children…  Malachi 4:6  (KJV)

 

 

I was with a small gathering with friends when someone shared a story about her young grandson.  He was playing ice hockey when another player ran into him and broke his leg.  The little guy was patched up and spent the remainder of the day in bed with a cast.

Some days later, his teacher asked the class to tell about the best day of their lives.  When it came time for this youngster to share, he said, “It was the day I broke my leg.”  The teacher interrupted, saying, “You didn’t understand.  I asked you to tell about the best day of your life.”  Again, the little fellow said, “It was the day I broke my leg.  That was the day my daddy spent the whole day with me.”

To this day, the father cannot tell the story without tearing up.  He says it was a wakeup call.  He had been leaving the house at 5:00 in the morning and coming home when it was dark.  His children hadn’t needed all the things he provided; they needed him.

How many of us can think of the times or events with our children that we could have handled differently?  Of the goals we’ve wanted to reach, thinking those would benefit our children most when all the time they’ve just wanted to be with us, to be loved by us.

Children tend to create the image of their heavenly Father based on what they know of their earthly father.  In all our learning, we move from the concrete to the abstract, and it’s so spiritually.  We learn unconditional love from our earthly father; we observe his character traits and assign those to our heavenly Father; we believe that our heavenly Father accepts us in the same measure as our earthly father.  All the traits, temperaments, dispositions, characteristics, and values that we see demonstrated by our earthly father we transfer to our heavenly Father.  True or not.

It’s no wonder that our children sometimes have trouble relating to God as one who has pursued them with an everlasting love (Jer. 31:3), who will never leave nor forsake them (Deut. 31:6), who always keeps his promises (Josh. 21:45), and who has good plans for them (Jer. 29:11).  But there’s no need to despair.  As long as we’re alive, there’s still time to love and to heal.

So what if we weren’t the perfect parent in the past?  Who was?  As we grow, we learn, and we can repent of the mistakes of the past.  Can you imagine the wonder of a grown child whose parent asks his forgiveness?  God had given us the marvelous promise to restore the years the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25), and we can claim that as we reach out in faith to our children.  With our cooperation, he can heal the wounds we’ve inflicted and turn their hearts to him and to us.

 

Thank you, Father, for showing us your love through Jesus Christ.  Make us into the parents and grandparents you’d have us to be; help us to receive your unconditional love and to lavish it on our children and grandchildren. Forgive us our sins; give us courage to repent; and bring healing to our children and our families.  In Jesus’ name.  AMEN.

DO GOODERS

 

And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.  Acts 10:38  (TNLB)

 

 

You probably remember the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, for their sermons and songs.  John is credited for averting in England the kind of bloody civil war that occurred in France.  Although they were both known for preaching salvation by faith in Christ rather than works, John famously said,

Do all the good you can

In all the ways you can

In all the places you can

At all the times you can

By all the means you can

To all the people you can

As long as ever you can.

We don’t reach out in love to others in order to win favor with God, and we don’t do our good deeds in order to earn our salvation.  However, when we love him, we just can’t help ourselves from wanting to please him.  Any good that comes from us is an expression of our love for God and an evidence of his presence in us.  Jesus told Peter that if Peter loved him, he would show it by doing what Jesus told him to do (John 14:15 Message).

It’s already late in the afternoon, but I’m thinking of ways to do all the good I can, however, and wherever I can.  Not only will it bring joy to the people I touch, but it brings pleasure to my Father and great joy to me.

 

Heavenly Father, remove from me every obstacle that blocks me from doing good.  Remove the self-orientation, and use me to bless your world—as long as ever I can.  In Jesus’ name.  AMEN.

FAIRY TALES

…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.  Psalm 30:5  (KJV)

 

 

She was tall, blonde, beautiful, and with all the proportions of a runway model—our new staff member.  She was charming, naïve, and newly married.  Carrie reminded us of the thrill of new beginnings and the dreams of great accomplishments.  She was visionary, and she caught us up in thinking that fairy tales just might come true.

The school year rocked along through the fall, and then we enjoyed the camaraderie of the Christmas holidays with numerous festivities.  Valentines brought a plethora of love notes and an abundance of sweets.  And then the honeymoon was over.  As Carrie moved into life as we know it, she came to my room and said with wide eyes, “I really believed the Cinderella story.  I thought all I had to do was make some promises, and I would live happily ever after…”

And that’s what many of us do in our lives as believers.  We get the heartbreak/rescue/ ever after business, but somehow we miss the classes that prepare us for the intensity of life following the rescue segment.  We look at rescue (salvation) to mean “immunization” –from worry, struggle, cares, hardship, pain, suffering, unpleasantness, heartbreak, and so on.  In actuality, rescue means access.

As God’s children, we can now access his grace in difficulty, his peace in suffering, his joy in heartbreak, his strength for struggles, his comfort in pain, and every single thing we need for life and godliness (II Peter 1:3).  We no longer have to merely “make it through” hard times; we discover the ability to be more than conquerors—being strengthened by virtue of the struggle (Ro. 8:37).

Dear little Cinderella needs her prince to rescue, provide, and care for her.  We have a constant, unfailing (Josh. 23:14) Father who sets a course for us that goes through stresses and storms while all the while ensuring that his Son is with us navigating the winds and waves (Matt. 8:23-27) and bringing us through to safety.  Our trust is strengthened, our confidence renewed, and we are better prepared for the next challenge of the voyage.

