Guidelines For Living Devotional

How to Be a Genius

Do you ever wonder why you don’t get more done than you do?  Perhaps there is a reason for it.  Dr. Catherine Morris Cox, the American psychologist known for her work on intelligence and genius, suggested that geniuses are not produced by great intelligence alone, but by some factors that can be developed by the average person.  Concentration is one of those factors.  Dr. Cox’s study revealed that some of the world's greatest geniuses were not necessarily intellectual giants, but those who had the power of concentration, even though they were greatly distracted.

How Do You Turn Things Over to God?

John Redman tells the story of a farmer who came to town and asked the chef of a new French restaurant if he could use about a million frog legs.  “Oui!” he responded enthusiastically, but he quickly asked, “Where in the world would you find so many frogs?”   “I have a pond at home that is filled with them,” replied the farmer, adding, “they drive me crazy night and day.”

How to Think About Trouble

"Nobody knows the trouble I've seen," begins an old song, but today the words might be more accurate:  "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen.  Nobody knows but my best friend, my neighbor, my mother, my dentist, and some woman I sat next to on the bus yesterday."

How to Cope with Pain

The great French painter Pierre Auguste Renoir was afflicted with arthritis that gradually crippled his hands.  Little by little his hands became gnarled and twisted, and it became increasingly painful to just hold a brush.  Anyone who has been strong and then has had pain begin to cripple him can relate to what Renoir went through, but Renoir's pain didn't go away with a few aspirin.  Eventually holding a brush became a painful challenge.  At last the arthritis put him in a wheelchair and the easel had to be lowered for him to even reach it. 

The Words You May Regret: Or Else

Have you as a parent ever felt like giving up on a teenager when he turned his back to you and God and went the route of the Prodigal? Then today's devotional is just for you.  Is it possible for a parent to separate behavior from acceptance?  Not only is it possible, it is absolutely necessary.  Sooner or later almost every parent has to say, "Look, kid, I love you, but what you are doing isn’t ok.  You reject the behavior, not the person.

How to Love in Real Life

"There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer; no disease that enough love will not heal; no door that enough love will not open; no gulf that enough love will not bridge; no wall that enough love will not throw down; no sin that enough love will not redeem.  It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake, a sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all...If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world..." so wrote poet Emmett Fox as he described the power of love.  Yet his words contain a fatal flaw, "if only you could love enough..."

Loving a Flawed Person

Florence Allshorn was a missionary sent to Uganda by the Church Missionary Society long before the advent of jets that span oceans and continents before the sun rises and sets.  A number of missionaries had been there before Florence, but all of them had given up and come back home.  The problem wasn't the climate or the cockroaches.  Neither was it the headhunters or unfriendly natives to whom missionaries, especially female ones, were quite a novelty.  The real problem was the senior missionary who was a strong‑willed woman with a will of iron who had single‑handedly stopped the plague by burning down entire villages.

Rejection-Proof Love

An amazing thing about the human body is that it tends to reject anything that is foreign to it.  Take a splinter, for instance, which has worked its way under your skin as a thorn did my thumb when I was pruning my roses.  Unable to dig it out with a needle, I said to myself, "I'll just let nature take care of it," and sure enough, it was sore for a few days and then the surface around the thorn toughened as the flesh began to isolate the foreign object.  In a few days, the thorn worked to the surface where I could get it with tweezers. 

How God Values You

The life of a single person, no matter what his or her background or past, is of equal, and great value to God.

The Closure You Need

Closure is part of the healing process we need to get on with our lives.  Thank God that there can be closure with difficulty which enables us to go on and to find His grace and strength.