Category: Devotional

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites!

They love to stand up and pray

in the houses of worship and on the street corners,

so that everyone will see them.

I assure you, they have already been paid in full.”

~Matthew 6:5 TEV~

Pray for Mr. Billy Gill as he recovers from his heart procedure.  Also, pray the medicines he will be taking will be effective in taking care of his problem.

Tiffany B. Currier is still running a temperature.  Pray for her as she fights off the pneumonia.

Cindy K. Edwards just had heart surgery and was recovering nicely.  Now, she has developed shingles.  Pray for her as she deals with this setback.  Cindy has a preschool age daughter.  Pray she will be able to take care of her family and overcome her recent health issues.

I’m posting this as a reminder of Father’s Day and so we can help change the statistics on Father’s Day.

=====  Thursday’s Thought For The Day (June 18, 2009)  =====

ADVICE FOR FATHERS

A mother was out walking with her 4 year old daughter. The child picked up something off the ground and started to put it into her mouth. The mother took it away and said “Don’t do that!”

“Why not?” asked the child.

“Because it’s on the ground,” said her mother. “You don’t know where it’s been. It’s dirty, and it’s probably loaded with germs that could make you sick.”

The child looked at her mother with total admiration and said, “Mommy, how do you know all this stuff? You’re so smart.”

The mother said, “All Moms know this stuff. It’s on the Mom’s Test. You have to know it or they don’t let you be a Mom.”

There was silence for a minute or so as the child thought this through. “Oh, I get it,” she said at last. “And if you don’t pass the test you have to be the Daddy?”

Fathers don’t always get the respect that mothers do.  That will become evident on Sunday.  The truth is, Father’s Day is just not as big as Mother’s Day.  On Mother’s Day, there’s a higher attendance at church, mothers have corsages on, emotions run high, restaurants do a booming business.  On Father’s day, well, there are more collect phone calls than any other day of the year (yes, that’s a true fact).

Despite the fact that fathers are sometimes overlooked, the Bible is clear about the great responsibility given to those of us who are fathers.  God challenges husbands to be the leaders in their homes.  He challenges fathers to be someone their kids can look up to  Allow me to share a few biblical pieces of advice with those of you who are fathers.

Love your wife!  Paul said in Ephesians 5:28, “So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.”  That’s one of the most important things you can do as a father.  Trust me — your children do watch how you treat their mother.  They watch … and they are learning and forming their concept of marriage from you.

Spend time with your children.  The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 127:3, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.”  In other words, our children are a great blessing.  Children are given to us to enjoy — not to be a burden … not to avoid … not to ignore … But to enjoy!  And in order to enjoy them, you’ve got to be with them … have fun with them … share your life with them.

Listen to your children.  Give them your undivided attention … not with one eye on the TV and the other eye on them. When they have a problem, they don’t need cartoons, they don’t need a video game, they don’t even need their best friends.  Dad … they need you!  We need to be approachable. Be the kind of father that they can come to and say anything that’s on their mind.

Train your children.  Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:4, “And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”  Notice what Paul said.  He didn’t say “parents”.  And he didn’t say “Sunday School teachers”.  He said, “fathers.”  As we train our children, our goal is not merely to get our kids to outwardly conform to a list of rules.  Our goal is to train and develop children who seek to glorify God with their lives.

Be a positive role model.  Much of what our kids learn is caught rather than taught—they learn from what they observe. This means we can’t afford to cheat on our taxes, lie to our boss, or be rude to a salesperson.  You are a role model for your children and, like it or not … good or bad … they will, to one degree or another, model their lives after you. You have inherited some of your father’s characteristics and your children are inheriting some of yours.

May God bless those of you who are fathers, and may we always look to our Heavenly Father as a perfect example of what a father should be!

Have a great day!

Alan Smith
Helen Street Church of Christ
Fayetteville, North Carolina

Thank you for praying today.

Anna Lee

We also have joy with our troubles,

because we know that these troubles produce patience.

~Romans 5:3 NCV~

( I selected this verse last night and emailed it to myself.  This morning, the needs to be posted just seem to require the verse.  God provides!)

Continue to pray for Mrs. Faye Price and her family.