We have not been rescued to be put on a shelf and admired.  We have been and are over and over rescued as a testament of God’s grace, his power in our weakness, and his faithfulness to his promises.  Hebrews 12:12, 13 (NLT) invokes us to “take a new grip with [our] tired hands and strengthen [our] weak knees. Mark out a straight path for [our] feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.”

We have more than a Prince (or Princess) Charming.  We have access to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  AND we can live happily ever after.

 

Father, how blessed we are to be walking with you every day of our lives.  We don’t have to wait for eternity for our joy.  We have YOU.  Amen.

THERE’S ALWAYS MORE

 

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have [it] more abundantly.  John 10:10  (KJV)

 

 

I just read about a lady who was known for her extraordinary Christian maturity.  One day her pastor asked her to preach the Sunday sermon believing that her experience would be instructive to the congregation.  On the Sunday when the lady rose to speak, her sermon was short and sweet.  “Dear Friends,” she began, “there’s always more.”  And with that, she sat down.

Just begin to ponder that simple message:  there’s always more.  The God of the Infinite, the one who promised to meet all our needs, the Alpha (beginning) and the Omega (ending), the great Creator never operates in scarcity.  He never runs out of any resource—of love, of grace, of mercy, of patience, of whatever we need.  And there’s no end to the delights of knowing him.

Think of what this means in your present circumstance.  As a parent, spouse, friend, employer:  there’s more wisdom, there’s more understanding, there are more ideas, there’s more love…  As an intellectual:  there’s more to contemplate, there’s more to learn, there’s more to investigate, there’s more for growth…   As a leader:  there’s more direction, there’s more discernment, there are more resources, there’s more creativity…  As a disciple:  there’s more to discover, there’s more to obey, there’s more to abandon, there’s more to enjoy…  We could fill in the blanks indefinitely.  Suffice it to say, that in Christ, there is abundance.

Lest we consider God as having limited resources, just look at his provision for the Children of Israel in the wilderness; for Elijah in hiding; for Ruth in Bethlehem; for David in his wanderings; for Israel in exile; for feeding the four thousand and five thousand; for rescuing you and me; and for the times he is always there for his people.  His hand is not shortened that he cannot save nor is he deaf that he cannot hear our prayers (Isaiah 59:1).

We sometimes treat our spiritual beings as add-ons.  They’re peripheral to our real lives.  But Jesus says I’ve come to give you abundant life, more than we’re currently experiencing.  If we’re not living in abundance, there’s more.  God has more for us than we can think or imagine and waits for us to move beyond our impoverished selfishness into his endless provision of more.  Wherever we find ourselves, there’s always more.  Dare we take the challenge?

 

Father, charge our spiritual imaginations that we reach out in faith to you to receive more from your goodness.  Move us beyond our spiritual poverty into the richness we have in Christ Jesus.  Gratefully, we pray in Jesus’ name.  AMEN.

IN GOD WE TRUST*

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD…  Psalm 33:12  (NIV)

 

During the Civil War, there was an increase in “religious sentiment,” perhaps comparable to what we experienced right after the tragedy of 9/11.  Suffering tends to makes us look outside ourselves to see what God might be doing or saying and how we might respond.

And so it was that when our country was going through the most divisive time in its history, Rev. M. R. Watkinson from Pennsylvania wrote to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase asking that “Almighty God” be somehow recognized on our currency.  After all, from ancient times gods and rulers had their place of honor on the coinage of the land.  Why shouldn’t the United States acknowledge God’s rightful role in our national affairs?

Secretary Chase responded by instructing the Director of the Mint to prepare a motto, saying, No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.  Once the design was approved, it went to Congress, and the Act adding Chase’s notation passed in April 22, 1864.  Eventually, this saying was added to our paper currency.  On July 30, 1956, a Joint Resolution of the 84^th Congress and approved by the President declared IN GOD WE TRUST the national motto of the United States.

On November 8, 2016, our country experienced a gut-wrenching upheaval as the results of our national election were announced.  For days analysts and pundits have tried to determine what happened.  Did anyone really anticipate the historic event that has provoked rioting among some citizens and hope among others?  And yet, we are one nation under God.

Did you take notice that in the late 19^th Century one man, Rev. Watkinson, was compelled to act after having felt “our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters?”  One man moved by God did what he could to make a difference in our country.  And now our national motto is IN GOD WE TRUST.

Let us, as good citizens of our beloved country and members of the Church, continue to rise in prayer on behalf of our nation:  for healing, for repentance, for spiritual renewal.  And let us pray for all our leaders that we would be established in righteousness (I Timothy 2:1-4, Romans 13:1).

 

Father, your grace has brought us safe thus far.  You established us as a nation for your purposes and have seen us through “many dangers, toils, and snares.”  In thanksgiving for your love and your grace, we ask you to forgive us for not loving our neighbors as ourselves and for choosing our own ways instead of yours; heal us; unite us in your love; be with all our leaders and give them wisdom to govern this great nation.  IN GOD WE TRUST.  AMEN.

 

* Information gathered from https://www.treasury.gov