Past Devotions

If you have been following along on Facebook, you probably already know the “Saga of the Sink!” The Sunday before we left for California on May 1, we discovered our kitchen faucet had begun to leak under the sink. We had water damage. We shut everything off, called the insurance company and a mitigation company came to survey the damage. Then we left for our trip.

Upon our return, we contacted the insurance company and on the 10^th the mitigation company removed all the water damage and set up loud fans and de-humidifiers, which were finally removed after three days. Then on the 15^th we got a bid for reconstruction, and the company installed a laundry tub so I wouldn’t have to use our hall bathroom as a kitchen. The newly installed sink leaked. Back they came and fixed the leak.  At last! I could now cut up salad in my kitchen.  Little did a know.

The following day I cut up lettuce, put it in a colander to be washed and set it under the cold-water tap. Coming back to it after a minute, I noticed it was wilted. I discovered that I didn’t have a cold-water tap in my kitchen, I had two hot-water taps. They had accidentally connected the dishwasher line to my cold-water tap. They fixed that the next day.

Yesterday we finally heard back from the insurance company approving reconstruction. My kitchen has been almost useless since April 29. As I see the broken counter top, the cut-up floor, the laundry tub, I can’t help but laugh. I have always tried to make Proverbs 17:22 my attitude during trying times. It sure has come in handy over the last 22 days and will probably be needed all through reconstruction!  A merry heart does good like a medicine. [NKJV]

I really am laughing at “The Saga of the Sink!”

Something changed in me recently.  I received a healing that I neither expected nor requested. I wrote recently about the volatile and difficult relationship I had with my mentally-ill mother. For years I tried to reason with a woman who did not have the capacity to reason. Our relationship left me impatient, angry, frustrated.  It left me wounded in many ways.

I have forgiven my mother. I have worked free of her fears that for years took residency in my own emotions. I really thought I had reached the end of that healing. Forgiveness and freedom, what more could there be? This past Mother’s Day I learned there was one thing more … love.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. [1 John 3:2 NIV]

When my mother left this world and entered the presence of our Lord Jesus, she was healed. The wounds which dominated her life on earth were healed. I know that when I enter His presence, I too shall be completely and finally healed. I also know that I will be able to look my mother in the eyes and say, “I love you,” and for the first time truly mean it.

Forgiveness. Freedom. Love. It is found in knowing Christ Jesus.

Father, tell my mother I love her, and that I look forward to the day when I can hold her and tell her myself. Amen.

I was playing around on Facebook recently and hit one of those links. It was reported to give me my “Warning Sign.” I seldom do things like that, figuring it’s just a way for others to gain information about you.  This time, however, I hit that link.  This is what I got in return.  “Warning!  Terry Lema:  Be warned that this woman has no time for drama.”

Okay!  This time it hit the nail on the head!  I don’t have time for drama. Let’s cut to the chase, get to the bottom line, peel away the layers!  Maybe that is why I love Proverbs 12:1 so much. “Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid.” [NKJV]

When our grandson was little, his parents didn’t want him to use the word “stupid.” Calling something “stupid” meant timeout.  One day PapaBob uttered the word “stupid” in front of our grandson, who immediately jumped on the opportunity to send PapaBob to the timeout chair.  He went, although not particularly happy about it.

Solomon had no qualms, however, about using a word we translate as brutish or stupid. “He who hates correction is stupid.”  God corrects us, instructs us, so that we might not stray from the right way. He corrects us because He loves us. We may not like to be corrected (no one likes to be told that they are wrong), but we need to embrace correction.  That correction will keep us safe, away from the harm intended by the enemy of our soul.

Father, by the power of Your Spirit in me, make me willing to embrace Your correction.  I don’t want to be “stupid!”

1 John 4:16: We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

 As I was reading in 1 John two words in verse 16 drew my interest—they are: know and believe.  John is emphatic when he says that we know and believe the love that God has for us. I asked myself, do we? Do we really know and believe that love?

*Know:  ginosko (ghin-oce’-ko); to “know” (absolutely).

*Believe: pisteuo (pist-yoo’-o); to have faith (in, upon, or with respect to, a person or thing), to entrust (especially one’s spiritual well-being to Christ)

Wow. John uses a word that means to know absolutely. Absolutely says we know God’s love without even a hint of doubt. And because we know absolutely, we can entrust our spiritual well-being to Christ Jesus.

I watch news shows such as Dateline and 20/20 on occasion. What I see so often is the trouble that happens when people become so eager to be loved that they entrust their well-being to the wrong ones. This yearning to be loved often overpowers good sense. It places people in desperate situations and at times even leads to death.

But to know absolutely the love that God has for us, to entrust our spiritual well-being to Christ Jesus, always leads to life, eternal life. God loves me! God loves you!  Do you know absolutely and believe that love?

*(Biblesoft’s New Exhaustive Strong’s Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright © 1994, 2003 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible Translators, Inc.)

On Palm Sunday I told the congregation the story of the little boy who was too sick to go to church on a Palm Sunday and had to stay home with his mother. When his father returned from church he was carrying a Palm branch and the little boy asked him what that was. The father explained that when Jesus came to town, the people waved Palm branches to honor Him.  The little boy responded, “The one Sunday I’m not there is the Sunday Jesus decided to visit!”

