Guidelines For Living Devotional

Is it really wrong to worry? Who would deny that there is plenty to worry about--the state of the economy, our health, the Middle East, the domestic problems including feeding the hungry (which few of us really worry about unless we are on the hungry end of the issue), and a lot of other things? But can we help worrying any more than we can help our hair thinning out or what happens to our good looks after age 50?

"If I can just get through this problem, I'm sure that everything will be okay." Ever think that? So you grit your teeth and, sure enough, you get through that problem, only to find that several more have cropped up on the horizon. It's something like pedaling a bicycle. Going uphill is so slow and takes so much energy, while the downhill run so quickly turns into another uphill climb.

"Due to the current financial constraints, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off until further notice!" so reads a notice on a local notice board. How's that for contending for a gold medal in pessimism? Nobody can take away the power of hope unless you let him. Hope is as essential to life as oxygen is to your human body.

William Carey was one of the pioneers of the modern missionary movement as he left his native England and went to India. In the process Carey established himself and began to translate the Bible into the language of the people he worked with. Before the days of linguists and computers, it was a long slow process. Eventually a printer joined him, and, after years of effort, Bibles were printed and the process of distribution was begun. One day, however, Carey returned from a time of ministry...

One of the most beautiful structures in the world, the Notre Dame Cathedral, stands on the banks of the Seine River in the heart of modern Paris. This beautiful building dating from the Middle Ages gains elegance and uniqueness partially from the lovely flying buttresses or arches which gracefully support the walls.

Long ago Joshua and his staff could have saved themselves all kinds of heartaches had they only stopped long enough to ask God for guidance. Here's how they got themselves into trouble. After God gave them two great victories--one at Jericho and Ai--they met together and renewed their commitment to serve God. The law was read and the people nodded their heads in agreement.

God made you in such a way that you can survive tremendous ordeals--illness, imprisonment, persecution, and privation. You can live without food and water--far longer than you might think. You can handle a tremendous amount of stress, but there is one thing with which you cannot do without. Apart from this you quickly despair. It is hope! You can rebuild when illness has ravished your body. You can put your finances together again, and you can pick up the broken pieces of your world when the...

You may have seen the headline yourself: "Rouge executioner a born-again Christian." The Reuters news story began, "The chief executioner of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, who ordered thousands of people killed in the 1970's, is a born-again Christian ready to face justice, the Far Eastern Economic Review said."

"No one can say 'Jesus is Lord,'" wrote the Apostle Paul, "except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3). Thousands of men and women today do recognize Jesus as their Savior, but they are still struggling to run their own lives and have never discovered the Lordship of Christ. "We are not our own bosses to live or die as we ourselves might choose" wrote Paul to the Romans. Many sincere, well-intentioned believers are really afraid to turn loose, not certain that God can handle their lives....

He was once a trusted friend, but something happened. His friendship became treachery, and the man who had been a companion, a family friend, and confidant became an enemy. Have you ever had it happen? Painful, isn't it? The person that you thought would have gone to the wall with you slowly begins to drift away. Your phone doesn't ring. It's a one-way friendship. When you call or drop by, you get the connection but it's cold, routine, and your friend gives you the impression that he's...

The English poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow captured an age-abiding truth when he wrote, "Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time." He's right, and one man who left footprints stretching across 2000 miles of time was an unlikely candidate for success—a fisherman by trade. He was scarcely qualified to do more than perhaps organize the union of fisherman on Galilee until the day that Jesus walked by and...

While the cross is unquestionably the universal symbol of redemption, Albrecht Dürer's praying hands have become the symbol of prayer. The story, though, behind his creation of those praying hands, makes it even more poignant. Dürer was a German painter who had a friend who also was a painter, and though his friend worked hard, he never became famous. One day Dürer, looking at the hands of his obscure friend, saw in his folded hands the embodiment of what prayer is about. Common, ordinary,...

When the British expositor and teacher, Joseph Parker, saw the suffering his wife endured as she lay dying with cancer, he was perplexed. Yes, he prayed and cried out to the Lord, but day by day, her suffering increased, and finally she lay still. When she died, for a week Parker, according to his own testimony, wallowed in the dark despair of atheism. He said that if he had had a dog who suffered as did the one he loved, he would have put the animal out of its misery.

"Jesus is Lord" says the words of the song, but what do you really mean when you say those words? It is certain that believers of the first century had some understanding of those words and their implication, for the Roman Emperor Domitian proclaimed himself a god and demanded that the subjects of the empire recognize him as such. It was really a pledge of political loyalty, but believers in Christ saw far more in that act of commitment than a pledge of allegiance to an emperor. All that was...

"He is Lord, He is Lord," sings the church. "He is risen from the grave and He is Lord." Yet while they are singing, a man edges forward on his seat thinking, "Wish they would hurry up and get this thing over so I can watch the big game." Like the phrases, "the Trinity" and "The Rapture of the Church," the phrase, "The Lordship of Christ" does not appear in the pages of the New Testament, yet the concept of Christ as being Lord of the believer's life is on every page of Bible.

Abdul Rahman was on death row with little prospect of avoiding execution. The case against him was air-tight. He confessed his crime; one allegedly committed some 16 years before. There was a public outcry as well to execute the bearded, sad-faced man for what he had done. Thousands of people rallied in the streets demanding that he be executed. And what was the crime that he had committed?

Everything in life is relative! What seems to be a major catastrophe to some is a mere bump in the road to others. Some suffer in silence, never letting others know the pain or heartache they are enduring, while others broadcast the slightest wrong they have suffered.

Living in a broken world creates a kind of spiritual skepticism in our lives, especially when we see human failure mirrored in the lives of those whom we have put on pedestals thinking of them as a cut above the ordinary. Then when they fail you, you ask, "Is there anyone who really lives the life, instead of simply of using the language and saying the right things?"

So, you think you have problems, do you? Consider the plight of a woman who held a rummage sale to get rid of her junk and put some money in her purse at the same time.

My daughter asked me if I had heard of a certain theologian who was better known in the 70s than today. "Yes," I told her, "he has one of the most brilliant minds of any evangelical alive today. But he is very eccentric, quirky, and never seems to stay in any one place very long."