Guidelines For Living Devotional

How Do Thoughts Dictate Actions?

Some 3000 years ago the wise man—perhaps Solomon himself—said it so well: "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he."   Simply put, you become what you think—negative or positive.   Your thinking shapes your attitude, and your attitude is like the wood carver's tool that molds you into the image you become.

What Is True Love?

"How could God really love me if He let this happen to me?" If you have never said it, chances are you have thought it--at least for a fleeting moment, and perhaps that thought took root in your mind and the logic has become a real problem. In coping with the problem of circumstances which run counter to your belief in a good God who loves you, you may well have to disengage yourself from the broken relationship which stands as a barrier between you and God's love.

Can I Question God’s Goodness?

Afflictions come to us in all sizes and shapes. I am thinking of two individuals in particular--one of whom sustained brain damage in a sports injury and then faced a life-long physical impairment, and another who has grown bitter over the loss of a baby girl found dead in her crib.  Both of them talk of God's love. The first speaks of it as a comfort and a strength; the other as an obstacle--"How could God really love us and allow this to happen?" In one case the injury drove him to God; in the other, it drove her away from God.

What To Do When You Doubt God’s Love

Have you ever doubted that God does love you?  Have you ever faced circumstances that caused you to say, "How could God love me when He has allowed circumstances as these?"  It may have been the death of your child, or a mate who deeply disappointed you, or something about which you prayed, and your prayer went unanswered—or so you thought.  Possibly you did not verbalize it at all, but way down in your heart you just allowed those thoughts of, "How could this happen if God really loved me?" to reverberate in your soul.

How Do You Know When You Have Heard God’s Voice?

Have you discovered that when someone says, "God told me to do something," we think that either we are confronted with a deeply spiritual individual or someone who needs a psychiatrist?

Stop And Listen To God’s Voice

Have you ever had the experience of being somewhere away from the noise and din of the city, perhaps in the mountains somewhere, or in a desert; and as you sat and looked at the starry sky, you were amazed at the silence?  It was quiet, right?  Wrong!  It wasn't quiet; it was just that you couldn't hear the sounds.  Strange but true is the fact that the atmosphere around you is filled with a thousand voices, but you just aren't tuned to them.  You can't pick them up.  If someone asks you what kind of a device you're listening to, you would say, "Well...it's a radio."  Or "I'm listening online over the internet."   There are "voices"—sound waves, cellular and digital signals all around us!

You Are Not Isolated Or Alone

Back when the world's population was less than 250 million, a mere fraction of what it is today, the prophet Isaiah wrote, "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!" (Isaiah 5:8, KJV).  I wonder how he would feel today when skyscrapers puncture the skyline of almost every major city on earth, yet one of the ironic contradictions of our day is that there are more people alive today than have died since creation, and furthermore, there is more loneliness than ever before.  Strange, isn't it?  You would think that with more people, there would be less estrangement and loneliness.  But it just does not work that way.

Find True Companionship

Alone! is the title of Admiral William Byrd's autobiography.  It’s the story of his life as this celebrated explorer tells about his experience in a little hut in the Antarctic near the South Pole.  Byrd tells how the isolation of seeing no other human being day after day began working on his mind and emotions as he spent the long winter alone, separated from friends and loved ones, even separated from friendly animals which might have offered some companionship or comfort.  "Alone!"  None would deny it, but a person does not have to spend a long arctic night in a little hut near the pole to know what it is to experience feelings of isolation and loneliness.

What Is A True Friend?

In the event that you are ready to lose faith in humanity, let me tell you about Jean Rosenstein and what happened to her. Mrs. Rosenstein sat down at a small table in her cramped, one‑bedroom apartment and painfully put her thoughts on paper. The arthritis in her fingers made the writing difficult and painful but she continued.

This Is The Cure For Loneliness

The composer Peter Tchaikovsky knew what loneliness is.  He raised the shades on the window of his heart as he wrote in a minor key, "None but the lonely heart can feel my anguish..."  There are more people today than ever before who know the anguish of the lonely heart.  In spite of the fact that more people are alive right now than have ever died from the days of Adam and Eve to the present, there are also more lonely people than ever before.  It takes more than masses of people to eliminate loneliness.