Encouraging Words Devotional

When God was giving instructions to Moses, He knew his people would sooner or later go to war against an enemy stronger than they were.

For years Dr. Margaret Brand served as a missionary eye surgeon in southern India.  In the rural areas she would sometimes do a hundred cataract surgeries in a single day.

A young woman in prison wrote me the following story:

My life was like a bottle. I always thought I was going to be something special. Maybe I'd be used to hold some costly medicine, or I might be used as a fine vase on some rich person's table. But I ended up just a plain green bottle sent down a conveyor belt and filled with cheap wine.

Sometimes Bible verses become so familiar that we gloss over them without applying them in a practical way to our lives. Isaiah 9:6 is one of those. 

While I am convinced that every one of us is here on earth for a reason—that each of us is created for a purpose, whenever I speak on this subject, inevitably the question comes up, "But what about people with disabilities? How can they ever attain their purpose? Did God make a mistake when He made them?"

When I was growing up, we used to sing a country Gospel song that went,

"Farther along we'll know all about it,

Farther along we'll understand why."

Sometimes when we pray, we sense the presence of God in the room with us. Other times God seems so very far away. Somebody quipped, "If God seems far away from you, guess who moved!" But I don't think that is necessarily true. That would be tantamount to asserting that if you can't "feel" God's presence, then He must not be there.

One of the reasons the book of Psalms in the Bible appeals to us is that the writings touch on experiences common to all of us. In the Psalms you find the entire range of human emotion--thankfulness, anger, love, hatred, joy, and more.

The prayer of a person going through very difficult times has been turned into a song by Margaret Becker and Keith Getty. Here are the words:

Jesus, draw me ever nearer

As I labor through the storm;

You have called me to this passage,

And I'll follow, though I'm worn.

A plaque hanging on hospital wall puts it well.

Cancer is so limited…

It cannot cripple love. It cannot shatter hope. It cannot corrode faith [or]…destroy peace [or]…kill friendships. It cannot suppress memories…silence courage [or]…invade the soul. It cannot steal eternal life. It cannot conquer the Spirit.

When Jesus stepped on shore after crossing the Sea of Galilee, he was immediately confronted by a man possessed by demons. The Bible tells us the details: "For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs" (Luke 8:27). The local people had tried to chain him and keep him under guard, but he always broke the chains and escaped.

Missionary doctor Margaret Brand wrote of the time that her young son, Christopher, was outside playing in the hill country of India toward sunset time. "Suddenly he rushed in excitedly. [He] seized my hand," she related, "and tried to drag me outside as he almost shouted, 'Come see the sky. It's unnecessarily beautiful!'

Some people see the Bible as just a book of rules and regulations that God has given to keep us in line. They perceive God as a bully looking down from heaven with a big stick ready to punish anyone who disobeys. How mistaken they are!

Does it seem to you that birthdays keep rolling around faster and faster, year after year?  Obviously, that means that sooner or later, if we live long enough, each of us is going to grow old. I, for one, want to make the best of my years. 

When a woman has given birth to her first baby, she starts off determined to be the best mother she can be, often keeping in the back of her mind a picture of the mother who meets all her child's needs, teaches wisely, and trains that little one in the way he or she should go, to paraphrase Proverbs 22:6.