Guidelines For Living Devotional

Whenever trouble knocks at the door of my life, I ask myself three question: 1) Is God trying to tell me something, and I've been too dense to hear His voice so now He's getting my attention? 2) Is the trouble the result of Satanic attack? or 3) Is this difficulty circumstantial--something that possibly I brought on myself, or may have happened simply because I got caught in the wake of a poor economy, or just happened to be in harm's way?

It's amazing what parents will do to see growth in their children. When a parent suddenly realizes that his or her child is significantly shorter than all the others in a given group, most parents start booking appointments with doctors and embark on a regimen of nutrition or medication. They don't want their youngster to be a "small fry!"

Rick Warren, a pastor who speaks to some 12,000 people every week, says that the question which people ask more than any other is, "Why did this happen to me?" Has that question ever come from your heart? A phone call in the night brought news that your best friend had been injured in an automobile accident. You were laid off at work, replaced by a younger person. The company that you thought was on the way up went south with your savings. Just when your husband retired and you thought you...

Living faster than ever before and enjoying it less? Millions of people are like that, living in a pressure cooker environment, packing more and more into less and less time, but liking it less every day. Whatever makes life worth living–the leisure walk through the woods, the time to sit and play with your baby, a candlelight meal with your husband, time to read and reflect–are all swallowed up by the monster of doing more and more in less time?

How you speak two words tells a great deal about your outlook on life--two very important words that are often spoken at the beginning of the day. Those two very revealing words are, "ANOTHER DAY." Think for a moment. When you awake in the morning and say, "Another day...," how do you say it? The inflection of your voice reveals a lot about your attitude.

Do you remember when your friend made a bad choice, a wrong decision like walking out of a marriage, or quitting a job over a petty disagreement, or allowing a disagreement to break a long-time friendship? And you said, "That person isn't thinking straight!"

Have you ever had the experience of waking up in the morning and asking yourself, "How have I gotten to this place? What has happened to me? Where did I go wrong?" The realization that you were in the wrong place under the wrong set of circumstances hit you like a ton of bricks. You suddenly realized that you had missed the right turn a few miles back down the road of life. Now you are asking, "How do I get out of this mess? Or is there a way out at all?"

Only ten percent of all people really think. Seventy-five percent think they think, and fifteen percent would rather die than think. Do you believe that? I often close a program with the phrase, "Think about it!" Yet, quite often, we prefer not to think because when we really do think about something, we are confronted with the consequences of our actions which we prefer not to see.

The human brain is an amazing creation. It has spawned the marvelous inventions of space and plummeted the depths of the biological kingdom. It has given birth to the space program, the marvelous advancements of medicine, the libraries of the world, the advancements of civilization, the remarkable achievements in the fields of science, history, anthropology, literature, social studies and a jillion things that neither time nor space allow me to mention. It has also produced the negative...

Some 3000 years ago the wise man—perhaps Solomon himself—said it so well: "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he." Simply put, you become what you think—negative or positive. Your thinking shapes your attitude, and your attitude is like the wood carver's tool that molds you into the image you become.

"How could God really love me if He let this happen to me?" If you have never said it, chances are you have thought it--at least for a fleeting moment, and perhaps that thought took root in your mind and the logic has become a real problem. In coping with the problem of circumstances which run counter to your belief in a good God who loves you, you may well have to disengage yourself from the broken relationship which stands as a barrier between you and God's love.

Afflictions come to us in all sizes and shapes. I am thinking of two individuals in particular--one of whom sustained brain damage in a sports injury and then faced a life-long physical impairment, and another who has grown bitter over the loss of a baby girl found dead in her crib. Both of them talk of God's love. The first speaks of it as a comfort and a strength; the other as an obstacle--"How could God really love us and allow this to happen?" In one case the injury drove him to God; in...

Have you ever doubted that God does love you? Have you ever faced circumstances that caused you to say, "How could God love me when He has allowed circumstances as these?" It may have been the death of your child, or a mate who deeply disappointed you, or something about which you prayed, and your prayer went unanswered—or so you thought. Possibly you did not verbalize it at all, but way down in your heart you just allowed those thoughts of, "How could this happen if God really loved me?" to...

Have you discovered that when someone says, "God told me to do something," we think that either we are confronted with a deeply spiritual individual or someone who needs a psychiatrist?

Have you ever had the experience of being somewhere away from the noise and din of the city, perhaps in the mountains somewhere, or in a desert; and as you sat and looked at the starry sky, you were amazed at the silence? It was quiet, right? Wrong! It wasn't quiet; it was just that you couldn't hear the sounds. Strange but true is the fact that the atmosphere around you is filled with a thousand voices, but you just aren't tuned to them. You can't pick them up. If someone asks you what kind...

Back when the world's population was less than 250 million, a mere fraction of what it is today, the prophet Isaiah wrote, "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!" (Isaiah 5:8, KJV). I wonder how he would feel today when skyscrapers puncture the skyline of almost every major city on earth, yet one of the ironic contradictions of our day is that there are more people alive today than...

Alone! is the title of Admiral William Byrd's autobiography. It’s the story of his life as this celebrated explorer tells about his experience in a little hut in the Antarctic near the South Pole. Byrd tells how the isolation of seeing no other human being day after day began working on his mind and emotions as he spent the long winter alone, separated from friends and loved ones, even separated from friendly animals which might have offered some companionship or comfort. "Alone!" None would...

In the event that you are ready to lose faith in humanity, let me tell you about Jean Rosenstein and what happened to her. Mrs. Rosenstein sat down at a small table in her cramped, one‑bedroom apartment and painfully put her thoughts on paper. The arthritis in her fingers made the writing difficult and painful but she continued.

The composer Peter Tchaikovsky knew what loneliness is. He raised the shades on the window of his heart as he wrote in a minor key, "None but the lonely heart can feel my anguish..." There are more people today than ever before who know the anguish of the lonely heart. In spite of the fact that more people are alive right now than have ever died from the days of Adam and Eve to the present, there are also more lonely people than ever before. It takes more than masses of people to eliminate...

It is said, "Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty." Yes, and the worse malady mankind struggles with is on the rise. We are all becoming lonelier and social scientists say, it may be a result of replacing our flesh and blood relationships with the virtual "friendships" of social media. Replacing face to face relationships with Facebook friends or whatever, interacting with people that we may actually hardly know, real human social interaction has...