Category: Daily Devotionals

Sing for joy in the Lord, O you righteous ones; Praise is becoming to the upright.  Ps. 33:1

God created me for His enjoyment. And He created me to enjoy Him.  How am I doing with both of these things?  I’ve spent the first part of my life doubting whether or not God loved me like He loved others. Enjoying Him never occurred to me.  I feared and served God out of duty.  But enjoyed?  Not on my radar.  

It’s easy to love God from a distance.  When He answers my prayers in a way I like, my love feels real. When I wait for an answer, my love can turn into suspicion.  When He says no, my love can be buried beneath anger.  I memorized Psalm 37:4 as a child.  Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Notice that the delight is in the Lord, not in the pleasure I receive from His gifts. 

What is the foundation of my enjoyment of God?  It’s His enjoyment of me.  “We love Him because He first loved us.”  That doesn’t mean there’s something deficient in my affection.  It merely confirms that God created me to be a responder.  He is the Creator.  I am the Created.  He reached out first.  I held out my arms in response.  He was the initiator.  I was the reciprocator.   

If I’m not enjoying God, there are some things I need to consider.  I may not really believe God loves me.  I can’t be general about this.  I need to be specific in all the places I still carry shame and regret.  Also, I may not believe the truth about God’s character.  Deception causes distrust.  But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.  2 Cor. 11:3   When I believe lies about God, I  hide and avoid.  I back up.  I’m shy of His proclamations of love.  Who can enjoy someone you’re unsure of.  

Enjoying God is at the epicenter of passion and connection.  How to do it is the topic of this series.  You can be sure that none of what follows will be abstract.  It will be hands on and practical.  Ask God to open up the channels from your heart to His because “In His presence is fullness of joy.”  Psalm 16:11

If I’m not enjoying You, show me I can.  If I don’t want to, pinpoint my objections.   Amen

For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.  Isaiah 57:15

Someone once stood, drew a chalk circle around his feet, then prayed, “Lord, please send revival, and start inside this circle.”  Revival of a home, a church, and even a nation happens with the God-encounter of one individual at a time. 

You’ve heard the term ‘the fires of revival,’ right?  To have a fire, I must be revived. I can’t generate heaven’s fire on my own.  The energy of the Spirit is just that ~ it’s of the Spirit.  I can be excited temporarily by a sermon, inspired by a movement, influenced by friends, but the only fuel that stands the test of time and transcends the ups and downs of life is the real thing.  Fire comes from a relationship.  I must be connected to a Person, not a scripture verse, not a charismatic leader, not a church.  Jesus.  One and only Jesus.

When one thinks about revival, it’s common to picture something that happens in great numbers.  In days past, it involved a tent, a a week long crusade perhaps, and a fiery evangelist.  But more often, there’s an individual revival where I don’t need a group, a preacher, a tent, or special music.  In private, Jesus and I meet and I am never the same after that. 

There are conditions for revival though. Isaiah quotes God as saying that He dwells in two places, in the heavens and with the lowly and the contrite. The wealthy don’t have an advantage, neither does a seasoned bible scholar or even a long time believer.  Money can’t buy an appointment.  Knowledge doesn’t impress.  God comes running to the lowly and the contrite.  Period.  ‘Whosoever will may come’ and the entrance to the presence of God is humility and repentance.

“My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’  Your face, Lord, I will seek.”  Psalm 27:8  Amen

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose hearts are blameless toward Him. 2 Chronicles 16:9

The Holy Spirit goes where he’s wanted. He’s absent from where He’s not wanted. Jesus couldn’t do miracles in Capernaum because He was not welcomed and the people were full of unbelief. It wasn’t that He no longer possessed the power to perform supernatural acts; the people weren’t willing to receive the Healer. In how many churches has the Spirit stopped working because the desire for Him has ceased? The United States, for the past 200 years, has been a birthplace of so many missionary ventures. How things have changed. Now, we need the missionaries.

• Not so in China. It is said that there are more Christians than Communist party members.
• Not so in Iran. Christianity is thriving and Muslims are awaking after encountering the risen Christ in the night. In the first light of dawn, they are on their knees calling him ‘Lord’. This is without churches and small groups for the most part yet some people are ready to receive Him.
• Not so in Germany. For the 1st time in centuries, there are churches with 800 members.
• Not so in Brazil. By 2020, it is believed that half of all Brazilians will be believers. There are reports of Christian gatherings in the streets.
• Not so in North Korea. Bibles are being smuggled in from China and for those fortunate enough to have a radio, Christian broadcasts can be heard across the border from South Korea. Missionaries from China are risking their lives to cross into North Korea at night to teach the scriptures. They have reported that the number of Christians is exponential and only growing.

