Thursday Devotional - God is With Us in our Disgust 6/2/22

 I walked into work the other day and someone shared how disturbed they were to hear all the terrible news in the world. They said it was especially difficult to hear and see about children being harmed. I agreed.

God is disgusted, too. I was able to share that I just re-read Matthew 18:5-7

⁵ And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. ⁶ “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. ⁷ Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!

I said I know God will bring justice. We often want it immediately, but He will bring it in His time.

However disgusted or appalled you and I are, we can be assured God is even more disgusted. We can trust His timing to rightly judge.

Thurs Devo: Kids - Our New Ministry

With the placement of the 2 foster kids (as I talked about last week), I will be going on parental leave for the summer. Even though we’ve kept the kids several weekends over the past 6 months, it will be quite an adjustment to care for them full-time! We know it won’t always be easy, but God has made it very clear these are the children for us. They are our new daily ministry for a lifetime! Joe and I have been praying for help to faithfully point our children to God and His ways daily. Of course, it will start with our own love for and obedience to God.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9     ⁴ Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ⁵ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Today is my last day in the office and Erin Miller has willingly agreed to write the Thursday devotionals in my absence! (Thank you, Erin!) I plan to follow along via our external blog – Workplace Devotions (http://trdailydevotional.blogspot.com/). Some of you already know this, but when we moved the devotionals to the Hub, this was a way to continue to include former co-workers, friends and family that also wanted to continue to receive the devotionals. So, if you know of others that would appreciate and be encouraged by these devotionals, then please pass the word about our external blogspot.  

May God bless each of you with a deeper understanding of Himself this summer!

Sincerely,

Alice

Thurs Devo: Great and Marvelous!

Last week we saw how God called His people in the last days to endure patiently, even to the point of death. He promised blessings for it. This week, we see God follow through on His promise!

Revelation 15:1-4     I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed. ² And I saw what looked like a sea of glass glowing with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and its image and over the number of its name. They held harps given them by God ³ and sang the song of God’s servant Moses and of the Lamb:

“Great and marvelous are your deeds,
    Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are your ways,
    King of the nations.
⁴ Who will not fear you, Lord,
    and bring glory to your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
    and worship before you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

Those who endure patiently will be victorious and live a great and marvelous life with God in heaven. They will understand, experience, and worship God for all that He is!

I haven’t patiently endured the last days, but Joe and I have endured (sometimes patiently and sometimes not) infertility for over 8 years (as many of you already know). However, come June 18^th, the 2 foster kids we’ve gotten to know this past year will be placed with us for adoption! They are a sibling pair – 3 ½ year old boy and a 2 year old girl.

We are praising God for His help to endure as we awaited His timing, His plan and His children!!! Victory (both great and small) belongs to the Lord God Almighty! He is Great and Marvelous! 

Alice

Obsolete Children

See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.  Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.  1 John 3:1-2

The other day, I read a silly quote that said, “Adults are obsolete children.”  That was written by Dr. Seuss.  I read Dr. Seuss books when I was little.  In fact, I can still recite my favorite quote from his book, ‘Stop That Ball!’  It said, “I whacked it high!  I whacked it low!  I whacked it so hard the string let go!”  There is a far greater lesson for me in remembering this other than a childhood memory.  It is a reminder that the innocence and joy I had as a child is something to aspire to.  It is important that I bring the exuberance, excitement, pure heartedness, and fun loving attitude about my faith like a child.  It is not because being a follower of Christ is fun and games.  Instead, it is knowing there is no better place than to be a child of the wonderful, majestic, and Holy God.

We are to embrace our role of children of God.  I love the letter in first James as today’s verse as it discusses our place as God’s children.  We have the knowledge of knowing Him intimately through His word and His Holy Spirit that dwells within us.  Are there times we will feel like we are in utter darkness and experience fear?  Yes.  Will we be tempted into sin and may at times fail?  Absolutely.  But as God’s children, we have the shining perfected example of our Heavenly Father, and this becomes our guide to righteousness.  We see Jesus as foretold in Isaiah 9:6 as the “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  We take on His traits as born again through Christ.  Yet while we continue to grow in Him, we must not lose the child like joy in being with Him.  There is no greater love than Jesus Christ has for us, and to have it, we should feel comfort, peace, warmth, and that feeling when you have an abundance of everything you ever needed.  That’s what it is like to truly understand you are a child of God.

To be a child of God does not come with just personal fulfillment.  It requires us to act.  Jesus said, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)  The children’s gospel song “This Little Light of Mine,” simply says, “This little light of mine.  I’m gonna let it shine!”  As God’s children, we contain His light within.  We in kind must let it shine with brightly inspired by the energy all children possess.  What is taking away your child-like passion for Christ?  How can you better embrace the idea of being a child of God?  My prayer is that we go joyously in our journey of faith and not become ‘obsolete Children.’  Amen.  

Caring for Orphans

Some of you know that Joe and I have not been able to have children. We got pregnant in our first year of marriage, but miscarried at 13 weeks. Since then, we haven’t been able to get pregnant again. For a while, we thought it just wasn’t God’s timing.

A couple years later, though, we were studying the book of Isaiah and I was challenged by God’s command to take care of widows and orphans.

Isaiah 1:17                                

Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.

James 1:27             Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Joe and I prayed about whether God was directing us to take care of orphans by pursuing foster-to-adopt. We attended a conference about it and then signed up for an official orientation class in our area, but the doors were locked when we arrived (2 minutes late, because of some slow traffic). We knocked on doors and called numbers we had, but to no avail. We took that as literally a closed door, at least for a time.

Four more years past, yet another fertility doctor visited, and we continued to pray about what God wanted us to do. So, last May, Joe went ahead and scheduled another foster orientation, but this time they came to our house. After many training classes and home visits, we were finally licensed for foster-to-adopt a few weeks ago!

Who else are the orphans, widows, or oppressed around you and me?

How might God want you and me to help those around us that are troubled, oppressed, or mistreated?

Alice