Loneliness
By Poh Fang Chia I saw this quotation on a friend’s facebook page: “It’s not that I feel alone because I have no friends. I have lots of friends. I know that I have people who can hold me and reassure me and talk to me and care for me and think of me. But [...]
ODJ: perfect condition-please take
So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him (v.11).
READ: Matthew 7:7-11
Allie is a new member of a small group of believers who meet weekly. She began visiting a few months ago when a friend invited her to come so they could pray for her and support her in her battle with cancer. Allie has since received significant healing, and she has taken steps toward discovering the God who heals.
Allie’s taste in fashion and furnishings is exotic. Her flat is filled with fairies, feathers, crystals, and cheap-but-classy antiques. Browsing an antiques shop recently, Allie came across a beautiful, old Singer-style sewing machine. “God,” she whispered to Him, “I’d love something like that for my place.”
God is a gift-giving God. He gives us food and joy (Acts 14:15-17), sunshine and rain (Matthew 5:45), Jesus and eternal life (John 4:10; Romans 6:23), the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts (1 Thessalonians 4:8; 1 Corinthians 12). Jesus compared the Father to earthly parents. If we, fallen and selfish as we are, know how to give our children good things, how much more so does He!
Still, there’s a world of difference between eternal life and a sewing machine, don’t you think? Allie wasn’t praying for food, rent money, world peace, or eternal salvation. Her request was a childlike prayer made to a God she’s becoming acquainted with.
A couple of days after her visit to the antiques shop, Allie was walking out her front door on her way to work when she saw a pile of junk by the roadside. She stopped, stunned. There stood a complete Singer-style antique sewing machine. On it hung a sign: “Perfect condition—please take.”
Perhaps our Father God likes to give a few toys every now and then—particularly to those inching toward His kingdom. —Sheridan Voysey
What gifts has God given you over the years? What does this reveal to you about His nature?
(Check out Our Daily Journey website!)
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Loading ...ODB: what will I do?
February 3, 2010
READ: James 1:21-25
Be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. —James 1:22
A man who has been my mentor and friend for many years often says that his goal in studying the Bible is always personal application. I appreciate his emphasis on putting learning into practice, because it’s too easy for those of us who study, discuss, teach, and write about the Bible to take a merely intellectual approach to the Word.
Oswald Chambers said: “There is a danger with the children of God of getting too familiar with sublime things. We talk so much about these wonderful realities, and forget that we have to exhibit them in our lives. It is perilously possible to mistake the exposition of the truth for the truth; to run away with the idea that because we are able to expound these things, we are living them too.”
James reminds us that the person “who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does” (1:25). The key issue is not what is preached or written, but what is done.
When I study God’s Word, my first question should not be, “What am I going to say about this?” but “What am I going to do about this?” — David C. McCasland
One step forward in obedience is worth years of study about it. —Chambers
Source: Our Daily Bread
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