Tag Archives: daily devotions

A Life In Limbo

I have a friend who recently mentioned that they were struggling with all the outside forces in their life. All of their external circumstances seemed bent on crushing them. They didn’t want to give up or go back to a past that’s gone, but didn’t really know how to move forward either. They were stuck in this limbo of life with no good alternatives. It’s a scary place to be when today’s problems are so consuming that you can’t see a future for yourself. It’s hard to know where to go or what to do when you don’t know which way is forward. I can only share some of the things that helped me.

The first advice I give is to fill yourself with God’s Word. When the outside forces are greater than what’s in you, you’ve got to put something more powerful in you. Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. The way to get more of God in your life is to spend time in His word. You have to make it a priority to read it. Mark Batterson says, “Reading is how you get through the Bible. Meditating is the way to get the Bible through you.” You’re not only going to have to read it, you’re going to have to think about it, chew it up and talk through it in order for it to fully strengthen you.

The second advice I give is to pray. God is not intimidated by your honesty in how you feel. In fact, I think it’s refreshing to Him when we are honest with our struggles, fears and thoughts. He gets enough surface level prayers every day. The ones where we cry out in desperation get His attention. The ones where we seek Him honestly draw Him in. The ones where we admit we can’t do it on our own cause Him to rush to our side. God knows we can’t make it through storms on our own. We weren’t created to. They’re meant to cause us to draw on His strength instead of being stubborn and trying to stand on our own. Prayer is how we communicate that need for God.

The next piece of advice I give is to surround yourself with other believers, especially those who know you and love you. Yes, some of your circumstances may be embarrassing, but trusting your family of God is what you need. Their prayers will be more passionate because they have a relationship with you. They won’t forget to lift you up in prayer. They’ll follow up with you and check on you. They’ll be that safety net you need in case you fall. They’re not there to condemn you. They’re there to help you. God placed them in your life to be a support. Let them be that for you.

If life has you in limbo or is pushing you down to see how low you can go, doing these three things will help you. If you’re life is going great and the sun is shining, these three things will help you. We never outgrow our need for God or to have His strength in our lives. We all need the inner strength that comes from a relationship with God. If we don’t need it to keep us from getting crushed, we need it so we can help someone else who is getting crushed. If you’re not in limbo right now, look for someone who is. They need your help more than you know.

What advice do you give to someone like I described?

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Free To Do What God Made You To Do

20140110-075440.jpg

It’s Free Friday! Today is the day you let go of the things in your life that keep you down or hold you back. To celebrate, I’m giving away a copy of “A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live” by Emily P. Freeman. Keep reading to find out how to enter.

So many of us feel like what we do doesn’t matter. We see ourselves as a grain of sand on a seashore full of sand. “How can one grain of sand make a difference,” you ask yourself. When you look at the world, there are over seven billion people who are here doing their own thing too. It’s hard to think that anything you do can make a difference in their lives. You don’t think you have much to offer them. You see others with talents that you wish you had and abilities beyond your own.

It’s tough not to get jealous when you see that God gave someone else ten talents and you look down at the one He gave you. It’s not easy to see the life of luxury others live while you struggle check to check. Others who don’t live the way they’re supposed to seem to be blessed beyond measure while you do everything right and wonder where all your blessings are. You wonder what your one true talent is and fear that it’s too late to find it and develop it. These are all thoughts that many of us have because we compare ourselves to others.

God doesn’t measure you according to the abilities He’s given to someone else. God measures you according to what you do with what He has given you. If your talent is raising godly kids at home, make a difference in the world through your children. If your talent is keeping things clean, then do it for the glory of God. If your talent is being able to get in front of large groups to perform, do it for an audience of One. Your life, no matter how mundane or spectacular, is meant to find ways to glorify the One who made you. Each of us have a purpose and a role to fulfill. God made you to do what only you could do.

I love what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech. He said, “If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.” You can’t successfully be someone other than the person God made you to be.

Whatever God has made you to be, I encourage you today to embrace that with everything in you. Free yourself of the comparisons that only make you put yourself down. Free yourself of the guilt that comes with not making as big a difference as others. Free yourself of the thoughts that your just a…. (Whatever you tell yourself). You are a child of God with a talent that no one else has. Your are the one God hand picked to raise those kids, be married to that person, fulfill that role in life. Your job is to do it better than He expected. Don’t bury your talent under thoughts of comparisons. Instead, invest it in the thoughts of doing what you do for God’s glory.

