Category: Devotionals

 

I stepped outside the front door of my mother’s home to carry out the trash, and heard the sound of kids playing, something I hadn’t heard in that neighborhood in longer than I can remember. Looking up the street to where some new folks had moved in, I saw the kids in the backyard playing some form of ball game.

It made me think back to when my kids were small. Along with my sister’s and brother’s kids, we had 8 kids around all the time. They loved to stay with Granny and play all around her house, inside and out, and off down on the creek.

When we were kids, in the 1950s, there were 4 kids in our family, 1 girl next door north, and 4 kids next door south, plus many others. Right there within a block were 23 kids besides ourselves.

When Chester wanted to start a baseball game, he didn’t have to go very far to find enough people to make up two teams, and fill all the bases, and plenty more to watch the game.

There have been a few families who lived on that block within the last 10 years, but mostly it is older people,

Reminds me also of so many churches where the average age of members is 40, and very few if any children in the congregation. As the church membership gets older, the church begins to die until most of the members are gone to heaven.

This is a serious problem in the American churches, as a whole. There is no one way to fix the problem, but I know that God has the answer.

Jesus told His disciples, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:  Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” Matthew 28:19-20 KJV.

One thing I notice is that just like ball teams, only so many people can be on each team, and then the rest of the people just stand around and watch what is going on.

Maybe it’s time to get the people out of the bleachers and start a new team.

 

 

 

I’ll never forget the navy-and-white polka dot blouse I bought in 1976 to wear with my crisp white polyester slack pants. I really don’t know how I looked in that outfit, but I felt like a million bucks. Of course, that was back in my much-younger days, when I was in better shape than now.

When I first started working for the phone company we had to wear dresses to work as telephone operators, but by the mid-70s we were allowed to wear dress pants, but not jeans. Those were the days when we wore our polyester pantsuits for work.

During the time I was divorced, before I remarried, I remember telling one boyfriend, “If you’re looking for a blue-jeans, tee shirt girl, you’ve got the wrong one.” However by the end of my career with the phone company in 2003, my “uniform” was blue jeans and tee shirts.

Sometimes I wish I still had some of those favorite pieces of clothing, but they wouldn’t fit me and I’m sure they would have worn out in those 37 years since then.

Remember the scripture about the children of Israel who came out of Egyptian bondage and walked 40 years in the wilderness? The Lord reminded them, in Deuteronomy 8:4 NIV, “Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.” God made sure that out in the desert where there was no place to buy more clothes, the Israelites always had good clothes to wear. I’m sure they got tired of wearing the same old clothes every day, day after day, for 40 years.

God has great things for us today, even better than what He provided for the Israelites.

 “I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of His righteousness,” Isaiah 61:10.

Those garments I’ll never grow tired of, or outgrow, or wear out.

Years after graduating high school, I have had dreams of showing up on the first day of junior high school, not knowing where my classrooms were, and wandering the maze of halls of the old three-story Vinita High School trying to find my classroom.

In my dream, I opened door after door to find class in progress, students and teachers staring blankly at me as my face flushed a bright red in embarrassment. By the time, I found my class and slipped into the last chair, the bell would ring to indicate the end of class.

We pre-enrolled in the spring, then went to the school a few days before school started to pick up our schedule. I lingered over it, memorizing every class, down to the last detail—time, room number, teacher. I spent hours with my friends, comparing schedules and wishing we could change it so we could all have the same classes together. We wanted to all be the same, same hair, same clothes, same classes, same friends. Junior high is all about fitting in.

 Things changed when Vinita High School Graduation Day came. One day we were all alike, but the day after graduation, we were each one of a kind. I was on my own, off to college, and then too soon, I dropped out and got married. When things were rough, a sick baby, bills to be paid and not enough money to pay them all, my dream recurred. 

Sometimes I dream of heaven. I walked through my Victorian mansion, with dark woods, a massive fireplace surrounded by walls and walls of books. I walked up the broad wooden staircase, into an open room with windows all around, looking out over a lovely park, where children run and play, and a window seat where I could sit and read for hours.

We can’t return to childhood, even if we want to, but we can go to a place where we are accepted and love and valued.

Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am there you may be also.” John14:2-3. NKJV

Heaven is not a dream, it is real.

