Guidelines For Living Devotional
A 5-minute daily devotional to help you fully live the life God has designed for you.
Episodes
"To be a Christian without prayer," said Martin Luther, "is no more possible than to be alive without breathing." Yet, so often, we voice words mechanically and perfunctorily, and fail to grasp the meaning behind them. How often have you prayed, "Our Father who art in heaven..." and repeated a prayer by rote, without even thinking of what you were saying?
Those of you who are familiar with computers are aware of pull-down menus. When you touch one item, a whole series of possibilities opens up before you. Such is the way it is with 57 Greek words which, translated into English, constitute a prayer we commonly refer to as The Lord's Prayer. Each phrase in this dynamic prayer opens powerful vistas of spiritual insight and potential.
"I've always had a heart for missions and the needy," writes a Guidelines' friend, "and our church does not support Christian missions. Sometimes I don't approve the decisions of the church and how the money is used. A bit extravagant at times.... What is right in God's eyes?"
In his famous sermon on money, John Wesley advised, "Get all you can, save all you can, give all you can." Today--some 200+ years later--we understand the part about getting all you can, especially without having to work very hard for it. But the saving and giving parts of it are often misunderstood today.
I had just flown into a rather primitive area in Northern Luzon, a tribal area of the Philippines, where Bible translators from Wycliffe had given the New Testament to a group who were reading it for the first time. Along towards evening, men came from the fields and women and children joined their husbands in assembling in the group house to hear the Good News.
There are only three things that you can do with it: 1. Save it; 2. Spend it; and 3. Give it away. It's money--the most explosive and troublesome issue involving families today. It isn't really how much you have, or how little you have, but what you do with what you have. The handling of money is the #1 problem facing people today. Our problem, simply put, is that we spend far too much, save far too little, and end up with...
“Good morning Dr. Sala,” writes a friend of Guidelines, “I have a question to ask you. I am confused about tithing, and I want to be obedient to God’s Word. I understand a tenth is required, and in Malachi 3:10 that it should be brought into the storehouse which I assume means the church. I have been giving half to church and another half [to missions]. Sometimes I don’t approve of the decisions of the church and how the money is ...
There is a mindset today which paralyzes our good intentions and causes our heads to turn from that which is unpleasant and causes us discomfort. It's the mentality that the needs of the world are so great, and our personal ability to make a difference is so tiny and inconsequential, that what we can do to change anything just doesn't count. So, the end result is that we do nothing.
"We took on Goliath!" advertises a small business whose product is overshadowed by a major manufacturer. The David versus Goliath syndrome means the little guy goes against the giant. There are times when the little guy goes against the big one and gets flattened like a steamroller does a stray cat. But what's the real story behind the confrontation of David with Goliath long ago?
Jesus illustrated great truths with human interest stories. One of them involved a wealthy man who turned over his estate to three men, entrusting each with a certain amount of wealth. Today we use dollars, yen, pesos or euros (depending on who has issued the currency) to measure wealth, but in Jesus' day the unit of measurement was a talent. Our English word for talent is a transliteration of the Greek word, the one Jesus use...
"Do you have investments?" a businessman asked me, "and what do you invest in?" I explained that I had some rather large investments, but they were not subject to the whims of markets and a capricious economy. I told them that I had invested my life in the kingdom of God--in people around the world, which included my children and family. From the look that I got as I explained what was important in my life, I recogn...
If you were asked, "What do you invest in?" I suspect that you would mention stocks, bonds, real estate, or perhaps precious metals. Or you might say, "You've got to be kidding. We're fortunate to have enough to buy rice and fish for dinner tonight!"
There are times when you can help a person the most by not helping that person at all. Sounds contradictory? Let me illustrate. There's a word which is wafted about quite freely: codependency. It's one of those buzzwords among people who are trying to overcome some of the problems they grew up with.
A brilliant young Oxford don, H.A. Hodges, was an agnostic, and felt that it was not intellectually honest to profess a belief in God, since he was certain that nobody could really prove His existence. But of course, he also acknowledged that the existence of God could not be disproven. He just wasn't sure and decided to remain neutral. One day, however, he strolled down Oxford's main thoroughfare and stopped before a st...
Whenever I go overseas on a mission's ministry, someone always says, "Hey, can't you find enough hurting people where you are without going to the trouble and expense of traveling?"
When you have a difficult person in your life—and who doesn't? —you have four basic options—much the same as how you would deal with a pair of shoes that hurt your feet because a nail has worked its way through the sole. You can walk away from him, ignore him — perhaps getting calloused to his difficult personality, put some space between you and him (which allows you to live with the situation) or respond to the difficult per...
Dr. Harold Voth, who served as senior psychiatrist at the Menninger Clinic for many years, was one of the leading voices in the 20th century for health care and mental illness. Dr. Voth used to say, "Hugging is an excellent tonic." He contended that it has been scientifically demonstrated that people who are mentally run-down and depressed are far more prone to sickness than those who are not. Hugging, he says, can lift...
How do you know when to say, "when!" How do you know when it's time to hang it up and quit? Do you grit your teeth and say, "They will have to take me out feet first," or do you see the handwriting on the wall, and you know it's time to say, "when?" Do you grasp the golden parachute, as they call a good retirement in business, or do you wait until they give you ten minutes to clean out your desk a...
How do you pray when your world is falling apart? Or do you stop praying and decide that God has ignored you or forgotten that you exist? I've been thinking about that very issue as I've answered some of the messages which have come to our office from people who are really hurting, but more than that, they have all but given up on God because they prayed for something, like winning the lottery, and it didn't happen. ...
In his book, Why Us? Warren Wiersbe tells of visiting a dear friend whose world had come apart. Her husband had gone blind, and then her health failed. As she struggled with an incurable disease, followed by a stroke that caused her to give up employment, she was forced to remain at home caring for her husband when she actually needed care herself.
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