What preceded the work of the Holy Spirit in your life? I suspect it was your awareness of your own spiritual needs and then a prayer that expressed your desire for His presence. Is this not what happened at Pentecost? Those upon whom the Spirit of God descended had been praying and waiting for what Jesus said would happen. He had promised that the Spirit of God would come to them. He had assured them that He was not going to leave them as orphans after His death. It’s no wonder they were looking up, anticipating, praying for the presence of Jesus to come in a form they’d never experienced.

Fervent prayer and a breathless anticipation of His movement in my heart is the environment where the Holy Spirit feels welcome. Whether church, country, ministry, or an individual, I must remember that the He goes where He’s wanted. The fuel of the Spirit will be absent if I am nonchalant about whether or not He’s active and also nonchalant about my own sin. But how the fire of His Spirit will burn and glow through the one who desires Him most of all and at any cost.

Show me if anything is preventing You from being larger in my life. Purify my heart so that You have a place to live and work. Amen

John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light. John 5:35

If I want to experience more passion for Jesus, I hang around with those who have it because it’s catching. It’s contagious. That’s why ‘remembering and reviewing’ the stories of my spiritual heroes is so important to my spiritual walk. I ask myself, “Who was it that was on fire? What was resident in their lives that is missing in mine?”

John The Baptist ~ He was set apart from the mainstream. I love his depiction in The Gospel of John movie. (Ian Cusick was cast as Jesus and it is a word for word delivery, with acting, of the Good News Bible.) Watching John the Baptist, it seems he can not speak of Jesus, nor speak to Jesus, without being nearly breathless. When grilled by the Pharisees about who he was; the Messiah, a prophet, or even Elijah, John only described himself as being a voice, one too unworthy to untie the sandals of the Messiah to come. After John was beheaded, Jesus described John in today’s scripture. Imagine having Jesus say of you, “She was a lamp that burned and gave light.”

Elijah ~ It was a dark day in Israel’s history. King Ahab ruled along with his evil wife Jezebel, the Phoenician princess. Elijah came on the scene full of power and with a fiery passion for God. He performed miracles that left people speechless. He raised the dead, called down fire from heaven, rode on a fiery chariot, and challenged the evil priests of Baal to a showdown. We never read that he ever stopped to consider, “Is this possible?” He knew God and marched into supernatural realms where miracles are born.

Nate Saint ~ One of five missionaries speared by the Auca Indians in 1955. Each of the five men had guns to protect themselves but wouldn’t think of using them for their own safety while evangelizing. Initially, they delivered gifts to the Aucas by making drops from a plane. The Indians seemed warm and receptive. But when they went back and landed on a beach near their encampment, the Aucas came armed. They speared Nate first, then his four teammates. Many years later, the Auca who personally speared Nate Saint baptized Steve Saint, Nate’s son. When Mincaye was asked about that awful day, he told Steve Saint… “We immediately knew we did something bad because after we killed your father, the angels came and sang and stayed with him as he died. Then they took him up in a big celebration.”

Gertrude Hewitt ~ My mother. Though she died of cancer when I was only 30 years old, her life’s example influences me every day. She was quiet, loved to serve, and sang as she worked. In our small town of 1200, she took notice of who hadn’t been seen in a while. Inquiring about their welfare, she would have them sitting at our kitchen table or plan to take food to them. Our house may as well have been named, Gertrude’s Soup Kitchen. When our town’s alcoholic hadn’t been seen in weeks, she went to his house looking for him. Eventually getting inside, he was lying in bed, near death, and she sat with him til the end. If Gertrude knew you were alone, and hurting, she would be there. She had passion to show compassion.

The fire in my heart is stirred just from writing these stories, Lord. Let their passion spread to all who read this today. Amen

I will remember the works of the LORD; yes, I will remember Your wonders of old. I will reflect on all You have done and ponder Your mighty deeds.  Psalm 77:11-12

An interesting thing happens when we become adults.  We are driven to give people what we needed but never got; what would have altered the course of our lives for the good had we experienced it.  We know in great detail what it was like to live void of it, whether it’s love, protection, innocence, a stable home, or the opportunity to reach our potential without obstructions. If you are in ministry as I am, we each have the privilege of teaching others about what we suffered and how we are healing.  While on the journey, we experience unexpected encounters where God meets us at Bethel ~ as He did Jacob.  We mark the spot, call it holy, and know the benefits of revisiting these hallowed places.    