 

What do you do the day after a great holiday? You get up and go back to work, so that’s what Peter did.

They’d had a glorious Easter Sunday evening church service.

Jesus had died on the cross, and was dead and buried for three days, but on a glorious Sunday morning, He rose from the dead.

That evening, all the disciples except Thomas were gathered together when Jesus appeared to them.

“Jesus breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” John 21:22, and at that moment, the disciples were born again, but Jesus didn’t stay with them this time like He always had in the past. Too soon, He was gone.

Monday came, and Peter told his fellow fishermen, “I’m going fishing.” Peter went right back to his old job, because without Jesus with him every day, Peter didn’t think he knew how to do anything else.

They fished all night.  Dawn broke and there stood Jesus on the beach. He called out, “Boys, did you catch any fish? Do you have anything to eat with your bread?” They said, “No!”

Jesus said, “Cast your net on the right side of the boat,” and they caught so many they couldn’t haul them all in.

Peter jumped off and swam to shore. When he got there, Jesus had a fire, and fish and bread ready to eat.

While they sat around the campfire after breakfast, Jesus asked Peter, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?” Jesus was asking Peter if he loved Him more than the fish and fishing.

And then Jesus spoke the same two words that he had spoken to Peter when he called him to be his disciple three and a half years before. “Follow Me.” John 21:19.

“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Matthew 4:19

 Nothing had changed. The call was still the same.

 You might have to go back to the same job on Easter Monday, but you don’t have to go back to the same old lifestyle. Let Easter Sunday change you, any Sunday of the year.

Let Jesus breath the Holy Spirit on you too. Hear Jesus calling you today, “Follow me.”

 

“Does it feel like you are stuck in a rut? Break out of that rut and come to this restaurant, or go to that vacation place. Or buy this. Or try this.”  Advertisers know that we want to change, but we don’t want to change.

The rut feels comfortable. We don’t have to think about what to do if we just keep doing the same thing we’ve always done.

The rut is easy. We can just slide along in life, day by day, living each day just like the last.

The rut is normal. Everybody’s doing it. It’s acceptable to the crowd.

The Israelites got in a rut, going around the same mountain, wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. God had delivered them out of Egypt, where they were slaves, but like one preacher said, Egypt was still in them. They had the “slave” mentality. They rebelled against God, almost as soon as they got out of town, and were doomed to wander around in the desert, going around and around the same mountain for forty years until the rebels all died.

Even so, the Children of Israel had it pretty good, even in the desert. God opened the waters of the Red Sea so they could cross over. He provided quail for meat and manna for daily food. If they were running out of water, God provided it out of the rock. If the water was poisoned, God gave them the solution in the form of a tree to toss into the water to neutralize it and make it drinkable. For all the 40 years they walked around in the desert, their sandals didn’t wear out and their clothes were just like new.

How long have you been going around the same mountain? It’s time for some changes in your life, maybe uncomfortable changes, but it will be good for you. God has a great plan for you, just like He had a great plan for the Isrealites.

The Lord spoke to them one day and said, “You have skirted this mountain long enough. Turn northward.” Deuteronomy 2:3 NKJV.  It was time for things to change.

God is telling you today, “It’s been long enough! Change directions. It’s time for things to change.”

 

 

 

 

When I want to remember something important, I write it on my hand. If I don’t do that to remind myself, I may not remember for days. That is an important  part of you, the palm of your hand. It is always right there in front of you, where it can be seen. You use your hands for everything, so if something is written on your hand, it would be hard to forget.

God has a tattoo of you on the palm of His hands. “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” Isaiah 49:16 N IV

You are important to God. He wants to constantly be reminded of you. Every time He stretches out His hand to do something, He sees you. What a comfort! If God be for us, who can be against us? The very one who gave His only begotten Son thinks about you every time He looks at the palm of His hand.

Sometimes it might seem like you are all alone in the world, but Jesus will never leave you. You may have lost your last friend, but you have a friend that sticks closer than a brother.

Jesus Himself said, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you. I will go with you even to the end of the world.” I am never alone. He has promised never to leave me.

Engraved on God’s hand is a permanent reminder of me to God, tattooed onto God’s hand.

He couldn’t even forget me even  if He tried.

Lavon Hightower Lewis