Dukes

Day by Day

Vance Havner had a great book. But this journey we are on has given this new meaning.  I am not a patient man.  We must just trust God and be patient, waiting on mom to get better.  She has good days and bad.  Even though today she stood and tried to walk, with total support, and sat for over an hour so she was probably very tired but today she had a bad day. The therapist are really working her and that may be why she has had two “different days”. she has just been a little less moving of left side, and a little more hazy confused at times not smiling as much.  We know with brain injuries patients can go up and down and you dont really know where the new normal is for over a year.   Just pray for her.  Pray for her cognition, pray for no infection, pray for her mobility and strength.  Pray that God would allow complete recovery.

Dad is doing well continue to lift him up.  He is having good workouts at therapy.  Pray for his work and classes as he is stretched mentally and emotionally.

A new friend said to me yesterday, “there is nothing like intimacy with God”  This journey along with his and Justin and Jennifer’s have taught us all that sometimes it is not like we want it but it is what it is.  And more importantly we have learned that what we know about God, we now really have experientail heart knowledge that he loves us and walks with us and carries us.  Our intimacy has grown in reality as He has walked through this with us.  He does love us so much.  We can live each day with Him because He lives.  When we suffer in pain, he relates to us he is there with us and he understands our anger, sadness, our desire to right a wrong. He also beautifully picks us up as we would our own children when they fuss and yell because something unfair has happened to them.  We pick them up and hold them in and through the emotional state they are in at the time.  He is with us, emmanuel, all the time through good  bad and ugly.  How much peace does that bring, a peace that passes all understanding.

Thanks for all your encouragement and prayer and all the way you have shown us love as a family.  We appreciate it and will never forget it.

Susie Eads’ Mom

Requesting prayers for my Mom. She has a breast biopsy tomorrow for a suspicious spot seen on her mammogram. She has survived breast cancer twice in the past and has undergone a mastectomy of one breast in 1997 and then then radiation and grueling chemotherapy in 2006 for cancer in the other breast. Please pray for a good report. She’s a strong lady. I love and admire her more than words could ever express….

Pray for Mrs. Nadine Council.  She has been having hip troubles that have limited her ability to do the things she normatlly does.

Deloy Chapman and daughter, Gracie, leave for Ecuador Friday morning!

Dwayne and Trisha Wison will be on a mission trip in

El Salvador June 27-July 6.  Pray for them too.

KOMpray

Kids on Mission Pray

International Mission Board

Prayer requests

“Let the little children come to Me, and don’t stop them,

because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these,”

Luke 18:16b

Mexico City missions to youth

Gerardo is new Christian in Mexico City. The church he goes to is called La Iglesia que Te Ama which means The Church that Loves You. Isn’t that a great name for a church? Gerardo is praying for his teenage sister. His sister is sick with bulimia, an eating disorder, so please pray that she will eat right and be healthy. Will you also pray with him for her to accept Jesus as Savior?    Two teenage missionary kids have a Saturday night youth group at their house, and Gerardo likes to go. These teens spend time praying for their Mexican friends. They tell their friends about the hope of Jesus. So many have difficult home lives, but they study God’s Word together and ask Him to guide them.   Alejandro grew up in a Christian home but he never knew that he needed to trust Jesus himself. He became a Christian this year and was baptized along with 4 other youth. Now he helps lead the youth group!   Alejandro and Gerardo both love studying the Bible. Gerardo says the Lord is calling him to be a youth minister one day. The first teenager he hopes to reach is his sister.   Please pray that God will continue to use Gerardo and Alejandro, and the 2 missionary kids. Pray that they will be able to help teenagers in Mexico City who need Jesus.

MORE PRAYER REQUESTS FROM MISSIONARY KIDS

I’m worried about some of my friends at school.  One believes in astrology, writes her horoscopes, healing powers in crystals etc., another has a severe hatred for God, and doesn’t want anything to do with Him.  Most of my friends are simply indifferent.  Please pray for them that God may have His way in their lives.  JILLIAN, age 14 (Central, Eastern and Southern Africa)

Please pray for me. I don’t have very many friends where I live. Please pray for my friend “Alice” to become a believer. EL, age 9 (East Asia)

My best friend is a Muslim, she has a Christian mother, but her father decided for her to be a Muslim. I would like her to be a Christian because I care about her. KATIE, age 12 (Northern Africa and the Middle East)

I need a friend. CALEB, age 6 (Pacific Rim)

War

…I HAVE NO alternative but to bluntly call it a war…

The prize is the inner spirit of my children, and the stakes are high. Arrayed against me are those who wish to extract money, loyalty, and the strong creative energy my son or daughter may have to give. In the eternal dimension, the prize is the soul of my children. I am not prepared to compromise or negotiate. Until my children are old and wise enough to distinguish their enemies from their friends, I hold the responsibility to conduct both a defense and an offense on their behalf, demonstrating all the time how and why it is done for their benefit.

