Past Devotions

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
‘Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

Silent night, holy night
Shepherds quake at the sight
Glories stream from heaven afar
Heavenly hosts sing, “Alleluia”
Christ the Savior is born
Christ the Savior is born

Silent night, holy night
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord at Thy birth
Jesus, Lord at Thy birth [Josef Mohr 1792–1848]

Silent Night. And then the cries of the Christ Child Jesus echoed throughout the heavens … God plan of redemption now dwelt on earth.

“This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.” [Psalm 118:24 NLT]

This is the day to rejoice!

God’s faithful love endures forever! Psalm 118:1

The LORD is our strength and shield! Psalm 28:7

The LORD has clothed me with garments of salvation and a robe of His righteousness. Isaiah 61:10

The LORD is the rock of our salvation. Psalm 95:1-2

The LORD’s peace guards our hearts. Philippians 4:7

The LORD delivered us from all our fears. Psalm 34:4

The LORD assures us of heaven. John 14:2

The LORD’s presence comforts and guides us daily. Psalm 16:11

Christ with us, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27

This is the day to rejoice!

Today I lift my voice in praise to You my LORD God. I rejoice in this day you have granted me. I rejoice in the salvation You brought me. I rejoice that I can confidently claim, “I am a child of God!”

Thank you LORD. Amen & Amen

“God moves in mysterious ways” has become a proverb in our times. Many think it is a verse from the Bible. It is not. It comes from a poem written in 1772 by the English poet William Cowper. It was eventually converted to a hymn, “Light Shining Out of Darkness.”

The first stanza reads: “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.”

While this proverb is not a verse of Scripture, it does link up with Isaiah 55:8-9: “’My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’” [NLT]

There is a vast difference between God’s wisdom and our human understanding. When we look at that first Christmas, we don’t always understand what God was thinking — sending His Precious Son, born to a virgin, to die on a Roman cross and bear the sins of the world. That is truly beyond anything we could have imagined.

And yet it happened. God’s thoughts, God’s wisdom, God’s actions saved us when we were lost, alone, and without hope. We may never understand why He did it this way, but we can rejoice and celebrate the miracle!

Thank you LORD. Amen & Amen

“How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults…. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” [Psalm 19:12, 14 NLT]

These last few weeks prior to the Christmas celebrations have been a very emotional time for me. God has been working out some things in my heart that I have allowed to take up habitation there – hurts from the past four decades of ministry.

I will simply say it hasn’t always been easy to be a woman in ministry, and I have accumulated hurts along the way. But I do not want to stand before my Lord with these burdens. I do not want them to turn into bitterness.

God has graciously and tenderly touched my heart over the past months and recently brought healing through a message at church. That message set me free. It allowed me to see that even during the hurts, God was at work.

I am not sure I have the words to explain the joy in having 40 years of hurts healed. My heart rejoices today because I now know that even our hurts can advance the Kingdom of God on earth.

Thank you Jesus! Amen & Amen

After Paul identifies himself in the opening of the letter to the Galatian church, he offers a prayer request for grace and peace and then talks about the purpose of the Father in sending His Son to us.

 “May God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.  Jesus gave his life for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live.  All glory to God forever and ever! Amen.” [Galatians 1:3-5 NLT]

The LORD Christ Jesus came to rescue us from this evil world in which we life. Recent events have proven (as if we needed further proof) that the world is a place where evil flourishes. Over the last weekend we saw the terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, a mass shooting at Brown University, an uprising of Isis in Syria that killed our soldiers, and a mother and father killed allegedly by their son.

Evil exists in this world. The NLT of Scripture has 530 references to evil. It enters in the first book of the Bible (Genesis) and doesn’t exit until the last (Revelation). We can push it down in one place and then watch it rise in another. Evil exists, period.

Except … while evil exists (and often flourishes) in our world, it does not control it. The grace and peace given by God our Father does. He has provided an eternal rescue in Christ Jesus if we abide in Him.

All glory to God forever and ever! Amen and Amen.

Following my surgery in July, I experienced some unusual symptoms which had doctors worried. They advanced some theories about what was wrong … seeming to go straight to the most drastic. I was eventually sent to a cardiologist. She didn’t think anything was abnormal. She encouraged me to relax and told me she would schedule an echocardiogram for a few months down the road.

I had the test a week ago and a few days later got the results. Except for a few “mini” old age items (and she stressed “mini”), nothing is broken in my heart. She even said I didn’t need any further follow up with her.

My physical heart isn’t broken! PTL! Yet, that reminded me that there are far more serious ways for a heart to be broken. We all have (or will) experience hurts and loss in life. Death is a sure thing. We lose loved ones. And loss comes in other colors also. Loss of independence as we age. Loss of health. Loss of financial security. Loss is universal in this life.

