Guidelines For Living Devotional

How To Prepare for Difficult Times

I often hear from frustrated, sometimes angry, sometimes confused people who ask a lot of variations of the same question:  Where was God when trouble knocked at my door?

What To Do When You’re In Trouble

Whenever trouble knocks at the door of my life, I ask myself three question:  1)  Is God trying to tell me something, and I've been too dense to hear His voice so now He's getting my attention?  2)  Is the trouble the result of Satanic attack? or 3)  Is this difficulty circumstantial--something that possibly I brought on myself, or may have happened simply because I got caught in the wake of a poor economy, or just happened to be in harm's way?

How Do I Grow Spiritually?

It's amazing what parents will do to see growth in their children.  When a parent suddenly realizes that his or her child is significantly shorter than all the others in a given group, most parents start booking appointments with doctors and embark on a regimen of nutrition or medication.  They don't want their youngster to be a "small fry!" 

Does God Hear Your Pleas?

Rick Warren, a pastor who speaks to some 12,000 people every week, says that the question which people ask more than any other is, "Why did this happen to me?"  Has that question ever come from your heart?  A phone call in the night brought news that your best friend had been injured in an automobile accident.  You were laid off at work, replaced by a younger person.  The company that you thought was on the way up went south with your savings.  Just when your husband retired and you thought you could enjoy life, a stroke changed everything.

It’s Time to Slow Down Your Life

Living faster than ever before and enjoying it less?  Millions of people are like that, living in a pressure cooker environment, packing more and more into less and less time, but liking it less every day.  Whatever makes life worth living–the leisure walk through the woods, the time to sit and play with your baby, a candlelight meal with your husband, time to read and reflect–are all swallowed up by the monster of doing more and more in less time?

How To Make Today Count

How you speak two words tells a great deal about your outlook on life--two very important words that are often spoken at the beginning of the day.  Those two very revealing words are, "ANOTHER DAY."  Think for a moment.  When you awake in the morning and say, "Another day...," how do you say it?  The inflection of your voice reveals a lot about your attitude.

4 Guidelines To Help You Think Straight

Do you remember when your friend made a bad choice, a wrong decision like walking out of a marriage, or quitting a job over a petty disagreement, or allowing a disagreement to break a long-time friendship?  And you said, "That person isn't thinking straight!" 

6 Ways To Get Out Of A Mess

Have you ever had the experience of waking up in the morning and asking yourself, "How have I gotten to this place?  What has happened to me?  Where did I go wrong?"  The realization that you were in the wrong place under the wrong set of circumstances hit you like a ton of bricks.  You suddenly realized that you had missed the right turn a few miles back down the road of life.  Now you are asking, "How do I get out of this mess?  Or is there a way out at all?"

Start Including God In Your Thought Process

Only ten percent of all people really think.  Seventy-five percent think they think, and fifteen percent would rather die than think.  Do you believe that?  I often close a program with the phrase, "Think about it!"  Yet, quite often, we prefer not to think because when we really do think about something, we are confronted with the consequences of our actions which we prefer not to see.

Have You Thought About Your Relationship With God?

The human brain is an amazing creation.  It has spawned the marvelous inventions of space and plummeted the depths of the biological kingdom.  It has given birth to the space program, the marvelous advancements of medicine, the libraries of the world, the advancements of civilization, the remarkable achievements in the fields of science, history, anthropology, literature, social studies and a jillion things that neither time nor space allow me to mention.  It has also produced the negative rationale behind two world wars and a host of lesser conflicts and the hideous reality of concentration camps, and has filled the prisons of the world because of man's failure to think through the consequences of his actions.