July 3, 2026 – Judged
Yesterday, Don had surgery on his shin to remove a cancer spot. While they were prepping him, the young nurse at one point said, “Y’all are so cute.” That’s what I have said about old people. Are we old people now? How did we get here at 61 (and almost 64)? I did say she’s young, probably younger than my 27 year old boys, so anyone over 40 probably seems old to her. Maybe she just thought our clothes were cute (he did have on a bright blue ball cap with “American Dad” on the front and I was dressed to go out for a casual, soothing lunch when it was all done) or maybe our banter was funny. Oh well, I’d rather be thought cute than annoying!
Interestingly, not to say that our nurse was judging us in a negative way, but the first two devotion books I’ve picked up are about judgment and judging and justice. I put them both aside at first thinking I didn’t want to go in that direction today, but then I remembered that this blog is something I felt God leading me to do; so, the subject matter in each of the books has always seemed to lean to the theme He had prepared for the day. When I picked up the third book, Jesus Calling, it confirmed the topic for the day.
JC – “My children make a pasttime of judging one another – and themselves. But I am the only capable Judge, and I have acquitted you through My own blood…. That is why I am highly offended when I hear My children judge one another or indulge in self-hatred. If you live close to Me and absorb My Word, the Holy Spirit will guide and correct you as needed. There is no condemnation for those who belong to Me.” See Luke 6:37, 2 Timothy 4:8, Titus 3:5, and Romans 8:1.
Max – Acts 17:31 – “[God] has set a day when he will judge the world.” Max offers this about justice, “When you wonder if the wicked will go unpunished or injustices will go unaddressed, let this promise gratify your desire for justice. God will have the final word.” He tells of the women in a Dinka village in Sudan who pressed sticks, tied together to form crosses, into the ground before burying the over hundred people who were murdered by “Government-backed soldiers…. Not as memorials to their grief but as declarations of their hope. They were Jesus followers. The crossed sticks expressed their faith in a loving God who could and will make sense of such a tragedy.* Do the same with your tragedies. Place them in the shadow of the cross and be reminded: God understands injustice. He will right all wrongs and heal all wounds. He has prepared a place where life will be finally and forever…just.”
Prevail #184 – Ezekiel 16:49 – “Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door.” Larson offers this perspective on on Sodom as it relates to us, “Oftentimes when we think of the city of Sodom, we think of her sexual sin, which was blatant, and a huge problem in the sight of God. Yet it’s interesting that Scripture notes that Sodom’s core sins were as follows: pride, gluttony, and apathy – and particularly, all while the poor and needy. That hits closer to home, wouldn’t you say? These three sins open the door to greater decadence…. Lord, forgive us. Sodom’s sins are our sins, and until we’re honest about our own tendencies, we will stay captive to them…. May we live purely and humbly, may we consume only what we need and give generously to others, and may we engage in this faith journey with our whole hearts and tend to the needs around us. God empowers us to live differently from the rest of the world.”
Power – John 14:27 – “Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. [Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled.] Joyce prods our thinking, “Perhaps you have never thought about how important it is to manage your emotions. I imagine we all think, I can’t help how I act when I am having a hard time. That is a normal human reaction, but with God on your side helping you, you don’t have to behave the ways a ‘normal’ person would…. he wants you to choose to control the negative emotions that can steal your peace. You cannot always control your circumstances, but you can control yourself with God’s help.”
Days – “Look from the top” (Song of Solomon iv. 8). Simpson offers this for rising above our judgmental ways, “Yes, our perplexities would become plain if we kept on a spiritual elevation. How often when a traveler quite loses his way he can soon find it again from some tree top or some hill top where all the winding paths he has gone spread behind him, and the whole homeward road opens before. So, from the heights of prayer and faith, we too can see the plain path, and know that we are going home…. When the Italian fruit-seller fins that he is heir to a ducal palace you cannot tempt him any more with the paltry profits of his trade or the company of his old associates. He is above it all. They who know the hope of their calling and the riches of the glory of their inheritance can well despise the world.”
Streams – Isaiah 28:24 – “When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually?” Cowman, with the help of selected sources, paints an easy to imagine picture of “a lovely meadow” she saw one day with thick green grass and wildflowers on the border with birds chirping in the tree offering shade to the cows. When she passed the meadow the next day, “…to my great dismay, the hand of the destroyer had been there.” The field had been plowed and was just “ugly, bare, and brown earth.” She wondered why that peaceful place had been spoiled but, “Then suddenly my eyes were opened, as if by some unseen hand, and I saw a vision…. of a field of ripe corn ready for harvest…. Oh, if only we would always catch the vision of the abundant harvest when the great Master Farmer comes, as He often does, to plow through our very souls – uprooting and turning under that which we thought most beautiful and leaving only the bare and the unlovely before our agonizing eyes.
Cowman concludes with thoughts from Samuel Rutherford, “Why should I be frightened and surprised…. I know He is not some arbitrary or irrational farmer – His purpose is to yield a harvest.”
Utmost – Isaiah 6:5 – “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.” Chambers explains how God convicts and transforms us, “When I get into the presence of God, I do not realise that I am a sinner in an indefinite sense; I realise the concentration of sin in a particular feature of my life…. God begins by convicting us of one thing fixed on in the mind that is prompted by His Spirit; if we will yield to His conviction on that point, He will lead us down to the great disposition underneath…. The effect of the vision of the holiness of the Lord on Isaiah was to bring home to him that he was a man of unclean lips…. The cleansing fire had to be applied where the sin had ben concentrated.”
JL – “Precious Jesus, Help me to look for You – and find You – in the hard places of my life…. Teach me to view my problems as opportunities to grow in grace, experiencing Your loving Presence in greater depth and breadth…. please remind me to keep clinging to Your hand…. In Your compassionate Name, Amen.”
*Os Guinness, Unspeakable: Facing Up to the Challenge of Evil (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2005), 136-37.