If you would like to win “A Million Little Ways” by Emily P. Freeman, all, you have to do is go to my Facebook page here and “like” it. I will randomly pick one person tomorrow (January 11, 2014) who has liked my page. If you enjoy reading these daily devotionals, please invite your friends to like my page so they can receive encouragement from God’s Word too.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Planning For Greatness

20140109-072453.jpg

I once had a friend that lived according to her Franklin Covey planner. She scheduled everything in that binder. If it wasn’t in there, she didn’t do it. I, being young, made fun of her. I asked her if she was ever spontaneous. She responded that she had time on Thursday evening to be spontaneous and wrote it in. Her life was mapped out and she was going places. I lived by no schedule and was going no where. She went where she wanted in life and I went where life took me. It’s not hard to see how important it is to make a plan and to work that plan.

I talk to a lot of people who are going to do great things for God. They tell me what God wants them to do with their lives. I ask, “What are you doing today to prepare for that calling?” Usually I get the religious answer, “God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called. He’ll prepare me in time.” I ask them what they are doing to today in the form of that calling. I usually hear crickets chirping. They, like so many of us, expect God to give us honorary doctorates in whatever field He’s called them to with no work on their part. They believe it will just happen.

I believe things don’t just happen. God expects us to plan, prepare and practice before it’s time to perform. We have to schedule time with Him, start out small and invest in our calling. When Jesus gave the Parable of the Talents, He said, “You have been faithful over a little; I will put you in charge of much.” So many Christians shun the little things because we want to do big things for God. We forget that God won’t give us the big things until we show we can be faithful over the small things. If you can’t spend time alone with God when your life isn’t hectic, how will you do it when it is?

I remember hearing Andy Stanley speak at Catalyst two years ago. He said that none of the speakers at Catalyst had an easy road to that stage. They paid high prices in the little things before God would trust them with the big things. Greatness in life only comes from being faithful when you aren’t great. All giants in the faith started out small. Major churches, giant Christian organizations and well known preachers started somewhere small. They had God’s call on their life to do something great and they started small. They scheduled time with God and began doing things that wouldn’t be noticed by most.

Do you feel like God has called you to do something big for Him? What are you doing today to prepare for that? What is a little thing that you can put on your schedule to do this week to move you closer to greatness? I heard someone once say, “If you were going to do it, you’d already be doing it.” If something is important to us and will pay out greater dividends, we wouldn’t wait until later to do something. We’d already be doing things to make that happen. We’d already have it on our schedule. Be faithful now when no one is looking so God can trust you when people are.

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

The Best New Year’s Resolution

20140108-070618.jpg

I had a Bible teacher in high school who had us write something in the front cover of our Bibles so we would never forget it. I’m glad he had us do it because I haven’t ever forgotten it. He had us write, “This book will keep you from sin. Sin will keep you from this book.” It strikes a chord with me as much now as it did then. In order to lead a successful Christian life, I’ve got to spend time in God’s Word. I’ve got to consume it it like I would food for my physical body.

The more I know God’s Word and what it says, the more I’m aware of what He wants from me. The more aware I am of what He wants from me, the less likely I am to stray from its commands. The less I’m in it, the less I know what God wants from me. The less I know what God wants from me, the more likely I’ll stray from His commands. Psalm 119:11 says it best, “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” The only way to hide it in your heart is to read it and study it.

Since it’s the start of a new year, it’s a great time to start investing in your spiritual life. There are many resources to help you read through the Bible in a year. The Bible app offers multiple types of plans to help you read through the Bible. I don’t think you can make a better resolution than to put more of God’s Word into your heart and mind. It’s an investment in the quality of your spiritual life, eternal life and relationship with God. It’s a tough habit to get into and requires sacrifice of your time, but the dividends paid are out of this world.

I once read that it takes doing something 21 days to make something a habit. I also recently read that January 17th is “Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day”. That’s the day most people quit doing their new year’s resolution. So sad that they were 4 days away from making it a permanent habit in their lives. We should all be able to go 21 days straight of reading God’s Word. You can find time by getting up 15 minutes earlier, listening to it in the car on the way to or from work, on your lunch break or 15 minutes before going to sleep.

If you want to live a life with a minimal amount of sin in it, start consuming the Bible. We have a guarantee from God that if we will hide it in our hearts, it will keep us from sinning. We also have a guarantee in verse 105 of Psalm 119 that His Word will be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. So, not only will it keep you from sinning, it will give you direction in your life. I believe we could all use help with that. My challenge for you is to start reading God’s Word daily. If you’re already doing it, stretch yourself to read more than you were before.

