Guidelines For Living Devotional

What To Do In Times Of 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."

Give Your Pain To Jesus

The distinguished 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. 

Stop, Think and Pray

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.

What Does Real Love Look Like?

"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..."

Begin Loving Others Without Expectations

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.

Start Experiencing Jesus’s 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 Do I Know God If God Values Me?

One of the marks of affluence in Russia today is the vast network of hastily constructed metal storage sheds which look like corrugated matchboxes just large enough to hold a car or protect building materials from greedy eyes.  With no windows and a large padlock, these storage sheds become a virtual prison for anyone unfortunate enough to be inside when the door closes.

Here’s How To Find Closure and Healing

Item #1:  A busload of Korean mourners gathers at the spot where the giant 747 crashed.  They sprinkle flowers on the barren, desolate ground and offer prayers. Item #2:   A father kneels by the grave of his 21-year-old son and cries, "I never got to tell you how proud of you I have been and how much I really loved you."    Item #3:  The family of a young woman whose daughter was abducted as she drove home late one night wants to watch the grim execution of the alleged murderer.

Start Seeing God’s Blessings

When a certain businessman bought an Italian sports car known as a Lamborghini, he phoned the local parish priest and asked him if he would bless the new vehicle, which was no small investment.  Hesitatingly the priest asked, "Just what is a Lamborghini?"  That was it!  "Well, if you don't know what one is, I don't think your blessing would amount to much," the man replied, and hung up.  Then he called a Baptist preacher and asked him if he would bless the sports car.  The pastor immediately responded: "A Lamborghini?  Wow!  That's great.  Zero to 60 in 5.3 seconds. Best engineered sports car in the world."  Then he hesitated and said, "You want me to bless it?  What's a blessing?"

How Does The Holy Spirit Fit Into My Plans?

Business journals and MBAs are convinced that strategic planning is important, a vital key to success; and no thinking person would deny the importance of knowing where you want to go and having a plan to get there.  But for the business person who takes the promises of God's Word at face value and is serious about making God his senior partner, is business success simply a matter of finding out what the need is and how you can fill it?  Where does the leadership of the Holy Spirit fit into the equation of success?