Thursday Devotional - Another New Sister!

Last Friday I came home from work to another new sister!

James and Sarah were playing together when James asked: “Do you want to be a Child of God?”

Sarah: “Yes.”

James: “You need to ask Jesus into your heart in order to be a child of God. do you want to ask Jesus into your heart?”

Sarah: “Yes.”

This wasn’t the first time James had asked Sarah similar questions. In the past, she had said no or ignored the question.

Joe overheard the whole exchange and stepped in to talk with Sarah about what it means to ask Jesus into our hearts and to ask about her understanding of what Jesus did for us. Sarah knew Jesus died on the cross for our sins and she was able to identify some of her own sins and her need for a Savior. She prayed in her own words, asking Jesus to forgive her and come into her heart! She is not only my daughter, but now my sister in Christ, a child of God!

Romans 10:9-13 ⁹ If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. ¹¹ As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” ¹² For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, ¹³ for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Have you believed in your heart and professed with your mouth that Jesus is the resurrected Lord?

If so, you are saved from eternal destruction and a meaningless life and are a child of God!

If not, what is holding you back?

Alice

Information For Good Decisions

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. Mark 1:16-18

My mother was an avid reader of Consumer Reports magazine.  She would keep old copies of it so that when it came time to shop for something, she could pull up one of the old articles giving ratings on various brands, and then weight cost and quality to what would ultimately would be her decision.  She passed that on to me, but I was not the one who enjoyed having magazines laying all over the household.  However as kids says nowadays, there’s an app for that.  Thus, finding brands and researching on them right down to the model number became easy.  I love my microwave oven that we replaced years ago because it was that good.   It gave me this sense of surety and confidence that my decision would work out just fine because I had enough information.

The decision to follow Christ was a decision I made just about fifteen years ago.  However one might ask what took me so long?  It took me a while to figure out that Jesus wanted me to follow him.  When you are an imperfect person who saw His followers as perfect, you do not believe you are worthy of such a blessing.  Thus, God had to provide me with a lot of information.  Through His watching over me, He loved and protected me.  He gave me scriptures through devotions, and words of encouragement through followers.  Thus when the time came to make the decision, I was ready to follow.  The choice was easy because much like my mother taught me when finding the right brand, God had shown me His goodness, love, and finally, His grace.  So the decision was easy.

Making choices for Christ is easy once you have the right information.  This sounds like a very simple and easy Devotion to take in.  However, it is not the information that is difficult.  The application and practice to come to the decision is.  Our life is a constant struggle to make good decisions because of our sinful nature.  As Paul so well put, “I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.” (Romans 7:19)  This is the challenge we have as followers.  We all fail in some degree or another.  This is why Christ’s sacrifice was necessary.  We alone could not cover our failures, and through Him, we are made perfect.  Thus, we must always remember that following Christ, while an easy choice, is a challenging journey if we do not have practices that ensure our walk of faith stays true to His word.  Understanding this provides us with the information needed to make good faith based decision that allow us to walk as Simon and Andrew did trusting in Jesus without hesitation.

Our choice to follow means embracing the adventure that God lays before us.  The journey of faith is one that is filled with choices that have both blessings and at times heartache.  But Jesus wants us to know that no choice is without God’s watchful and loving eyes there to help and protect us.  We do not ever get to either know or understand this unless we have chosen to take up His cross and follow Him.  So let us always remember Jesus Christ as our savior as the foundation of all choices, and utilize the information we’ve gathered in our journey of faith going forward.  What information are you needing from Christ today?  What decisions might you need to wait on God for?  My prayer is that we trust God as our source of information to make good decisions.  Amen.

God's Hand

Psalm 23:4

Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

I love how God works in and through people at the perfect time.  There are times that we have no way of explaining how perfect something happened except that it was God.

Recently, my sister tagged me in a post on Facebook that her nephew had posted looking for someone to recreate a poster he found.  See, he is a teacher and uses his desk area at school to be a witness for the Lord.  Add to that the fact that he was diagnosed with a very aggressive stage 4 Hodgkin Lympoma a few weeks ago, he really wanted something that would share with his students that he is not afraid.  This poster had Psalm 23:4 on it.  It was done with very crisp lines and he said he liked it because it made him feel like it was God saying that he had already set the plans for him. 

When my sister tagged me, her nephew, Johan, wasn’t sure who was being tagged.  It has been about 25 years since we’ve seen one another.  I took a look at it, knew I could not do the exact image for copyright reasons but said that I’d play with it and figure out something.  I ended up doing a design and he loved it even more.  He said that it was completely who he was, even down to the colors (which were not yet set in stone as I showed him screenshot of what I put together). 

Though all of this, Johan kept saying how God worked it out perfectly.  The canvas was set to be delivered to him today, which is when he was hoping to have it by as school started today for him.  Yet it arrived early, allowing him to get it hung in his classroom before students would arrive. 

Our God is amazing!  When we are in our darkest, most trial filled times, he is there.  He is with us, comforting us. 

Today I want you to think about the things in your life that could be nothing other than God working it all out.  I also ask you to be praying for Johan as he undergoes treatments.  He is only 35 and has young children.  They are positive that they will be able to treat it however this will certainly be a battle that will wear him down.