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

How To Value Grace

20140107-071927.jpg

Several years ago the cell phone industry gave out free phones if you’d sign a contract with them. They also offered buy one get one free offers all the time. For the most part, they have abandoned that practice of selling phones for one simple reason: customers didn’t value the devices. Even though that device was worth several hundred dollars, because it was free to the customer, they treated it poorly thinking, “It’s a free phone. If anything happens to it, I’ll just go get another one.” Now customers are charged hundreds of dollars for the devices and they take better care of them.

I wonder if we’ve done the same thing with God’s grace. Do we treated it poorly because it is given to us freely? While it really doesn’t cost us anything to accept it, it did cost God His only son. When we face temptation, we think, “God will forgive me. I’ll just ask for forgiveness later.” We get an “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission” attitude with God. Because grace is free to us, we don’t value it like we should. We know that the more we sin or fail God, the more abundant God’s grace is. There is enough to cover our sins, no matter how bad they are.

Paul must have been experiencing the same lack of appreciation for God’s grace with the Roman believers. In Romans 6:1-2 he wrote, “Should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of His wonderful grace? Of course not!” He knew how valuable God’s grace was and it upset him that people just treated it as commonplace. It bothered Him that people used the free gift of grace to live their lives in sin apart from the way God wanted them to live. He saw that they placed no value on what grace really cost.

It’s easy to devalue something that is free to us. It’s in our nature to treat it poorly. Unlike the cell phone companies, God is not going to start charging you more for His grace. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by free grace (God’s unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [of your own doing, it came not through your own striving], but it is the gift of God; Not because of works [not the fulfillment of the Law’s demands], lest any man should boast. [It is not the result of what anyone can possibly do, so no one can pride himself in it or take glory to himself] (AMP).”

We can’t earn God’s grace or salvation by doing things. Since the price was paid by the death of Jesus on the cross, it has been made free to us. It’s paid for. We simply need to find a way to value it in our lives and to learn to not treat it like it didn’t cost anything. If we consider what grace cost Christ each time we’re faced with temptation and ask ourselves, “Is doing this worth a nail in the hands of Jesus,” we’ll learn to value it more and follow through with temptation less. We’ll find that we will live like He asked us to and place a higher value on something that cost Him so much.

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

You Don’t Have To Be Lonely

Some coworkers and I were talking about all the online dating sites. There are ones dedicated to Christians, black people, those looking to get married, those who are already married and even one for farmers. The last one mentioned has most people thinking it’s a joke. The commercials are very low budget and goofy, but their jingle is catchy. It says, “You don’t have to be lonely at farmers only dot com.” While their commercials are notoriously bad, their slogan resonates with so many. “You don’t have to be lonely.”

In today’s world, we are connected more than ever, but somehow feel alone. Whether you’re single, dating, engaged or married, you’re still susceptible to feeling lonely. Since creation, God has been calling out to us telling us we are not alone. He has tried to grab our attention in each sunset and sunrise. He has called to us in the beauty of nature. He paints us a picture each night with the stars. He calls to us with each wave that crashes on the shore, “I’m here. You are not alone.” He has tried to let us know since we were born that we are loved, but we ignore His signs.

We try to fill that loneliness with imperfect relationships, sports, exercise, addictions, online gaming and the Internet. None of it really satisfies us, but we keep trying to fill that void. There is something in each one of us that desires companionship. God placed it in us. His desire is that He would fill that void in each of our lives. When humanity ignored Him long enough, He became one of us so that we would listen to Him. On His mission here, He told us how much He loved us and that we weren’t alone. In fact, one of the very last things He told us was that He would be with us always.

In the last verse in Matthew 28, Jesus’ last words were, “And you can be sure of this: I am with you always.” He knew that we would feel lonely and wanted to encourage us that we would never be alone. He wanted us to know that even though He was taking His place back in Heaven, He would still be here to guide us and to comfort us. He has no desire that any of us would ever feel alone. Hebrews 13:5 reiterates what God told Joshua in the Old Testament. He said, “I will not, I will not, I will not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake you nor let you down or relax my hold on you (AMP).” He was emphatic that He will not leave you so that you would know you are not alone.

What things have you put into your life to try to keep from feeling lonely? In what ways are you ignoring God’s voice calling out to you that you aren’t alone? What can you do today to start recognizing His presence in your life? The jingle to that commercial is right: you don’t have to be lonely. You have a God who desperately loves you and wants you to know that He is with you in whatever stage of life you’re in. When He is in His place in your life, everything else will fall into its place. He has not left you alone. He is with you all the days of your life. Will you recognize Him and let Him fill that void?

