Tag Archives: Devotional

Andy Stoddard ~ If You Can’t Say Nothin’ Good

Sometimes when we read scripture we wonder, “what can this passage be saying to me in this moment?  How can I understand it?  What may God want me to do with this truth at this time in my life?”  Sometimes it can be hard to understand, hard to deal with. 

And then there are other passages that are so simple they leap off the page.  Today’s passage, to me, is one of the “leap off the page” passages.  Listen to what we are told in James 3: 7-10: 

For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue – a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. 

Like our mamas said growing up, “If you can’t say nothin’ good, don’t say nothin’ at all.”  Today, the way we “say” things may be different, though.  Sometimes we “say” with our mouths.   

Sometimes we say it with our Facebook posts and comments.  Sometimes Twitter. 

Sometimes Snapchat or Instagram. 

Sometimes texting. 

As Christians, we cannot do this.  We cannot be in the business of tearing each other down.  The world does a good enough job of that.  We’ve got to build up.  We’ve got to speak kindness.  We’ve got to speak grace. 

Now, I’m going to get on my soapbox that I’ve been on for a while now.  I’m not saying we have to agree with each other.  I’m not saying, honestly, that we’ve even got to like each other. But we’ve got to realize and live into what James says here – they are made in the likeness of our Creator.  Everyone.  Folks we like, folks we don’t. Those who are right, those who are wrong.  All of us are made in God’s image. 

And we’ve got to treat each other that way. 

We’ve got to speak to each other that way. 

We as Christians must season our language with grace. 

Today, may God’s grace tame our tongues.  May we speak grace to one another.  May we speak grace to those we agree with, and to those we don’t agree with. 

May we treat everyone as they are, someone made in the image of God. 

 

Carrie Carter ~ Find Your Wings

I didn’t cry when our boys went to kindergarten. 

I didn’t cry when our boys went to high school. 

I didn’t even cry when our oldest graduated from high school. 

Maybe that’s why the flood of emotion that washed over me a couple days before we took our oldest to college completely caught me off guard. Even now, as we’re back home, the wave swells, tears rise and threaten to spill over. 

Why now?  

I’ve always known before that he will invariably be home at the end of each day. 

No longer. 

And yet… 

A tiny word filled with purpose. Yet. The tiny word that reminds me why we do what we do. It keeps me focused, goal-oriented, intentional. 

We raise them to the best of our ability so they can spread their wings and fly away. It’s biblical. 

“If anyone comes to me but does not hate [or loves more than me; Jesus is using hyperbole to emphasize his point] his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, or sisters—or even ·life [life itself; or his own life]—he cannot be my ·follower [disciple].”  Luke 14:26 (Expanded Bible)  

“So a man will leave his father and mother [ in the sense of a new primary loyalty] and be united with his wife, and the two will become one ·body [ flesh].” Genesis 2:24 (Expanded Bible) 

We haven’t reached the applicability of the second verse, but it’s biblical that I open my palms and graciously release him to leave. 

This first step of releasing is new territory for me. As my husband wisely said, “We’re stepping back from coaching and allowing him to be the team captain. He’ll be calling his own plays.” This means lessons learned the hard way. We will be there to support and advise, but only when it’s asked for. This is probably the most difficult of all, given that I cut my teeth on “Dear Abby.” No comics for this girl. 

Did we do enough?  

The answer is yes, though it falters a little. We did what we knew to do. Maybe it’s not enough, maybe we could have done better – know there were areas in which we could’ve done better – but we did what we knew to do in the best way we knew how. 

Is he ready? 

The answer is yes, a hearty yes. The boy has been trying to set off on his own his entire life. Twice at the age of three and again at the age of eight. He has hitchhiked with strangers twice, he’s been brought home by police. He has been an observer of navigating the world. His spiritual footing is solid for a guy his age. Will he stumble? Yes. Will he question? Yes. Does he have weaknesses that need purified? Yes. But he is ready to work out his own salvation and make it his own. 

The yes’s don’t make the letting go easier, but they magnify the yet… 

Many parents have asked me, “How can you let him go so far away? Why can’t he stay around here?” 

The yet is what prompts me to answer the questions with my own. 

How can I not let him go so far away? How could I force him to stay here? 

Seven hours away is exactly where God wants him. God so graciously closed all other doors in order to make the decision very clear. Who am I, his mother, to stand in the way of God’s path for his life? He is suited for a purpose far above anything I could dream for him. 

So the tears may fall, yet we have reached the goal line in raising him. I now have a piece of my heart in Illinois, yet our purpose has been fulfilled.  

There is an area of my nest that is vacant, yet I’m so proud to see him fly. 

Find your wings. We’re so proud of you. 