But God has promised to heal those who are brokenhearted. Isaiah prophesized that God would send an Anointed One to heal. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, Because the Lord has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted.” [61:1 NKJV]

When Jesus began His ministry, He declared of Isaiah’s prophecy that “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” [Luke 4:14-21 NKJV]

Thank you Jesus for healing the brokenhearted (of which I am one). Amen & Amen

I have a hymnal called “Hymns of Glorious Praise.”  The Table of Contents for that hymnal tells me it is laid out by theme.  The first section is worship. “O, Worship the King” all glorious above, and gratefully sing His Power and His love. (Franz Joseph Hayden, 1732-1809)

Right after the worship section in this hymnal come songs we hear this time of year, the songs of the Incarnation, songs of Christmas. Yet too soon, following the Christmas songs come songs of the cross.

It was for the cross that Christ came. It was for the cross that He abandoned all the rights and privileges of His divine nature and came to earth as a babe. It was for the cross that He took upon Himself the sins of this world and surrendered Himself to death, even a death on a cross.  [Philippians 2]

And the cross was for us. To fully appreciate the babe born in the manager, we must always do so in sight of the cross. If Jesus was only a great teacher, a good man, or a prophet, celebrating his birth would not be much different than celebrating the birth of other good teachers and good men.

But Jesus was not just a great teacher, a good man, and a prophet, He was and is and always will be God the Son, and He came to Bethlehem that wondrous night for a single purpose, to reconcile man and God. That reconciliation meant the giving of his very life’s blood on a heathen cross, the one true spotless sacrifice offered for the sins of men.

Both the star over the stable and the cross on the hill cast shadows that stretch through all eternity to remind us of what our salvation cost our God.

What a privilege and blessing it is to be a Christian. All the guesswork is taken out of salvation because salvation is given to us at the beginning of our life with the Lord, by His grace, through our faith. We need never worry if the life we are living is good enough to get God’s attention or blessing.

I began life in a religion where I never knew if what I did was going to please God enough to be accepted by Him at the end of my life. I remember the fear that brings into a heart daily.

I am ending my life with a faith that is so different, so comforting, so wondrous. God came to earth as a babe. There is a Christmas song with the phrase, “there were many babies to become a king, but only One King became a baby.” [“One King” by David Phelps)

Isn’t that the most amazing thought? Our King became a baby and lived a singular life unto God, died on a cross and became the atonement for our sins, so that we might be the righteousness of God in Christ. Now the life we live is not to achieve salvation or atonement, since God has given that to us freely; now the life we live reflects His glory in us, a life He has ordained full of good works done from a thankful heart.

Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:8-10: “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”  [NLT]

The good works that we do are not to win God’s favor for that has already been granted. The good works we do flow out of the love God gave for all that first Christmas.

I am always happy to see December come. It is my favorite time of the year. I love Christmas music, family gatherings, and all the excitement and fun. I love the anticipation I see in the faces of the children. They know Christmas means good things.

As we age, that anticipation often fades. The holiday season doesn’t always mean good things.  Sometimes it means facing the holidays alone, or without that special someone. Sometimes it means trying to scrape by on minimum wage and still meet the needs of family. Sometimes it means facing the dysfunction of the family in which we were raised, or the one we inherited through marriage.

For me though, Christmas is still a time of anticipation. I find myself reflecting often on that first Christmas. Oh, I know the Christ Child was more than likely not born in December, the stable was probably a cave, and while the shepherds showed up that night, the wise men probably took a bit longer to arrive! But none of that matters to me, what matters is that the Christ Child WAS born, born to a virgin, born in the likeness of man, born with a purpose, and that purpose was the salvation of men.

That is the anticipation I sense at Christmas, a re-kindling of the awareness of why Christ came and what it means to all men. Christmas is when God came to earth to reconcile man unto Himself. Christmas is a time of celebration, a time when we sing with the angels, “Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men.” 

It is a time when we come with the Shepherds and bow down to see this wonder of wonders. It is a time when we bring the only gift we have, a heart in desperate need of salvation, and present it before the Babe in the Manger.

During the Christmas season I often find my heart wavering between sorrow and joy.

There is so much need, so much hurt, so much loneliness and struggles that break my heart. Then I see the manger and the Christ Child Jesus. I see the Magi and the shepherds and hear in my imagination the angelic hosts proclaiming and I am filled with pleasure.

Then I remember the cross, the crown of thorns, the whipping and mocking and spitting and I mourn for a world that rejected its Savior.

The cross gives way to the empty tomb. I see the surprise on the faces of the disciples; I see the delight in a mother who embraces a son that she thought was forever gone from her. I rejoice in a life that death cannot conquer.

And I see a world that still does not know its salvation, a world that abides in turmoil and struggles. I see the homeless man leaning on his cane outside the Dollar Store, fearful even to make eye contact with me as I go by. I see the children who have nothing and expect nothing even during this time of year. And my heart breaks.

But deep inside I hear the prophet remind me. “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.” [Isaiah 9:6]

The government—the rule—is on His Shoulders, not mine. I can allow my heart to break with the things that break His and rejoice in the things that give Him delight. My Savior, my LORD, loves me. And He loves you. Today, that is enough.