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Free From Dark Clouds

It’s Free Friday! What are you going to let go of today? What’s holding you down that you need to be free of? Today’s the day you can make that choice to let go. To celebrate Free Friday, I’m giving away “Epic Grace: Chronicles of a Recovering Idiot” By Kurt Bubna. Keep reading to find out how you can be entered to win it.

20140103-073606.jpg

Disney put out a movie recently called “Frozen”. My favorite character has to be a snowman named Olaf. He’s the world’s only snowman who loves summer. He’s always upbeat and looking at the bright side of things. Even when he’s melting, he’s saying positive things. In the end, he gets his wigs to live in summer. He’s given his own snow cloud that follows him around so he can live through the times that would normally wipe him out. We can learn a lot from that snowman.

Many of us walk around with a dark, rain cloud over us instead of having our ideal climate overhead. We see the world through lenses that are tainted by the things that have brought us pain. We see negativity in every situation because that’s all that we believe will happen. We’ve lost our ability to see good coming from anything. When something good happens to one of our friends, we aren’t genuinely happy for them. Instead, we’re either bitter or we believe that the floor is going to drop out from under them too.

For many of us, that dark cloud is caused by our past. We’ve never learned to forgive ourselves from the things that God has forgiven us of. We allow others to label us with a scarlet letter. We love under condemnation instead of freedom. Romans 8:1-2 says, “Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air (MSG).” Once you are forgiven from Christ, you are free from the black cloud of your past.

The first part of that scripture says that we no longer have to live under that cloud. That means that if it’s still there after you’ve been forgiven, it’s there by your choice not God’s. He wants to come in and clear the air over your head. He wants to create your ideal climate so that you can be who He called you to be. He knows you’re still going to mess up from time to time and He knows you aren’t perfect. His desire is that you understand He is a God of second (and third, and fourth,…) chances. He’s not there to hit you over the head and put a dark cloud over you every time you mess up. He’s there to clear the air and to forgive you.

If you’re living under that dark cloud today, let God’s Spirit come in and clear the air over your head. Get free from that cloud that affects you negatively. You simply do it by accepting His forgiveness is enough. Don’t condemn yourself or allow others to condemn you for the things you’ve been forgiven of. Let God use the dark things in your past to be a positive testimony of what He can do. The choice is yours. Will you let go and be free today?

In order to win “Epic Grace: Chronicles of a Recovering Idiot” by Kurt Bubna, go to my Facebook page for Devotions By Chris here and “like” it. I will choose a winner at random tomorrow, January 4, 2014 from the names of people who have liked the page and post it on my wall. If you win, private message me how you would like to receive it. If you know someone that needs to hear this message, please repost or share from your own wall.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

The Recipe for Success

20140102-074523.jpg

I was raised on the tradition of eating cabbage and black eyed peas on New Year’s Day. My Facebook feed is filled every year with photos from all of my friends who also partake in this tradition. The black eyed peas are meant to bring you good luck and prosperity while the cabbage is supposed to bring you wealth. Everyone is looking for something to bring them a better year than the year before and more success. I can personally tell you it doesn’t come from following this tradition.

One of my favorite scriptures in the Bible actually talks about how to be prosperous and successful. The recipe is simple, but hard for us to follow for some reason. It’s found in Joshua 1:8. It says, “Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do (NLT).” This was God speaking to Joshua as he was about to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. He was telling him all he needed to do to be prosperous and successful.

The first thing God said in this recipe was to study scripture continually. If you ever went to school, you know that studying is hard work. I remember reading the chapters over and over, looking over notes and writing things down on flash cards to help me remember things. If I wanted to be successful on the test, I had to put in the work ahead of time. If you want to be successful in life, you are going to have to put in some work on the front end. It will not just happen. It takes time and discipline. It also means you have to have an understanding of the material God provided to help you live.

The next part of this recipe is to meditate on scripture day and night. God doesn’t want us to check off a box each day by reading a chapter or two. He wants us to read it and then to think about it both day and night. He wants us to think through how we can apply His word to our lives and how we can out it into action. He wants us to know what He said so that when the time comes, we’ll obey what He says instead of what the world says. He doesn’t want us fooled by trick questions, so He encourages us to know the material inside and out.

Obedience is probably the hardest part of this recipe. It’s the secret ingredient to prosperity and success though. When you look at everything God requires of us, it all boils down to obedience. We have to choose our will or His. If we substitute our will into the recipe, it won’t come out right. Only through obedience does the recipe work. If we can learn how to be obedient to His will we will find success in all we do. The only way to be obedient is to follow the first two steps. We have to know what God says first and then understand it. Success comes from reading God’s word, meditating on it and obeying it not from eating cabbage or black eyed peas. I pray you find much success and prosperity this year.