The Nature of God When the Sun Goes Out and the Rain Comes Down

Eerie.  

Unnatural. 

Awe-inspiring. 

Within a short span, we went from sharing photos of uncanny eclipse shadows to videos of hungry floodwaters rising. 

America stood still while time turned in on itself and twilight became midday, calling out confused crickets while the sun went out and summer heat cooled. We haven’t found a way to control the moon. It’s not customizable. There’s no “cue eclipse” app for homo sapiens to adjust the lighting for planet earth. Vikings, the plague, the age of exploration, steam engines, automobiles, space travel – it doesn’t matter. Before germs squirmed under a microscope, humans stood in awe. After carrying pocket-sized computer phones, humans stand in awe. 

The deafening roar of world events quieted. Frantic efforts at viral marketing campaigns stilled. The grinding push of the mundane halted. We stood and we marveled. 

Shortly after, a hurricane showed up on meteorologist maps. It slowed in the Gulf of Mexico. There are so many false alarms, and it appeared to weaken. Then Hurricane Harvey got a second wind. Suddenly bumping up in power and severity, it charged towards land, shearing roofs, throwing trees, and dumping unimaginable amounts of rain. 

The marveling delight we took in watching, childlike, as the moon marched triumphantly in front of the sun, turned to marveling dismay. We marveled, but the joy shifted to heartbreak. The familiar became strange. While we trust the sun to burn, cloud cover or not, midday, we found it darkening. While we assume we walk through front doorways, stepping over the threshold, we found a grandma leaving her house through the front door on the back of a jet ski, couch floating nearby. We assume crickets chirp in the evening and furniture stays where we put it. Sometimes our assumptions are blocked out, bringing shadow. Sometimes our assumptions are lifted up, flipped over, and sent down the river that used to be a freeway. 

“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” 

James 1:17 reminds us of this: the sun can go out; the winds can topple towers; the floodwaters can transform landscapes, but there is no variation or shadow resulting from change in the nature of God, the Father of lights. Within the Triune nature of God, there is love, giving and receiving. But even if the crickets come at noon, even if the couch floats out the front door, even if the roads become rivers, the good nature of God doesn’t change. It is more reliable than the movements of the heavens and more reliable than the infrastructure that keeps water in the faucets and power in the outlets. And every good thing – awe at natural beauty, gratitude for good weather, bountiful harvest, redemptive stories of kindness and hope – every complete gift, every generous act of giving, is from above. 

The assurance that God remains reliable, dependable, and good is not a flip, trite coffee mug assurance. It is weather-beaten and muscle-weary. The assurance that even nature may change but that God doesn’t change is a rebellious stand against ideas of gods who are fickle, moody and egocentric. The idea that nature doesn’t contain or limit the Divine is revolutionary.  

Up may become down, day may become night, land may become sea, and it doesn’t change the timeless nature of God. The solar system can reel and God remains the Good Shepherd who puts everything on hold to seek out one lost sheep. The path of totality may march across the land and God remains the woman who loses a coin, lights a lamp, sweeps the entire house, and calls her neighbors to celebrate when it is found. The earth groans and Jesus looks up and sees Zacchaeus taking refuge in a tree above the swirling tide of people below. Creation creaks out labor pains while friends dig frantically through a roof to lower their ailing friend to Jesus who is teaching in a house when broken humanity comes down from above into his view. 

Do you see? You don’t need eclipse glasses or news footage from an affiliate station helicopter to see. God sees. God doesn’t change with the flood levels.  

Everything else is up for grabs, but not the nature of God.  

Is your heart weary? Are your arms heavy? Have you fought tough battles? Do you feel like your body has betrayed you? Are you lamenting the loss of relationships that were supposed to last and didn’t? 

Come, friend. Come, all who labor. Come, all who are weary. God will give you rest. And God will not rest until you have been found. Nothing can dim that or wash it away. 

 

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee,
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not,
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.
 

Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me! 

 

© 1923. Ren. 1951 Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188
www.hopepublishing.com


 

Feature image by Jongsun Lee on Unsplash

Carolyn Moore ~ When You See a Turtle on a Fencepost

I wrote this a couple of years ago, when I was going through what I can now see was a cyclical pattern of emotional ups and downs in ministry. This year, the Lord has seen fit to bring healing so I’m in a better place spiritually and emotionally, but I thank God for good souls who have been such an encouragement along the way, like my District Superintendent. 

Everybody goes through seasons of spiritual “stuckness,” days or weeks or sometimes even months when you just can’t seem to get out of your spiritual bad mood. If you’ve had that experience or are there now, you’re not alone. This is a normal part of the spiritual journey. It is not a sign of weakness; to the contrary, it may well be a sign that God is about to launch you into a new season. 

