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Prayer topics
Tiredness as a Blessing
Service For You, Not Just Happy Feelings For Me
Use My Writing, Lord, to Speak 'Your' Words
Squeaky Clean Honesty
Power, Energy, Healing, Growth - From God

Tiredness as a Blessing
Date: September 23, 2003

Dear Heavenly Father, Once again (over and over!) Your Word has spoken directly to my heart and to my circumstances and situation. How much You must love me, an insignificant speck of dust even as I am!

I am starting to get a routine here for my mornings, and though I am still physically tired, I am trusting in You to carry me through - or should I say, as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 1, because I am still tired, I must throw all my trust on You to carry me through and deliver me. Thank You, Lord. I hadn't seen this "tired" business that way before. In that sense, my tiredness is a blessing! (But I'd still like to be delivered from it sometime...).

You know about yesterday at work. You know how tired ____ was, and though I sympathized with her, I stopped short of praying for her. I'm sorry, Lord. Please give me another opportunity, Lord. Your will be done.

Lord, You know I asked my daughter where she stood with church and all, and she said two things. One, she doesn't want to be forced to go, and second, that she is trying to figure things out for herself. Oh dear Lord, please speak to her heart in this "figuring things out" stage of her life. Thank You, Jesus.

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Service For You, Not Just Happy Feelings for Me
Date: September 24, 2003

Dear Heavenly Father, Good morning! And it is! Thank You for Your great healing work on my throat and my tiredness. I am trusting You now to bring it to full completion. Thank You. And thank You that I am feeling so much more awake this morning. So looking forward to time with You - and at work - and this afternoon with my sister-in-Christ,____.

Now, dear Lord, please bless the reading of Your Word to my heart, and help me to grow from it. Fill me with Your Spirit. And help me to give out the blessings I received, so that You can trust me to give away to others, and fill me more for service for You, not just for happy joyful "feelings" for me. I'm sorry to have been so slow to get to this point, Lord.

Beside today's devotional there are pencilled notes in my Grandmother's handwriting, no doubt from about the 1940's or so! It is a wonderful feeling to think of the continuity of God's work in my family line, and that His Word never changes and is always alive. It is great, too, to see my daughters using this same devotional book - yet another generation!

Dear Lord, I find myself quite often thinking of doing this job for a long period of time, and it seems so kind of depressing. What about wanting to go to Bible camp, or anything like that? But then I remember that You open and close doors, and You will arrange all things to Your glory and my best good in Your service. And I remember I am to live one moment at a time and not even think about the future except to see it as a wonderful adventure with the One who loves me infinitely and eternally, the One Whom I desire to learn to love at least in some degree in the same way, as much as the creature is able by the power of the Creator. So, no more work worries.

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Use My Writing, Lord to Speak 'Your' Words
Date: September 25, 2003

Dear Lord, Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, by the indwelling of Your Holy Spirit. I am Yours! Oh, glorious thought! Your ways are not my ways and Your thoughts are not my thoughts. You are infinitely above all I am, yet You reach down and love and care for me forever. What an incredible, omnipotent, loving God we serve! Hallelujah!

Thank You for always leading me and being with me. Thank You for chastening me when I need it, even if I don't always understand it at the time.

Dear Lord, that sad email from ____, and that one from ____, and that one from ____, and those ones from ____ all sit on my computer waiting to be answered. Lord, I do believe You have given me a gift of writing. Dear God, please use that gift to speak Your comfort and direction and love to these people You have given me to write to. May only Your words be spoken. Like ____ used to pray, "Hide me behind the shadow of Your cross, dear Christ Jesus, my Lord and Saviour forever and ever!" Thank You, Lord. Amen!

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Squeaky Clean Honesty
Date: September 26, 2003

Thank You, dear Father, that this week has passed quickly. Thank You for being with me through this cold, for Your wise decision to allow it, rather than to instantly heal it (and yet I also know that it could have been much worse).

Yesterday I was slow at work and made some mistakes. And Lord, I tried to cover them up or explain them away. I was not honest, Lord. Please forgive me and help me to be "squeaky clean" when it comes to honesty - to everything. I was thinking this morning about all my mistakes and bumblings yesterday, and I was thinking that I was just too sick and tired to have the energy to turn to God as I should have. Then I realized that it is precisely when we have no strength or energy in ourselves, that we must throw ourselves on the power and might of God. And I think - I know - that God has allowed this cold so that I could come to understand that, and even appreciate the nasty condition! So thank You, Lord, for this rather extraordinary "blessing"!

I read 2 Corinthians 4 this morning. Thank You, Lord, for the facts about Jesus. Thank You that I am Your child. Thank You for the time with ____ yesterday and the opportunity to serve, using the gifts You have given me. Thank You that Your mercies are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness, O Lord!

