Category: Devotion


Jul
2023

Too Full for God

categories: A Day in the Life, Prayer, Uncategorized, Wisdom

Vanessa here,

Do you have room in your heart for anything else?  A new job to help with the bills, a fundraiser to feed the starving children, a sale at your favorite crowded shoe store.

Have you stacked your life with carpooling, lil’ Ellen’s ballet classes, and you’re-the-only-one-who-can ministry work, making a buck, oh and quality hubby time between 7:00 and 10:00 on Saturdays, that you’ve lost the meaning of having quality devotion?

I have.

This year seemed to be one in which many things had finally come to fruition: My novel, Madeline’s Protector is being published. My hubby stopped being deployed, at least for a little while. My firm just signed its biggest client.

Then reality came a knocking.

Revisions and more revisions to my master piece. (All the edits, including cuts were for the best.) So, now hubby wants me to go to bed at a decent hour. Doesn’t he know inspiration hits at 1:00 A.M. My client believes that they should be my only obligation. It get’s better. Their offices are an hour from my home, and they want this homeschooling principle partner to be onsite early in the morning, three days each week. I won’t mention their lack of understanding of how long something takes to develop and deploy software.

So I adjusted, code for reducing my devotion time and being less present with my family.  Surely, they won’t mind. I began dropping off/out of my net circles. There was no time to twitter or follow cherished loop threads. Thus, when I needed spiritual refreshment, I pushed away from God and those needed friends offering words of encouragement.

Yet, as I seek to get handle on this new normal, tragedy strikes. My younger brother is prepped for open heart surgery in Florida. He lives in Georgia near the rest of the immediate kin. He just visited a client when he started experiencing chest pains. With a torn Aorta, the odds of his survival were less than 25%. The doctor told him without the surgery, he’d die in less than two days.

All the cards of my life fell off the table. My hands trembled, and I choked backed tears as I tried to convince our mother that everything was going to be fine. I don’t remember what I said or did next, except speeding away from my ‘not-understanding’ client. I have flashes of begging Delta to let me an oversold flight to be at his side when he comes out of the five hour surgery.

While I waited for positive signs of recovery, him waking up, etc., I slept on a hospital couch. My 16th anniversary passed with just phone calls. My child’s upcoming birthday party went unplanned. Nonetheless, my client learned to survive. My book galley edits… Well, I’m thankful for the editing team.

The only positive, other than seeing Marc open his eyes and squeeze my hand, was finding time to increase my prayer time. After crying out to God  for days on end, I regained that sense of connection. I never felt His arms about me more.

Why must it take near tragedy to begin to re-prioritize? I know that others have even more on their plates. I can’t imagine the depths of the burdens each of you have weighing on your lives, the important demands nipping at your heels.  All I know, is that you must run and fall at His feet, collapse your weight into God’s warm embrace.

Sleeping in the meat-locker cold air in the hospital, sniffing the wonderful bleach-laced alcohol scents in the air, gave me the opportunity to see my life, how much I’d isolated myself from friends and family with the myriad of pursuits I’d packed into my life.

First, I must apologize to my friends and family. I’ve been on the edges of your lives, only dipping my head and nodding to appear as if I’m present and involved. Every second that we breathe is precious. Every moment has worth, not just the accolades or project deliverables.

I repent for all “my busy time.”  God made us to enjoy a Sabbath, every seven days.  I’ve made it into a seven-day work week. How can I give my best to my clients or to hubby and my lil’ girl, if my batteries are never recharged?

I need to say no. You can’t serve two masters or promise to deliver something that is not humanly possible.We all want to be the good guy, the go-to girl. I am going to have to find joy in slacking. Miss Eager Beaver is now going to be, Mrs. let-me-check-my calendar. It won’t be easy. Maybe there’s a 12 step program for saying no.

Lastly, no matter how “important” some deadlines or tasks seem, it will never be more important than finding time to commune with the Lord. He is the lifter of my head when all seems lost. He is the city on hill giving guidance to those stuck in the valley. I don’t ever want to have my heart so full, that I push God and dependence upon him out of the ventricles.

My brother is now recovering at home in Georgia. He’s a walking miracle. God has used this circumstance for all our good.

Be blessed and say no to all but God.

 

 

Originally posted 2012-10-03 10:00:00.

  • Comments Off on Too Full for God

Jul
2023

More Than Conquerors

categories: Devotion, Personal Stories

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

Romans 8:37 NIV

A few months ago, a friend betrayed me. The pain slashed shockingly deep into my soul. Never had I imagined that she would take the step she took. Every time I see her name now, I want to cry for the loss of a friendship that was important to me and, I thought, her too.

A few days ago while at a conference, someone was shockingly rude to me on an elevator. She was a stranger to me, and still her  behavior hurt me. Just this morning, when telling my husband about it, the mortification from her words cut into my heart.

My human reaction is to lash back, hurt the other person as I was hurt. How dare this person treat me like this? I want to fight.

Yet I need say nothing, take no action. The fight is already won. Romans 8:38-39 tell us that nothing—NOTHING!—can separate us from the love of God. That means that no matter how rude someone is to us, no matter how many people betray us or snub us or treat us like we are less important than we think we are, We are bonded to the Lord through His great love.

We are more than conquerors. In our hearts, through the one who loved us so much He died for us, we are greater than those who seek to destroy us.

Romans 8:37 has become my life verse because I need this reminder when my humanness wants to lash back at those who hurt me. I don’t need to because Jesus has already paid the price and made me more than a conqueror over the sins of the world that strive to separate me from His love.