I’ve been spiritually stuck for a while, dreadfully stuck. Even though I know it is a normal part of the journey, when I’m in the middle of it I’m not usually able to think rationally about it. I whine. I complain. I rail against God. 

I was in the middle of that valley last week when I met with my district superintendent for an evaluation. I appreciated being able to share honestly. I wanted him to tell me what I’m doing wrong, what I’ve done to get myself here and how to get out of this. “I just feel like I’m stuck,” I complained. “Like I’m sitting on a fence.” 

With that, my DS reached into his backpack, pulled out a stuffed turtle and dropped it on the table between us. One has to wonder what kind of person just happens to have a turtle in his backpack, but that’s another story for another day. 

“You know what they say about a turtle on a fencepost, right?” he asked. “If you see a turtle on a fencepost, you know he didn’t get there by himself.”  

Wait … what? Are you saying that God put me here? 

My gut reaction wasn’t healthy. Mean children put turtles on fenceposts to watch them suffer. So is God a mean child who enjoys watching me suffer? If that is my view, then my understanding of the nature of God is severely impacted. If God is out to get me, then I’d better approach all of life from a self-protective place. 

On the other hand, if God is good then my self-protective posture betrays what I know to be true. Am I preaching God’s goodness while I function as if he is against me? 

If you see a turtle on a fencepost, you know he didn’t get there by himself. 

If God is good and God has a hand in putting me in this place (even an uncomfortable place), then why? What if God has me here to prepare me for something deeper? What if this is not a stuck place but a spiritual incubator, a season of preparation much like what John the Baptist prophesied? “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight paths for his coming.” Maybe if I’m in a spot, God put me there not to be mean but because he loves me and sees in me what I don’t see in myself. 

What if God sometimes puts us up on fenceposts to save us from ourselves, or to keep us from running out into the road (you know, I’ve never seen a turtle outrun a car)? What if God has us up there to keep us from running … period? What if he has us up there to wear us out, so that when we get our feet on the ground again, we’ll be willing to rest trustingly just where we’ve been placed? 

What if trusting a good and merciful God means rooting ourselves in that goodness rather than our circumstances, believing that even fence-post seasons can be fruitful? 

 

Rev. Carolyn Moore blogs at www.artofholiness.com. 

 

 

Featured image courtesy Marcus Dietachmair via Unsplash.

Andy Stoddard ~ Our Most Important Meeting

There is so much that we can learn about God, our life, our calling, by looking at the life of Jesus Christ.  He can teach us how to love, how to be faithful, how to be holy, how to see to live out the good news of God’s love each day.

And today we see something very significant, and very important to Jesus’ life and his ministry.  Look at what we see in Mark 1: 35-36: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him.” 

Of all the things in the Bible that strike me, this is among those that always brings me the most wonder.  Jesus Christ – second person of the Trinity, of the very nature and being of the Father and the Spirit – knew the importance of prayer. 

Prayer, at its most basic level, is about communion and relationship with God.  Jesus wanted to be in the presence of the Father.  So no matter how busy his path, no matter what was going on, he was going to spend time with his Father.

Because only time spent with his Father made walking the path possible.  Only time spent with the Father gives clarity, gives direction, gives strength, gives vision, gives what we need. 

Time spent in prayer is never wasted.  Time spent in prayer is not about getting our wishes granted.  Time spent in prayer is being present with God and allowing the fog to lift.  It is time that allows the business, the frustration, the rush of this world to lift from our souls and for us to see things as they really are.

We learn to see through God’s eyes, not through our fears, doubts, worries, and stress.  The fog lifts.  We can see clearly.

Jesus valued his life of prayer.  We must as well.  We must prioritize.  We must make it important. Because there is no more important meeting we have today than to meet God in prayer. 

 

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Do You Need to Move On?

“Move ON!” a little girl voice shouted from the porch.

She’d been watching me weed then went inside. During that time, I’d moved down the flowerbed but doubled back, pulling stray weeds I’d missed the first time in the tangle of morning glory vines. When she came out, she saw me bending at roughly the same spot as when she’d gone inside.

“You need to move ON!” (She’s no shrinking violet.)

Weeding and praying go hand in hand. I tug and clear and get dirty and think and talk to God and process my thoughts and feelings and listen to the birds and untangle morning glories. And God weeds my soul and cultivates my soil and could, like in the cemetery Easter morning, be mistaken for a gardener.

My aim this summer isn’t to weed perfectly, obsessing over one patch of dirt and plants. I pull the big ones, clear the edges, and move on.

But what about when we don’t move on? When we scratch the soil over and over in one place, ignoring the rest of the flowerbed, poring over our troubles, worrying the soil like we can read clumps of dirt like tea leaves?

