Category: Devotionals

My husband is a deer hunter. No, he doesn’t hunt bambi; he hunts the big one. We eat deer meat year round. Deer steaks, deer chili, deer spaghetti, deer jerky–you just can’t beat my husband’s deer jerky.

 Esau was a deer hunter, a man’s man. He loved the great outdoors. I can just picture him as a big woolly backwoodsman. The Bible even says his hands were hairy.

 Esau came in from hunting one day, famished from hunger. In a moment of lust for food, he gave away the blessing of the firstborn to his younger brother Jacob for a bowl of stew. Then he forgot all about it. One day his father Isaac told Esau, “Take your weapons, your bow and arrows, and go hunting and bring me some of that deer that I love to eat so my soul may bless you before I die.” Then Jacob and his mother Rebekah tricked Isaac into giving the blessing to Jacob.

Isaac didn’t completely disown Esau. Esau still got a blessing. Hebrews 11:20 says that Isaac blessed both Jacob and Esau. In spiritual terms, Esau lost out on being in the lineage of King David and Jesus. Jacob became the ancestor of Jesus, because of that firstborn blessing.

Hebrew 12:16-17 says “Lest there be any…profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”

Phil 3:19 speaks of a people “Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.”

What a shame to be so concerned with natural things that he gave up the greatest opportunity of a lifetime, to be the ancestor of our Lord Jesus Christ, for a bowl of beans.

 How many opportunities are we missing because we have our mind on things of this world and not on things of heaven?

Jacob possessed Esau’s blessing. Who is possessing your blessing?

 

I was driving along a stretch of hay country in northeast Oklahoma, admiring the autumn colors as I sang along to the radio. I kept noticing a reddish-brown shrub that just glowed in the afternoon sun. Pretty thing, I thought, I should plant one of those in the yard. I wonder what it is?

I had to slow down for a truck going around a hilly curve and that gave me a chance to get a closer, longer look at the shrub. It was a sumac, which is considered a pest in Oklahoma. The old-timers called it “shoe-make.” It grows everywhere. It is considered invasive, because it will take over if you don’t keep close control over it. I read in a decorating magazine recently that people are planting sumac for its rich autumn color and low growth habit in their landscaped yards.

Reminds me of the time back in the 70s, when I planted honeysuckle on the trellis of my front porch at my first home. In 2 years the porch was almost hidden by the honeysuckle.

 

Our family was quarantined with scarlet fever when I was about 10. Someone from the health department posted a notice on our front door saying no one was to enter or exit the house for two weeks.

The corner grocer left sacks of groceries on our porch.  The school teachers came by to check on us and talked to Mama through the door.

Mama babysat a 2-year-old neighbor girl, so she was quarantined with us. I remember her mama talking to her through the window, but I don’t remember Diana being particularly upset. She called my mama “Mama Hightower” and spent almost as much time at our house as she did at her own.

After a couple of days, when we started feeling a little better, our experience was more like playing hooky from school. We did the same thing we usually did—playing school and Sunday school. I was the teacher as we studied reading, writing, and arithmetic. We memorized Bible verses and read Bible stories.

It was fun for us kids but I can’t imagine what our poor mother went through, with four sick kids, and only herself to take care of them.

Lepers were quarantined in Bible days. They were required by Levitical law to call out as they walked, “Unclean, Unclean!” so that people would know they were about to come in contact with a person with a highly contagious disease.

 Luke tells the story of Jesus and the ten lepers in Luke 17:12-14 kjv. “And as he [Jesus] entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.”

It was unheard of for a quarantined leper to show up in the temple, to get near a priest, but if Jesus told them to, they believed they must obey, and as they did, they were healed.

As you believe and obey, your healing will come.

“Are you ready for some football?”

When I was in Camp Fire Girls Horizon Club during high school, we invited the football coach to come speak to our club about football. He explained the rules of the game and how it was played and I can truthfully say it went right over my head.

I understand that a bunch of guys on two teams face off on a field with two goal-posts, with the purpose of getting the football across the opposite goal line. Am I right so far? Then someone kicks the ball, or throws it, or hikes it between their legs to the guy behind him and they all run and jump on the one carrying the ball.

I was a member of the pep squad so I went to pep rallies, home football games, and some out-of-town games. We admired and looked up to our Vinita high school football boys. The members of our football team were talented football players which they proved when they went to Oklahoma high school state division championship playoffs in 1967, 43 years ago.

A person doesn’t have to be an expert in the field of football to enjoy the experience. I have never enjoyed sports, either watching or participating, but I admire others who do.

The Holy Spirit is our coach—telling us what to do, telling us what “play” to put into operation at the exact moment that it is needed. He signals us through our hearts, our spirits, by the Word of God, the Bible, and by advice from other Christian leaders. He sees the Big Picture and knows what is ahead.  He tells us, “Turn here,” “Stop!,” Don’t do that,” Do this,” and if we would listen to the voice of our coach, the Holy Spirit, our lives would be much better off.

I Corinthians 2:12 says, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”

Christians are called to participate, not to watch. We are players on this field, in this game of life, not bench-warmers.

 

 Mama used to raise chickens and ducks. Oh, I loved those little babies in the incubator in the warm winter kitchen. The little ducks would flop around in the water, knowing instinctively that they should be swimming, while the baby chicks would do all they could to get away from the water, except to drink a little drop now and then. Somehow those chicks knew water would kill them, because they were not created to swim. Chicken feathers get wet and stringy, while the duck feathers shed the water.

What kills one lifts the other to his destiny. What wounds one heart until it cannot be healed rolls off another heart.

Instead of grieving over the troubles that come our way, the insults of those who don’t understand us, we can learn to face them head on and let them roll over us and down our backs and off us—like water off a duck’s back. Those things can’t hurt us when we act that way

 As James 1:2 NKJV says, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.” The word ‘count’ is a mathematic term. So maybe it isn’t ‘joy’ when it happens, but we can count it as ‘joy.’ Act like it is and call it ‘joy.’

The very thing that was sent to drown us will lift us up by our duck feathers and float us to our destiny. The human reaction is to defend ourselves, argue, fight, complain about the injustices that life brings us, but the spiritual action is to rejoice.

Decide in advance that you are going to act, not react. If you have a plan of action in advance, when those trials come your way, you will instinctively do what you plan to do.

Let the trials of life float you to your destiny.

I was standing in the laundry room rebooting my laundry, moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer, having no conscious thought, just working automatically, when the refrigerator shut off. Silence. Isn’t it funny that you never notice the refrigerator running until it shuts off?

I seldom have silence.

Usually the first thing I do when I walk in the door is turn on the TV. When I get up in the morning, I turn on the TV and the computer. Driving down the road, I have the radio or a CD playing. The kitchen TV has news on while I cook supper and do the dishes.

There is nothing wrong with watching the news and weather, keeping informed with what is going on in the world. It’s okay to check email, read the latest in the Internet, share words of encouragement and wisdom with friends.

However I wonder if we have lost the discipline of silence.  Are we afraid of our thoughts? If we had a few free minutes of every day to think, what would we think about?

Psalms 4:4 says “Meditate upon your bed and be still.” Psalms 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God.” Mark 4:39, Jesus said, “Peace, be still.”

We don’t have to wait till the middle of the night to be quiet. Find a place of perfect stillness, even if it is only within your own soul. In the midst of the storms of life, those people who have found stillness, quietness, peace with the Lord, will enter the place of rest.

“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He (the Lord, the Most High) will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge.” Psalms 91:1, 4.

The Lord’s peace like a feather pillow will surround you with perfect stillness.