God, Himself, gave His children specific instructions for how to keep faith alive.  He knows how small and feeble we can be, how fragile our faith is when we’re tempted to fear, and how frail our faith can be when set against the backdrop of a trial.  He named this prescription and repeated it many times throughout the Old Testament.  His exact words were  ~

1. Remember and Review 

God didn’t just encourage the Israelites to remember the stories of His faithfulness, He commanded it.  He didn’t require such a thing for His good, but for their good.  Faith is contagious and by keeping stories alive, He knew they’d find new strength.  They became the storytellers of the ages, the ones who built monuments and altars as markers.  Their culture centered around commemoration feasts.  All these things had this in common; they provided spiritual fuel that spanned generations.    

Remembering and reviewing is critical for me for the same reasons.  It gives me three things; strength, supernatural energy, and courage.  If my faith is weak and fear has overtaken me, I know it’s time to get out my journals.  The greater my need, the more comprehensively I review my Bethels.  After I re-visit my holy moments, I move on to review my spiritual ancestor’ stories, the ones whose lives were fueled by the Spirit.  God is the same today as He was yesterday.  Who He was to them, He is to me.  What He did for them, He often does for me.  God personalizes their stories in just the way I need to hear them.

Tomorrow, I’d love to highlight a few of my favorite biblical characters; the ones who burned brightly because the fire of the Spirit was behind them.  

If we had no scriptures, we’d not be able to trace Your fingerprints.  Take us back, stir our memories, and make it manna all over again. 

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;  Phil. 2:12

If I hold a prism up to the light, I see beautiful colors that sparkle.  As many times as I change the angle, there are different facets to behold.  This is the concept of ‘working out my salvation with fear and trembling.’  If I ask God to open my eyes to His Son and the wonder of the Gospel, I discover that there are endless combinations of shades, colors, and textures to captivate me.  I find that I was created to stand in awe and to worship the One who gives the gift of Himself; One so incomprehensible that no matter how much I behold the Light of the world, there is always so much more to discover.  

Worship and trembling go together.  There have been moments where I’ve been so moved during worship that I could no longer stand up.  Isn’t it a beautiful thing to be overcome by the Spirit?  I should never get so used to Him that I fail to be affected by His glory.  I’ve been captivated by a few life experiences too, like a song in the process of being written or arranged.  The music runs in my head all night.  Or, a new writing venture has also consumed me.  The material was being unwrapped and defined constantly, all hours of the day and night.  

But being captivated by earthly things is nothing like the wonder of discovering Jesus.  He is the Word and He ministers to every part of me as a woman.  With divine disclosure, I walk into the expanse of Eden’s restoration.  I see that, in Him, the curse has been lifted and perfection restored.  Trembling is born. 

After the death of Jesus, two men walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Both disciples of Jesus, they were in deep discussion about the report that Jesus was alive. At that moment, Jesus appeared and walked with them though they didn’t recognize Him. He challenged their unbelief about the resurrection and began to remind them of Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah’s life, death, and rise to glory. His words were so dynamic that when it was time to leave them, they begged Jesus to stay longer. Later, when He broke bread with them, their eyes were opened.  Then they had this conversation. “We should have known. Didn’t our hearts burn within us as He walked with us?”

Does my heart burn when Jesus speaks? Does it burn with conviction, but more often, does it burn as having been affected by a supernatural influence? Have I known a series of life-changing moments when the heavens opened and all became clear?  This is what it is to tremble under the beautiful weight of a divine experience with Jesus. His words are potent.  I’m often sleepless due to the excitement I feel and I’m voraciously hungry for more. I certainly feel more alive than I’ve ever been and wordless to describe the experience. Trembling is the aftereffect of having heard the Rabbi’s voice. 

Trembling is the place where fuel is born.  There is no energy like supernatural energy that comes from having spent time with You.  I want even more momentum and combusion.  Speak to me in this series and give me Your abundant life.  Amen

• I can force myself to love the unlovable and all the while I’m fuming under my breath.
• I can put on a smile and say, “God is good” when I feel He’s being unfair.
• I can declare that God’s peace passes all understanding but never have experienced it.
• I can appear patient but underneath, a volcano of frustration is just waiting to come out.
• I can perform acts of kindness but resent every moment of it.

