Christianity isn’t always clean and straight forward. There are times when we truly aren’t sure what we should do, what is right? That is why we need the presence of God. God could have simply left us with His Bible and said ‘good enough, they should be able to figure this out.’ Instead God left us with His Spirit. He left us His Spirit because He knew we would need an aid and a guide because things wouldn’t always be hot and cold, sometimes the answer to our situation wouldn’t be clear cut. God has the answers. They say listen to your heart, but most don’t really understand how true that is. That pinch in your chest from the Spirit telling you what to do and what to avoid is vital. Do I cross into the promised land when there are giants? My head says ‘not a chance!’ My heart knows that we can take that land because God says we can! Listen for the Spirit when you are uncertain. God sent Him so that we would have the answers to the unclear questions. Trust Jesus and follow His guiding, even if it doesn’t always make sense.
Category: Devotional
Lent devotional 28
Spring has popped up and now we have the pleasure of bees. I feel like bees are in the ‘super misunderstood’ club of the animal world. Bees stingers hurt so they get a bad reputation, but they truly just want to do their jobs. They collect pollen and cause plants to grow. In fact bees have an intricate system that they live in and even have their language, which is super cool! But they buzz and that makes people dislike them. There are many people out there who are like bees. They work hard and do important work, they are unique and wonderful people truly… but there is something about them. The way they talk or how they dress make them unappealing. Why? Good question. Why? These are people just like us they’re just unique. There isn’t any real reason to not like them but because of a judgment we choose to avoid them. Like the bees they are misunderstood. Maybe you are one of these people. If you are, remember, Jesus’ followers were odd in the eyes of many, even hated, but Jesus loved them and helped them do great things! Even if you are misunderstood, Jesus gets you and He loves your unique oddities.
Lent devotional 27
The struggle is real.
We all have seen the sign, T-shirt, Facebook meme, “the struggle is real”. It’s become a joke in many aspects, but how many have lived it? I know amazing people who have lost jobs, spouses, children, homes, and eventually their faith. We say Job testing, but thank God that most of us have never been that far down the broken road. Not because Job did anything wrong, but because his suffering was unmatched, there were times when I assumed God was speaking in parables but no, that amazing man truly went through all that. I know people who have been as close to a Job suffering as I have ever seen, and yet they never gave up or lost hope. These people have felt weak, like being strong hurt too much, but in those moments they chose not to be strong but to still be brave, because it takes courage to trust God. We can be weak, strength wasn’t what God told us to have, Faith is. Don’t give up!
Imagine what Jesus felt as He walked the road to The Skull? Do you think He felt strong? No. But He had Faith is His Father! Jesus knew that in the end God would be waiting with open arms, so He stumbled forward bravely. Thanks to Jesus we also get to have Him waiting for us at the end with open arms. He knows weariness and pain, don’t think that He doesn’t understand because He does. Only Jesus is worth our Hope, and because of Him we have hope.
Lent devotional 26
Just because you fail, doesn’t make you a failure.
Just because it hurts, doesn’t mean it can break you.
Because you cry, doesn’t mean you’re weak.
Sometimes being a hero simply means standing back up after you’ve fallen down. Sometimes the strongest thing you do in a day, is get out of bed.
Moving forward doesn’t always mean big steps, even if you fall onto your hands, you are still going forward, just stand back up and you’ll be further forward than you were before you fell. God has never turned away from the broken, or the hurting, or the lost. God has never turned away from the unsure, or those who simply don’t know what to pray, or those who don’t have it in them to pray that day. Jesus is the friend who walks beside you through the pain He never lets you go through it alone, give it all to Him and trust Him.
Lent devotional 25
Rainbows
Who here loves rainbows? Me too!
Who remembers why there are rainbows? Because we sinned. We sinned so badly that God decided to wipe us from the earth, but He noticed His servant Noah. Because of one man’s faith and devotion, God chose not to completely destroy all of His creation. Then as a sign that He would never destroy the earth by water again, God made the rainbow. Rainbows we see as a sign of God’s love, but they are also a reminder of His power. God’s power destroyed all the earth except those He chose to save, then He painted the sky to remind people that He was God and had the power to destroy us, but the love to give us a second chance.
Lent devotional 24
What’s on your mind?
When you ask if someone has a moment to talk, lot’s of times people will answer with ‘what’s on your mind?’