It is not a phony war the effective father faces. It is often a jungle conflict fought with the stealth of a modern day “guerrilla” who appears in the day as an innocent friend, only to return in the night as a bitter and exploitative foe. My eyes return to the war photo of the squad’s leader, mine detector in hand, leading the way. Behind him are men; they follow because he has the capacity to discern the safe path. There are no careless steps; mistakes are fatal. Gordon MacDonald

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12

Posted by Mike Benson at June 17, 2009 1:57 PM

May your joys outnumber your troubles!

Anna Lee

“I am He who lives, and was dead,

and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen.

And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.”

~Revelation 1:18, NKJV~

Doctor appointments can help the caregiver as much as the patients.  That’s the way I feel after taking Momma and Daddy to the doctor yesterday.  I know we are one the right track.  Thanks for your continued prayers for my parents, my sisters, and me.

This devotional is the kind of medical treatment we don’t need, but it carries a message that needs to be shared.  Thank you, Mike Benson, so getting across messages in such a special way.

Lazy

THERE WAS A big, overgrown cow poke named Tall Cotton, whose specialty was going to sleep during duty hours, leaving the rest of the crew to do his share of the work…

The boys took it for a time, but they finally decided that something had to be done about the matter.

Then came the day they found Cotton curled up in a haystack, boots off, sound asleep. They opportunity was golden. The boys rounded up a huge tarantula, killed it, and laid it close to Cotton’s leg. Then they tied a pin on the end of a stick and jabbed the sleeping cowboy a couple of times. Cotton came awake like a wild Comanche doing the snake dance and, at the same time, a cowboy rushed up and smashed the tarantula with his boot heel.

Cotton took one look at the dead tarantula and turned white. He began to get sick, even though the other cowboys did their best to console him with stories of horrible deaths they had seen as a result of tarantula bites. Finally, one of the crew, who laid claim to having read Ten Thousand Things Worth Knowing, as well as Dr. Chase’s Recipe Book, offered to try to save Cotton, even though he admitted it seemed hopeless.

First, the cowboy poured a pint of Castor oil down Cotton. Then he followed it up with a glass of soda, a cup of vinegar, and finally a quart of water in which a plug of tobacco had been soaking. For a while it seemed almost certain that Cotton was going to die from the tarantula bite, but the medicine was potent and, eventually, he was saved.

After that, the crew had very little trouble with him lying down on the job, especially in haystacks! (Stan Hoig, The Humor of the American Cowboy, 26, 27)

“Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids.” Proverbs 6:4; cf. 6:9-10, 24:33

Have a blessed day!

Anna Lee

“The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” ~James 5:16b~

Tiffany Bankston Currier is home (Cedartown, GA), but still has pneumonia, pleurisy, and low oxygen levels.  Please continue to pray for her and her family.  Her parents will stay at least ten more days to help take care of Tiffany and her family.

Mattress

JERUSALEM — An Israeli woman mistakenly threw out a mattress with $1 million inside, setting off a frantic search through tons of garbage at a number of landfill sites, Israeli media reported Wednesday.

The woman told Army Radio that she bought her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise on Monday and threw out the old one, only to discover that her mother had hidden her life savings inside. She was identified only as Anat, a resident of Tel Aviv.

When she went to look for the mattress it had already been taken by garbage men, she said. Subsequent searches at three different landfill sites turned up nothing.

The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot published a picture of the woman searching through garbage at a dump in southern Israel.

Yitzhak Borba, the dump manager, told the radio station that his staff was helping the woman, saying she appeared “totally desperate.” He said the mattress was hard to find among the 2,500 tons of garbage arriving at the site every day.

He said he increased security at the site to keep would-be treasure hunters at bay.

For her part, Anat said it could be worse. “People have to take everything in proportion and thank God for the good and the bad,” she said.

Loosing a $1M would be bad; loosing your soul would be a lot worse.

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world,

and loses his own soul?”

Mark 8:36

Posted by Mike Benson at June 11, 2009 10:35 AM

Count your many blessing this Lord’s Day!

Anna Lee