You can probably fill in the blanks for the rest of the attributes. But is this the way I am supposed to live? Am I never to know the exhilaration of being fueled by the wind of the Spirit? Am I never to feel a supernatural wind gently nudging me to step in the sandaled footprints in front of me?

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I will lead the blind by ways they have not known.  Is. 42:16a

6.  Forgiveness is hard because ~ I’ve embraced a fake forgiveness.

Forgiveness is messy.  No one looks forward to a season like that.  It involves reviewing the hurt, asking God to show me how I internalized it, feeling anger, grieving a loss of some kind, and many other things not easy to navigate. I fear that if I start feeling angry or I grieve deeply, I’ll never be able to escape the cycle.  

What’s the safe alternative?  The one the church so often adopts.  Their paradigm is this ~ A person goes forward during an invitation, they kneel at the altar, cry a few tears and tell God that they will forgive their offender.  They get up and put on a face that says, “Now I’m finished.  Been there ~ done that!” This brief encounter with the edges of forgiveness leads onlookers to believe that this person should be all better. In fact, others will expect it.  When this person’s heart fails and hurts again, they will beat themselves up over being a failure of a Christian. And if they confess their struggles to another, they will probably hear sermons that stir up guilt. 

What is the answer?  To understand that forgiveness is not cerebral, nor is it momentary.  The bigger the hurt, the longer the process, and the messier it is.  I have to be careful not to surround myself with confidants who have the false expectations of an unbiblical kind of forgiveness.  To be vulnerable to hardliners who diminish God-given emotions   is a mistake.  I don’t know what they would have done with Jesus when He modeled a very wide emotional spectrum.  He was free to express joy and also free to grieve to the point of sweating drops of blood.  We here in the western world have numbed out to the extremes that are healthy for us.  We believe that to be stoic is to be holy.  

If you are one who has walked the aisle, said the words, cried briefly, and then wondered why – with time – you didn’t feel much better, perhaps you have been the victim of poor teaching and unreasonable expectations.  What should you do? Start over. Find a journey partner or prayer partner.  Be yourself and acknowledge what you have been afraid to disclose to anyone, including yourself.  God already knows it’s there and has been waiting for the exposure of what’s been hidden.  Now is the season for refreshing.  

There is a promise that goes with you so don’t fear. I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth.  Isaiah 42:16 

You are leading me into the dark, turning on the light.  Amen

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh craves what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. Galatians 5:16-17

5. Forgiveness is hard because ~ It doesn’t feel natural.

After teaching on forgiveness, I always give an invitation for women to respond; to indicate publicly that they are ready to follow Jesus in a lifestyle of forgiveness. I encourage them to abdicate their self-imposed right to sit on the throne of judgement and give God back His place as sovereign Ruler. I ask any who are ready to do this to stand and then lift one hand toward heaven and say, “Long Live The King!” Oh, how I wish I could take each of you with me to witness what happens.

The battle begins. Some people do it quickly as God had already prepared their heart through the teaching to desire freedom and the things of the Spirit. But for most, the struggle to respond is evident in their body language. Tears flow, weeping can be heard, and there are tentative beginnings of arms slowly being raised, but then lowered again. Raised/lowered ~ the battle continues. Other than salvation, I believe this is the biggest spiritual war any child of God faces.

I’ve had women tell me, “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t do it. I don’t have it in me to forgive this person.” I assure them that I know this to be true. They do not have it in them. That’s because forgiveness is not natural, it’s supernatural. What’s natural (and of the flesh) is revenge, and how we love to fantasize about it!

When I can’t forgive, I cry out to the God for help. He offers it no matter how great my need may be. His Spirit, inside of me, is ready to equip me for obedience. He infuses me with grace. Yes, it’s a war. Everything in me says that someone has to make them pay, someone needs to make sure things are fair, and if I don’t do it – I fear God won’t. This is the language of the devil and once I know that, I can reject those thoughts and focus on what the Spirit is saying in the Word. His way leads to life and freedom. Satan’s way leads to anger and bondage.

Copying Jesus is impossible. My flesh wants what He doesn’t want. Oh, Father – but living by Spirit is possible because I’m giving You all the power to make it happen. Fill me today with Your desires. Amen