God already knows what’s on our minds, so why do talk to Him? Because God wants to be asked. God says to pray several times in the Bible. Why does He want us to pray? Because there needs to be effort on our part, if God simply gives us what we want all the time without our asking wouldn’t we end up never talking to God? Perhaps thinking that we are just ‘lucky’? Maybe thinking that we are so amazing we can provide all these ourselves? Forgetting that there is a God who rules and provides? Oh, quite easily. In fact we see God’s people (that’s us) doing exactly all these things in the Bible and in modern days. How does it go again? They had a time of abundant prosperity- without asking for it, God simply provided- then they began to sin against the Lord. If we ask then we remember to thank God when provided for. If we give time to God then we won’t forget who the miracle worker is, because it isn’t us. God still hears the yearnings of our heart, He still hears us when our souls cry out and we don’t have the words to say, but when we do have the words to say, He likes us to pray.
Lent devotional 23
We all have someone who is our safe place, where we can go and are accepted unconditionally; Jesus is that safe place for me. Oh, I have others too, but Jesus is my first and most reliable.
Jesus is pure and perfect. Of all of us, He has the right and reason to be judgemental. Yet, if I come to Him broken and crying He comforts me, if I come to Him angry or afraid He guides me, If I bring my sins and lay them before Him He says “what sin?”
Jesus is my safe zone, the one I can go to no matter what and He won’t judge me or critisize me, He will just love me and help me as my friend and savior.
Jesus is your safe zone too. You may feel a little uncomfortable going to him, but once you begin to speak to Him you will feel better and you will see things through His eyes.
‘Thank you Jesus, for being my friend, and my safe zone.’
Lent devotional 22
Petra-
The first people to inhabit Petra were Nomads called the Nebataeans. When they first found the rock Fortress they used it as a stronghold for their families and their merchandise. Later they gained control of the central incense and spice trade; and then, due to necessity, began using Petra as a Market Hub because it was located conveniently between Asia and Arabia. We know about these people and what they did and how they lived because of detailed, yet sometimes hard to decipher, wall “journals”. Scribes had etched into the stone walls a history of the nomads who first inhabited here. When and how these people were driven out, or simply chose to leave, is vague. Later in the Kingdom years, the city belonged to the Edomites who we know from their battles with Saul and David. It has been suggested by Scholars that the Fortress / Safe Haven of Petra fell to ruin because Edom gave aid to Nebuchadnezzar when he destroyed Jerusalem. It is believed that in Jeremiah 49:16,
You have been deceived by the fear you inspire in others and by your own pride. You live in a rock fortress and control the mountain heights. But even if you make your nest among the peaks with the eagles, I will bring you crashing down,” says the Lord .
Jeremiah 49:16 NLT
God is speaking of Petra or Sela. Now the once-vibrant city lies as a reminder of what happens to those who harm God’s people. This city makes me think of Helm’s Deep from Lord of the Rings. Helms Deep was assumed to be a fortress where you could hide in times of attack; a place to keep your goods and your valuables so they wouldn’t be stolen by Raiders, and yet it wasn’t powerful enough to protect the people. In the end it was just a stone building waiting to crumble. Petra was seen as a fortress not only by the nomads who discovered it but also by the Edomites who conquered it later. But the stone Fortress was turned into nothing but a reminder of the devastation of God’s hand. He claimed he would make Edom like Sodom and Gomorrah. And he did. All Edom did was aid Babylon, but they aided Babylon when Babylon was besieging God’s holy city and God’s people and that was a mistake. God will never leave your battles unfinished, you may never even see it happen, but someday the stronghold your enemies hid in as they attacked you will lay empty as a sign of what God has done for you.
Footnotes :
American Natural History Museum
NLT
Got questions- answers to Bible questions
Lent devotional 21
Don’t forget that God loves you. If He is for you, no one can be against you and succeed. There will be times when it feels like the enemy is winning, but God is fighting battles for you that you will probably never know about. Trust Jesus. He is there for you.
Lent devotional 20
Sometimes our faith in God is like being a seashell.
We float around on the ocean floor until God enhabits us. Now instead of being tossed by the tide we can swim on our own.
When God is in us He guides us and directs us where He wants us to go. The shell never doubts the way of it’s master; We should never doubt the road God takes us on. Just trust and swim and someday we will be picked up, placed in God’s pocket and taken to Eternity💝
Carried in the cross 