A while later something caught my eye. When I was young I collected the dried mud cicada shells left behind by the bugs that crawled out of the dirt. I don’t like the siren calls of cicadas and I don’t like the live locusts flying anywhere around me, but watching one flutter and squeeze out of its shell was mesmerizing.

“Move on!” I wanted to say. “You can’t stay in there forever, you know, and now you’re halfway out. Keep going! The world is waiting and you cannot return to the ground you crawled out of.”

It can seem hard to move on, but consider how absurd it would be for the wet, stiff cicada to attempt to fit back in its dried dirt shell.

In what area is it tempting to stay?

In what shell are you comfortable?

What draws you to stay laboring in one spot over and over, turning the soil over and over, but never planting and moving on?

“Move ON!” There are pressing things just around the corner – in my case, burgeoning tomato plants loaded with promising yellow blossoms – and your eyes are settled on one patch of dirt.

There is promise and a new world and all you see is the struggle of escaping the shell.

Move on.

Spirituality the Jesus Way

The Latin American Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino described spirituality as a profound motivation; he said that it’s about instincts, intuitions, longings and desires—both within nature and in our culture—that move us, inspire us and shape us, inform and fill our decisions and actions. That definition of spirituality—“profound motivation”—connects with Jesus’ words to us to seek the kingdom of God first, and everything else will be added (see Matthew 6:33).

Our spirituality is whatever we desire most. Whatever we strive for, whatever motivates us, drives us, moves us to select one thing over another; whatever primary shaping forces are in our life, that’s our spirituality.

Following in the Jesus way is about recognizing that Jesus calls us to a particular type of spirituality, a way of life that’s shaped by seeking and finding God’s presence in our life, doing whatever is necessary to put God at the very center of our lives, to put ourselves at the very center of God’s will. When we do that, we experience deep, abiding, life-changing, life-marking joy—not because we’ve earned it or achieved it, not because of chance or circumstance, but because it already exists. God’s blessedness is already there, and we experience it when we seek God’s kingdom. Jesus promised that when we seek the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness first, everything else will be added. That adds up to a type of happiness the world can’t give or take away.

The biggest challenge for Christ followers who seek to follow Jesus side by side rather than at a distance is the implicit question of the Beatitudes: Will we yield ourselves totally to Jesus?  

Will we allow him to shape our lives and give us happiness, joy, and blessedness, or will we continue to seek happiness by following the direction of the world?

When we yield ourselves to Jesus, following in the Jesus way—up close, in the thick of things, not at a distance and in the shadows—we experience the deep joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction. We become Kingdom people.  

 

Otis T. McMillan ~ Light, Life, and Love

“Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.” —Daniel 6:10

Daniel’s life shows the power of a heart transformed by faith in God. A transformed heart is a grateful heart. A heart filled with gratitude overflows in praise to the Giver of Life. It perceives the world (and the people in it) differently.

It is strengthened in faith, and grows in confidence that God will continue to show himself strong on our behalf. What has God done in your life? How do you see the world differently because of who God is?

Take a moment to pray with me for a life of gratitude: Transform our hearts, O God. Fill us with praise for who You are and gratitude for what You have done. Strengthen our confidence as we worship You with humility and thankfulness. In Jesus’ name, amen. 

“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”—John 8:12

Our eyes are drawn to light. Light in all its forms—a pinprick of light that illuminates a dark room, moving light, changing light—draws our attention. Jesus said that he is the light of the world.

Are our eyes as tuned to spiritual light as they are to physical light? Do we strain to catch a glimpse of Jesus, the Light of the world, whose presence stands out like life-giving light in a dark world? Look for Jesus to go before you today, and follow where he leads.

Take a moment to pray with me again, this time to see the light of Christ: Transform our hearts, O God. Fill us with praise for who You are and gratitude for what You have done. Strengthen our confidence as we worship You with humility and thankfulness. In Jesus’ name, amen. 

“We love because he first loved us.” —1 John 4:19

As we come to know whose we are and we become increasingly familiar with God’s character, we cannot help but be overwhelmed at the depth of God’s love for us. His love is a powerful change agent; it permeates our attitudes, thoughts, words, and actions. It transforms our lives, bringing new purpose and meaning.

When we extend his love to others, it transforms them, as well. Are we being so transformed by his love that we find ourselves loving others like Jesus loves us, even if that means loving out of our comfort zone? Who will you love like Jesus today?

Take a moment to pray with me for the love of God to transform your life: Jesus, Your love is transforming our lives, changing us from the inside out. May Your love complete its work within us. Reach into our hearts, revolutionize our thinking, reshape our lives so that we are more like You, living ambassadors of God’s love. Teach us to love like You, we pray in Your name, amen.