3 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Plan Your Next Chapter

20131231-073219.jpg

Can you believe this year is over? I like to think of each year as a chapter in my life closing. It gives me the opportunity to find closure for the things I want to put in my past and keep there. They’re still a part of my over all story and the development of my character, but I can choose to leave them behind. I remind myself that there’s not a great protagonist without an antagonist, and no one achieves greatness without being marred by failures and disappointments. It’s how we choose to see those things in our life, how we respond to them and whether or not we have the ability to move past them that makes us great.

How do you choose to see the roadblocks that came into your life this year? What are you going to do about the failures and disappointments that happened? How are you responding to life changes that came out of nowhere? Bitter. Angry. Hurt. Faithless. Defeated. Those are words I would have used for the times when I’ve faced years that didn’t go according to my plan. It’s not wrong that you feel those things. They’re normal human emotions that God placed in us. If we hold onto those emotions and allow them to steer our decisions and life, then we get into trouble.

God told us in Ephesians 4:26, “Be angry and sin not.” He was saying that’s ok to feel these emotions, but don’t let them control you. I know that’s easier said than done, but it’s a choice. One that only you can make. You can choose to leave those feelings behind in this chapter along with the reasons for those feelings. You can choose to pick out the good things in your life and to move forward with them instead. Begin your next chapter on a high note. Begin the next year free from the things that held you down this year.

Next year is full of blank pages waiting to be filled. You have to choose if you want this chapter to be a comedy, tragedy, drama or adventure. Just because this year was full of drama or tragedy it doesn’t mean that next year has to be. I’m reminded of those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books I read when I was a child. At the bottom of each page, you had the choice of what the character did next. If you thought they should do this, then you turned to page 38. If you thought they should do that, then you turned to page 64. Life is a lot like that. You choose your next steps.

I choose to let God order my next steps. I still have to take them, but I don’t have to take them alone. Before you do anything or begin to write your chapter for next year, stop and ask God what He wants to fill your pages with. Ask Him to help you close this chapter and to move on from it. Seek His wisdom in where you go from here. Spend time in prayer and planning instead of just letting life take you where it wants. Just like a budget tells your money where to go, a plan tells your life where to go. Get together with God and make a plan for an amazing new year.

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Bridges Of Love

20131230-075429.jpg

How can we be proactive with God’s love? I think that’s a question each of us should ask ourselves daily. In our fast paced world where we are inundated with news and information constantly, we have become very reactive. As soon as we see an event or headline, we’re quick to react and tell the world where we stand or how we feel about it. In our reaction, we are acting out of the heat of the moment and emotion. Being reactive usually builds walls that divide instead of bridges that show love. The only way I’ve seen to build bridges is to be proactive in sharing God’s love.

When you look at Jesus’ life, there were times when He was reactive and proactive. When He would go into the homes of notorious sinners and eat with them. He was bring proactive. He was building bridges of love instead of walls of hate. He knew the best way to win others was to spend time with them. He knew that listening to what they had to say built value in that person. You never hear Jesus blasting them. Usually He blasted the people who had a problem with Him building bridges. There’s security in building walls. There’s monotony in building walls. But there’s vulnerability in loving others and building bridges.

For some reason, we have lost our ability to be vulnerable to the world. We have decided to be known for all the rules and regulations instead of compassion. When that is what we’re known for, we are no better than the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. It drove them crazy that He spent time tearing down the walls of regulations meant to keep others out. It infuriated them that He built bridges over where they had dug ditches. His ability to see the person and not their sin flew in their faces and they killed Him for it. They had lost the over arching message God has always sent the world: Love.

When I look at my life, I ask, “Am I building walls of regulations to separate myself from those who need Jesus or am I building bridges of love to lead them to Him?” If I can quote every scripture that says what sin is, but can’t recall any that teach me how to show love, what have I gained? We quote I Corinthians 13 in weddings mainly these days, but it’s really about our message to the world. Verse 2 says, “If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, ‘Jump,’ and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing (MSG).” Without love our message and actions fall on deaf ears.

So, I ask again, how can we be proactive with God’s love today? What can you do to show others His love instead of His anger? Where can you build a bridge today instead of a wall? Who in your life needs you to listen to them instead of preach at them? Who in your path needs a hand that will lift them up instead of pushing them down? Each of us have the responsibility to love. Each of us have the capacity to do it. Jesus said the world would know us by our love. He didn’t say they’d know us by what we’re against. It’s time to be proactive with His love.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized