Guidelines For Living Devotional

What Does it Mean to Deny Yourself

"Then he said to them all: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me'" (Luke 9:23).  Who was this one to make such a bold statement? He's identified in history as Jesus of Nazareth, but Nazareth was merely the place where He grew up.  One day, Jesus put the question to His disciples, saying, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" (Matt. 16:13). Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16).

Here is What is Even Better Than Forgiveness

"Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends," wrote Harriet Ward Beecher. Most of us, however, never get to the cemetery with those faults.  We gunnysack them.  We file them away in our memory banks, we store them in the closet; and then when the time is right, we marshal them and use them as weapons and clubs to wreak vengeance upon our enemies.

What Does It Mean to Be Reconciled?

When General James Edward Oglethorpe said to John Wesley, “I never forgive,” Wesley answered, "Then I hope, sir, that you never sin."  Why did Wesley say that?  Because sooner or later, you do sin, you say something you ought not to have said, you do something that hurts someone, perhaps someone you love, and you need to be on the receiving end of forgiveness.

How to Hear God's Voice

Before they put astronauts aboard the spacecrafts that were sent to the moon, scientists used a rather elaborate system to keep the missiles on the right path in space. It seems that, in spite of their great accuracy, the missiles would deviate from the correct trajectory and wander off course.  The slightest deviation would, of course, cause them to go hurtling off in space forever, and miss the moon entirely.  To correct the deviation, scientists installed receivers in the rockets. From Cal‑Tech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a message would be radioed through space to the missile.  The receiver aboard the spacecraft would translate the message, causing the great retro-rockets to fire for a precise number of seconds to correct the course of the space missile gone astray.

How to Know God's Will

In one of his plays, William Shakespeare wrote, "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will."  What the great poet of England was saying is that the hand of God guides us, and, at times, His guidance overrides the human will.

How to Stay Balanced

Michael Fortino is a time-management specialist. He is one of those capable individuals who analyzes businesses and tells management how to be more productive and efficient, but Fortino has changed his mind about some things.  In the 1980s the personal computer was born.  Now we have the Internet, e-mail, cell phones, instant messaging.  What we thought would be labor saving devices end up eating up more and more of our time. 

Are Angels Real?

You will never have to convince Josh Dennis that angels are real.  He learned that fact, first-hand.  It all started when he got separated from the Boy Scouts that were exploring Hidden Treasure Mine. When he got lost, people expected that he would be found in a matter of hours. But long hours soon turned into days. What rescuers had not counted on was the treachery of the drop-offs and the hidden pockets of darkness with floors of deep water.

Living a Life of Meaning

The headlines of the newspaper read, "GUNSHOT BLAST KILLS HEMINGWAY!"  It was dated Monday, July 3, 1961.  One of my literary heroes lay dead of a self-inflicted wound, bringing his life to a tragic end.  Hemingway was a man's man.  I admired his style of writing, and I admit I was rather fascinated by the way he seemed to stare life in the face and go after it.  He wrote about wars, bullfighting, big game hunting, physical adventure as man was pitted against his environment--things that were of interest to a young man in his mid-20s.

What Faith Lived Out Looks Like

Ernest Hemingway once said that "courage is fear that has prayed!" If he's right, then a man in Zamboanga has that kind of stuff.  In the event that the city of Zamboanga doesn't register with you, allow me to explain that this is one of the principal cities in Mindanao, southern Philippines, an area which has been torn by strife.

Is God in Your DNA?

In a tribal area in Northern Luzon in the Philippines, a witch doctor sprinkles chicken blood on the door posts of a new house and chants a prayer asking that the spirits bless the residents. In Yangon merchants step out of their sandals and walk barefooted up the steps to the great Shedagon Pagoda and sit in contemplation before a golden Buddha.  Half-way around the world, families fill parking lots, then with Bibles under their arms stream into churches looking more like modern shopping centers than traditional ones with spires and organs. While their paths to God may be as divergent as the distance between the three groups I mentioned, all of them, right or wrong, are reaching out to God as they conceive him to be.