Someone asked me why we didn’t stay in California longer than three days, staying the weekend and coming home on Monday instead of rushing home Saturday morning. I replied that we didn’t have a lot of money, the trip was spontaneous, etc.  Those were valid reasons. But deep in my heart, I was a little like that small boy. What if the Sunday I was in California was the Sunday Jesus decided to visit Idaho?

To some that may sound silly, but that is my heart’s cry. I go to church every Sunday now anticipating the Spirit is going to rain down upon us. I am expecting the River of God to begin to flow down the aisles of our log cabin church. I am expecting the manifest Presence of God to walk among us, bringing healing, deliverance, repentance, salvations, restoration, Revival. I want to be there when it begins to happen!

I am waiting and desperately praying for God’s Revival to visit us. I don’t want the same-old same old. I want the fresh anointing. I want what God has for our generation. I want what God intends for The Way in Middleton, Idaho. So, I wait, knowing that one of these Sundays Jesus is going to visit us like never before and everything – everything – will be different, including me.

Father, we’re desperately praying and waiting. Amen.

Last Sunday in church we prayed for healings. Not specifically for physical healing, but healings of all types.  Most of us came forward and stood at the front of the church. We began to praise, to acknowledge our need and to believe. God said, “Today is the day.”

 Today is the day. Today is dawning and God is breaking through all the barriers we have erected in the past to keep Him out of our midst.  He’s breaking through our need to control what happens in our services. He’s breaking through our self-centered prayers and motivations. He’s breaking through and bringing a new spiritual awakening, “Revival!”

And the enemy of our soul senses what is coming over the horizon. The enemy is putting up a great fight against those who are waiting and seeking for the great spiritual awakening in our midst today. But the enemy is fighting a losing battle.  The enemy cannot stop God’s move, but we can.  Be aware, beloved, that God has warned us that we can lose today if we harden our hearts to Him as Israel did in the wilderness.

“Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast. So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did.’” [Heb 3:6-9 NIV]

Today is coming on the wings of the Spirit and the ones who have been waiting and desperately praying are going to receive it.

I love Jesus’ disciples. They are so human! Whenever I wonder what I can do, an old woman, I remember what those men did—they turned the world around in one generation through the power of the Holy Spirit within them. Still, they were very ordinary men, often knuckleheaded and dense. Jesus had just told them to wait in Jerusalem until the Father sends the Holy Spirit as He promised. And what are the next words out of their mouths? “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” [Acts 1:6 NIV]

Despite everything that had happened, they were still looking for Jesus to oust the Romans from their land, they wanted their earthly kingdom and they wanted it now.  Jesus had a different promise and a work for them … “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  [Acts 1:7-8 NIV]

I love the promise – “You will receive power” and I love the work – “You will be my witnesses.”

There was no equivocation in Jesus’ promise. You will receive the power of the Holy Spirit, not you might, or you could. There was no “maybe” in His declaration.  Power would be theirs when the Holy Spirit descended upon them on Pentecost. And that power would energize their work to be Jesus’ witnesses.

Next Sunday is Pentecost, May 20. We have been praying and waiting for the Presence of the Lord Jesus to manifest Himself in our midst now, to our generation.  I wonder …

What is God doing? How often I have asked that question when I didn’t understand what was going on in my life, when I could not see the end from the middle of the problem. But, that aside, “What is God doing?” is a valid question for the church today.  After all, should not our greatest desire be to “hear what the Spirit is saying to the church?”

Just before Jesus ascended to heaven following His resurrection, He told those gathered with Him to not leave Jerusalem.  He told them to wait “until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” [Acts 1:4-5]

Many scholars tell us that Jesus did not say this to just the eleven apostles, but to more than 500 people gathered to hear His great commission and witness His ascension. [Matthew 28:18-20, 1 Corinthians 15:6]

Notice the time frame Jesus gave them – until. They were to wait until. Humans have a difficult time with until. We want to know when, down to the day and the hour. And if it is going to take too long, then let’s go on to something we can achieve in a shorter time.

God, however, often requires us not just to wait, but to wait until. Of the 500 who may have been present that day, when the “until” arrived on the Day of Pentecost, only 120 were left in the Upper Room to have an encounter with God that not only changed them but changed the world.

So, what is God doing? He’s bringing about Revival across our land, across our world. The enemy senses it’s coming and doing everything in his power to stop it. The church must heed what the Spirit is saying, we are to wait (and pray) “until” we see God’s outpouring!

Happy Mothers’ Day to all you wonderful women!

Twice in the Book of Isaiah, God refers to Himself with qualities we often associate with mothers.

Isa 49:15-16:  “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” [NIV]

Isa 66:13: “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.”  [NIV]

One of my favorite parables is the one of the Prodigal Son. After everything that boy did, insulting his father by asking for his inheritance while his dad was still alive and then running off and squandering that inheritance on what the NIV calls “wild living,” his father was watching and waiting with compassion for his son to return.  “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” [Luke 15:20 NIV]

How our God loves us. He watches and waits for us to return to Him. He yearns with compassion for his lost sons and daughters. What comfort is ours when we return to Him and find that He is not angry with us, that He does not reject us, but instead throws His arms around us and kisses us to welcome us home.

Father, what comfort is found in You, what compassions flow from You. Amen.