I love the themes I found in today's reading. First, our adequacy in service/ministry is from God, through the glorious life-giving Spirit (not by the law); therefore we can serve and preach boldly. Secondly, when I turn to the Lord, the veil is lifted from my heart and I receive liberty by the Spirit, and I am being transformed into the glorious image of Christ.

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Power, Energy, Healing, Growth - From God
Date: September 27, 2003

The devotional reading for today deals with divine healing. The writer is 70 years old and says he can do twice as much work as he did in his prime, because he has learned to be in the strength of God. He also says it has been "for twenty-one years... a reality growing deeper and richer, until... I am in every sense a younger, fresher man than I was at thirty." He also says he does his work with less than half the effort needed before.

Is this really available, Lord? Can it grow in me, too? Yes, I do believe "The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty." (Zeph. 3:17). If God can heal cars and work miracles for homes and jobs and all kinds of other things, why can't such a mighty God heal and energize my body?

I have asked and asked, but maybe it is happening. Lots of people my age are in way worse whape. And God is giving me energy for my job, and for my ministries and my home responsibilities. And even with my cold, God has kept me going. But maybe if I'd trust His power more, He might have just wiped it out? Or maybe I went through it for a lesson (well, yes I did - the very lesson of operating in His strength when mine was gone!).

Lord, I want Your energy and power. By Your Word, I am Your child and all that is Yours is mine. I come to You today (to be honest, with a bit of fear and trembling, and the enemy trying to cast doubts, like it isn't time, or I don't deserve it, or it isn't Your will... but all these are lies, according to Your Word, so I reject these doubts and fears) and place my trust in You! "On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand." Satan, the enemy, is "sinking sand!" I reject Your lies, satan, in the name of Jesus! And Lord God, I claim Your power and health and energy, in the name of Your Son, Jesus my Saviour, whose precious blood has made me Your child and heir, with all the rights and privileges accruing thereto. Thank You, Father God. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Holy Spirit. Thank You, my God, Three-in-One!

I am made anew in the image of Christ. I am made as He is. He is the healer, the creator, the renewer - not weak and sick and dying. He is life itself, the source of life and of all good. My Lord and my God! Jesus, when tired in His earthly life, withdrew and turned to His Father for strength and guidance, and I can do this too! And someday, when I see my Lord face to face, all my earthly tiredness will be gone forever! Thank You, Jesus!

I am reading in 2 Corinthians 4 and You have just explained something to me! Thank You! Verse 7: "But we have this treasure [the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ - verse 6] in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. That is what the writer of today's devotional was saying: "I am in the strength of God." All this time I have been thinking of it as my strength being increased by God, but that isn't it at all. It is God's strength working through me. And no matter how God chooses to work His strength through me, it will be sufficient and overflowing for the service/ministry/work He has for me to do from moment to moment. (No, satan! This is not a cop-out! This is the truth of the Word of God from His own mouth - inspired, God-breathed! 2 Timothy 3:16!).

Praise God! What a relief! I don't have to "feel" strong. I just have to step forward wherever and whenever God leads, and His strength will do the work and carry me through.

2 Corinthians 4:10: "Always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body." The death and dying of our body is reminding us always that His life is in us. And the life is growing and being manifested in our body. Oh, glory, hallelujah! What a great way to look at physical suffering! Praise God! I was wondering about that the other day, watching ___ in her wheelchair. Thank You, Lord, for revealing Your answer to me. Hallelujah! What a mighty God we serve!

2 Corinthians 4:16 "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is dying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day." And it is from our inner man that God's strength is sent forth. And it can't help but affect our outer man. If fact, the inner man becomes stronger and stronger, till that life from God does indeed become a "reality growing deeper and richer, until... I am in every sense a younger, fresher man..." (and someday, I will not even need this body at all, as God will give me a new, heavenly body, and I will see the glory of my God face-to-face forever! Hallelujah!).

Know what? I could read these scriptures and devotionals over and over with my own intelligence, and they would speak little or nothing to me. So I know that I have the Spirit of God - in fulness - because He is using His Word to reveal, to communicate, to share in love, so much to me. God loves me! God is growing me. God is already empowering and strengthening and healing and growing me every day. Even though I don't "feel" it or "see" it all the time: Hebrews 11:1 "Faith is the evidence (assurance, conviction) of things not seen, but hoped for." I hope for strength. I trust God in faith, though I sure don't "see it happening" right away a lot of the time. God says He will do it, and He does, step by step until the fulness of eternity.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18. The Conclusion! "For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparisons, while we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, bt the things which are not seen are eternal." Praise God!

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