August 20, 2025 – Security
I’m going to Atlanta today to see my son, Davis! (I’ve mentioned Alex, I believe. They are twins. 26 years old. As most parents say, “It’s hard to believe”.) He and his boss are going to go over the financial plan they have been working on for Don and me. Be with me as I travel, Lord, to and from because I didn’t sleep well last night. Don was at his 1920s band gig in Tuscaloosa; so, I was on my own, and I got quite a bit of decluttering done. I thought I’d be tired but was energized by the progress I was seeing so I took a PM pain pill that I thought would also help with the shoulder and neck pain.
JC – “I am a God who heals. I heal broken bodies, broken lives, and broken relationships….You cannot live close to Me without experiences some degree of healing. [Thank You] However, it is also true that you have not because you ask not….The healing may be instantaneous, or it may be a process….[like my decluttering] Your part is to trust Me and to thank Me for the restoration that has begun. I rarely heal all the brokenness in a person’s life.” Think Paul and the thorn.
Utmost – “Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once and ask Him to establish rest.” I tossed and turned (not literally, because of my shoulder, but in my mind for sure) for hours last night. I felt like I was awake the whole time, but I imagine there was sleep in there at some points. Needless to say, it was unsettling sleep and was even making my heart thump loud. There was no spatula prod pushing on the realization part of my brain; so, I have not excuse for why it took me so long to speak aloud to the distractions in my mind. I asked God to still the busy-ness and restlessness and to give me peaceful rest. Next thing I knew it was 6:30am. Thank You God. (I missed the 6am prayer service but it will keep me company, and likely awake, on the drive.)
The rest of Chambers’ devotion is so good with such helpful perspectives, but I’ll offer this one line rather than all of them: “A child of God never prays to be conscious that God answers prayer, he is so restfully certain that God always does answer prayer.”
Streams – Genesis 32:24 – “Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.” Cowan writes, “It was God in human form, pressing down on Jacob to press his old life from him.” Maybe You were wrestling with me last night, Lord, on the decluttering subject? Cowman continues, “If God has called us to His highest and best [less clutter and more organization and simplified living does indeed seem like a higher and better way of living and honoring God], each of us will have a time of crisis, when all our resources will fail and when we face either ruin or something better than we have ever dreamed.” This makes me think of a time after our wedding in 2022, but I won’t take time to go there right now because I will sidetrack and backtrack and diagonally-track us right past my time to leave. I’ll share that, and the PM pain info I wrote in my journal, another time.
Suffice to say, I came to a decision point of trusting God or of falling back into what I knew and had worked out for myself (which actually had come from God in the first place, and I knew He could end at any point in order for me to trust Him with what would be next). “We must be willing to let go, surrendering completely to Him….God knows how to lead us to the point of crisis, and He knows how to lead us through it….Do you have enough of Him to win the victory….Die in His loving arms to your own strength and wisdom….coming into a new experience with God.” Trusting and following His plan is a much less stressful way to go [just as a financial plan and budget can do for us, neither which I hate to admit at 60 that I’ve never really had).
Max is entitled, “Face God First.” He says you gain nothing by setting your eyes on the problem.” Like Mueller and the fog. “You gain everything by setting your eyes on the Lord.” Think of Peter walking on the sea in the storm. “If you are sinking, it is because you are looking in the wrong direction….Face God before you face your problems.” 1 Timothy 6:15 – “God…is the blessed controller of all things, the King over all kings and the Master of all masters.”
JA – “Find your security in Me….when you start to feel anxious about something you have seen, heard, or thought, bring that concern to Me.” Proverbs 23:18 – “There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.”
Prevail 232 – “Jesus was content to be misunderstood. He was on a mission to save all who would believe in Him.” That makes me think of when Lisa Harper was reading from a passage in her book and talked about the WWJD bracelets folks used to wear (and maybe still do). She discovered that it’s not what would He do because He is in the here and now doing it. I am likely not saying that correctly (listening to a book is an efficient way to get more “reading” done, but I don’t get to underline and easily refer back to passages; therefore, I have ordered a physical copy of the book to arrive tomorrow and will try to find and convey what she shared.)
This also makes me think of Matthew 20:22 when Jesus says to Salome about her sons sitting with Him in heaven, “You do not know what you are asking….Can you drink the cup I am going to drink? When James and John said, “We can” (like we all do sometimes when we are energized in our service to God), Jesus said, “You will indeed drink from My cup [gulp – Big Gulp, ha ha – hope that wasn’t sacrilegious], but to sit at My right or left is not for me to grant.” So, James and John were saying they were ready for being humbled and for “a criminals death on the cross…abhorrent dishonor…abandoned by His friends and felt forsaken by His Father”….? WWJD – He would go through all of that for us and pay for our sins too!
Larson finishes today with, “Eventually the truth will win….What if we entrusted our story to the One who knows the whole truth? Like Jesus, we would become a force to reckon with….Lord, Help me to stay on mission.”
Power – Galations 6:7 – “For whatever a man sows, that and that only is what he will reap.” Joyce points out, “A farmer doesn’t plant a tomato seed and expect to get broccoli, and you should not plant negative-word seeds hoping to get a good harvest….you can change your words and therefore you can change your life.”