Originally posted 2012-09-28 10:00:00.


Jul
2023

Good Stewardship by Ruth Axtell

categories: Devotion, Education, History, Stewardship

I often think about how privileged I am to have been born in this country, received a good education, always had enough food to eat, clothes to wear, comfortable houses to live in, cars to drive, opportunities to travel—and do the work I enjoy doing. As a Christian, I feel very much that this privilege includes responsibility in the form of “stewardship.” To me stewardship means acknowledging that I’ve been given more than others, not squandering those things (be they talents or material things), and then using those benefits to help someone else.

Portrait of Robert Raikes by George Romney, National Portrait Gallery, London

A person who embodies this spirit of good stewardship in the Georgian era, but whose impact was felt way into the Regency and beyond, was Robert Raikes (1736-1811). He was born into privilege in Gloucester, England, the son of a printer and newspaper publisher. When he lost his father at the age of twenty-one, he had enough wealth to live the idle life of a typical man of his class.

Instead, he felt that sense of stewardship and used his talents and wealth to help the men locked in the workhouse and county jail in his city. He began to teach many to read, since they had little to do in jail. He also began to see how ignorance and illiteracy often led to a life of crime.

His “aha” moment came when he went to see about hiring a gardener. While there, he noticed how noisy a group of boys in the street was. The gardener’s wife told him how much worse they were on Sunday. It gave him the idea of teaching them to read, since working children only had Sunday off. He immediately inquired if there were any women in the neighborhood willing to teach them, and hired four, paying them a shilling each, to teach these boys the Bible and catechism.

At first only boys were taught. The first lessons were given in the early 1780s (accounts vary whether it was in 1780 or 81) in a woman’s private home. Soon there were more “schools” opened in the city. In 1783 Raikes published an article about these Sunday schools in his paper. One of the reasons he gave for teaching children of working class families on Sunday was the following: “Farmers and other inhabitants of the towns and villages complain that they receive more injury in their property on the Sabbath than all the week besides; this in a great measure proceeds from the lawless state of the younger class, who are allowed to run wild on that day, free from every restraint.”*

The story was picked up by the London periodicals and generated a lot of response from other cities. From these initial Sunday schools, the Sunday School Movement took off. For those who opposed what he was doing, his schools became known as Raikes’ Ragged Schools. The children spent most of the day in the school, attending church in the afternoon, and going home by five o’clock. The movement caught on and spread to other cities and then to the United States. The parents willingly brought their children to Sunday school because it meant a chance for them to receive a free education.  By 1831, 1.25 million British children were being taught weekly in these Sunday schools. That constituted approximately one-quarter of the population.Free, compulsory education was not passed into law in England until 1880.

Think of the impact a Sunday school movement had on a nation and on the world.

 

From The Rise and Progress of Sunday Schools, A Biography of Robert Raikes and William Fox by John Carroll Power, Sheldon & Co., New York, 1863

Originally posted 2012-09-21 10:00:00.

  • Comments Off on Good Stewardship by Ruth Axtell

Jul
2023

Waiting on God

categories: Devotion, Faith, Uncategorized

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31

I discussed this verse last week in the women’s Bible study class I teach at our church. It’s a rather commonly quoted passages of Scripture. While not necessarily as popular as John 3:16, I’d wager many a Christian has heard sermons on it before and had others quote it to them a time or two.

In some regards, the verse is probably overly familiar. We hear it so often we forget what it really means.

It’s a natural, human reaction to try rushing God rather than waiting for Him. The story of Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar (found in Genesis 16) illustrates this point perfectly. Sarah and Abraham had an unconditional promise that God was going to make a great nation from their offspring. At the same time, they’d been waiting for God to fulfill this promise for over twenty-five years.

And as you can imagine, after twenty-five years of leaving home and wandering around the desert,  Sarah got a little impatient. Instead of waiting on God, she decided to help move God along. So she gave Abraham one of her maids to take as a wife.

**Note this practice was common and acceptable in Sarah and Abraham’s day.

Now I have to admit that after twenty-five years of wandering around a desert trusting God, I’d be getting rather impatient for God to give me a son. Would I have behaved as Sarah did? Perhaps yes and perhaps no. I’ve never been in that situation. But I do know Sarah’s story illustrates this:

Waiting on God might be hard, but getting ahead of God will be disastrous.

Indeed, Sarah reaped a slew of negative consequences from her actions. Hagar got pregnant with Abraham’s child and lorded it over Sarah. Sarah then felt contempt and bitterness for Hagar and demoted Hagar back to her position as a maid. Rather than suffer such degradation at Sarah’s hand, Hagar ran away, and God intervened to save Hagar and her unborn child’s lives.

So as we look at the story of Sarah and Abraham and Hagar, and at the principles taught in Isaiah 40:31, we can all be reminded to wait on God.

Waiting on God might look different for each one of us, and it certainly looks different throughout the course of history. For example, for an unmarried Regency woman, waiting on God usually meant waiting for a husband that she would meet at any number London social events. For an unmarried woman living today, waiting on God might mean not getting married at all, or meeting your husband somewhere other than a London social event.

But the principle is still the same. Take a deep breath and WAIT ON GOD. You’ll end up with a much happier, easier life if you follow God rather than get ahead of Him.

** Both photos taken from Wiki Commons

Originally posted 2012-08-24 10:00:00.