Sunny&80The Reading Glasses (#jammed daily devo, day 133)
Posted on May 13, 2018
May #jammed: Growing Grace.
Day 133:Unneeded.
“Do not withhold discipline from children.” Proverbs 23:13 (VOICE)
They are still a permanent part of my pen holder. During a season riddled with health 
issues, I obtained a set of reading glasses to correct odd headaches. Looking at a screen through different lenses didn’t cure me like it had many others. The only solution that proved to work was stepping away from the screen. But I had work to do!
God gives us the perfect amount of time to live …each day. The discipline to listen to God as He guides us through life is essential in finding what works.
Today’s verse reminds us how important it is to discipline our children, and that corporal punishment is OK. This is something society is definitely not OK with. As with anything in life, we should prayerfully consider all things …including parenting. There isn’t one blanketed way that works for each child. Even children from the same household need to be seen differently when disciplinary measures are considered.
Look at each child through a different pair of glasses, as each one is unique. The heart of parental discipline is learned by taking the time and effort to know the children God has entrusted us with. He made our children. It would behove us to ask Him what is best on their account.
Sometimes, we just need to take a break from the screen. Walk away, no matter how pressing we think the issue is or how offensive their behavior was. Until God gives us a clear understanding on how to handle our children, and other disputes in life, it’s best to remain calm and silent in prayer.
“Do not withhold discipline from children,
since corporal punishment will not kill them.
In fact, it may be that kind of punishment
that will save them from an early grave.” Proverbs 23:13-14
I have discovered that a quick flick to the forehead zips my kids lips faster than any other method of silencing them. One flick. Nice and hard. To the middle of their foreheads. Shocked faces. Instant quiet. Pray hard into finding what works.
Ask Jesus for leading, and then listen to it. Look through His lenses for your life. He died for our misbehavior. Try to extend that grace in return.
Father, Praise You for this verse, and thank You for our children. They challenge and grow us like none other! We confess our tempers and impatience regarding them, and ask for Your hand in guidance to discipline them in a way that leads them to Your feet. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Get the conversation started by commenting below, and let’s encourage one another as we face life in 2017 armed with grace!
#greatgrace17
Happy Flicking,
Megs
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The Pinch (#jammed daily devo, day 106)
Posted on April 16, 2018
April #jammed: Grace Studies.
Day 106: Relief is coming.
“Surely You’ve heard me say,
“Don’t be deaf to my call; bring me relief!” Lamentations 3:56
Anyone who’s suffered long-term pain can relate to the sentiments of the prophet 
Jeremiah in today’s verse. God does hear and answer our prayers, but His answers don’t always look the way we want them to, or happen in the time we would like them to.
When my husband first complained of a pinched nerve, I honestly didn’t pay much attention. It happens every so often, and usually goes away in a few days. This time, it was much worse. He couldn’t lay down. Night after night he tried, but ended up down in the basement on the reclining couch. After living with the pain for a week, myself and some friends pulled that couch upstairs …and weeks later, he was still sleeping there.
We take things for granted until they are taken away. Why does human nature have to be that way? God designed us, and did so perfectly …to need Him. He does give us more than we can handle and He does allow circumstances to bleed out beyond our control. There’s a lot of life that He will withhold the answers to, and we don’t have the capacity to understand why even if He let on.
After weeks of pain, therapy, and doctor’s visits, it became clear there was something else causing his nerve to be pinched. Something, as I write this, only God holds the answers to. In prayer to Him it’s tempting to beg for definitive answers over miraculous healing. But I know better from my own pain that hope deferred grows faith.
I pray for him to hear God’s voice through the pain, and feel His presence through the frustration. “Don’t be deaf to my call;” Jeremiah pleaded. When someone we love is in pain, we feel helpless to stop it. “Bring me relief!” When we are in pain, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, it takes over our focus. It becomes difficult to concentrate on the hope of healing, and hard to let go of what we think that should look and feel like.
Hold onto the hand that was nailed to the cross. That Hand knows pain like none other. Our hope is in Him.
Father, Praise You for Jesus. No one has ever experienced pain like He did for us. Thank You for His sacrifice, which allows us to call out to You for help in full confidence that You hear us and will answer us and heal us. Forgive us for wanting to control what the answers to Your prayers look and feel like and when they happen. Bless us to be strong in Your Word, and rely on You for strength. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Get the conversation started by commenting below, and let’s encourage one another as we face life in 2017 armed with grace!
#greatgrace17
Happy Crying out,
Megs
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The Water’s Purpose (#jammed daily devo, day 93.)
Posted on April 3, 2018
April #jammed: Grace Studies.
Day 93: Water and grace.
“What’s the water for?” my youngest asked, as we watched our Pastor dunk someone under.
Brilliant question.
In today’s verse we witness the “empty waters” on earth before God’s voice spoke creation into existence. Water must be pretty significant to have a place before all other creation, and it seems fitting to me that even today we are submerged in it to symbolize new life.
Egyptian texts speak of places without function as “nonexistent…” in general it designates a situation in which positive values such as purpose and worth are lacking. “Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary of the Old Testament
The earth is God’s beautiful creation, yet many days we blur by the beauty that He’s placed around us. Thus is a life without Christ. Still beautiful, but blurring by the beauty that He specifically purposed. Each human life was put on earth just as intentionally as each note of nature.
When we are dunked under the water, the old is gone, the new has come. We begin to
pursue His purpose over our own, and therefore begin to feel life as it was intended to be.
Each day, we look to water to cleanse us, hydrate us, and sustain us. We wash our clothes, our cars, our kids, our hands … It makes us clean. It fills us up. It keeps us moving. It’s a basic human need for survival. It’s been here all along. Before the first tree, first cloud, first sound of God’s voice …”empty waters.”
Are we just jumping in to be refreshed, or have we been emerged in Living water to drown death?
Merriam-Webster’s definition of water begins with, “the liquid that descends from the clouds…”
Indeed, He did. To dunk us all. #revival
Father, Praise You for water. The most basic human need and yet the first element existent upon earth. You place everything with significance, and we thank You for placing such importance on water. Forgive us for not depending on the Water of life like we do the water we drink. Bless our souls to be refreshed with Your living Word, the water of life, Your Son, Jesus. In His Name, Amen.
Get the conversation started by commenting below, and let’s encourage one another as we face life in 2017 armed with grace!
#greatgrace17
Happy Dunking,
Megs
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The Windows
Posted on February 21, 2018
“When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” Psalm 56:3 ESV
King David wrote Psalm 56 when the Philistines captured him in Gath (Lucado Life Lessons).
The strength to live authentically comes from God, alone. King David’s encouragement is centered on the confidence source of our courage. Living our full truth out loud comes from bravely walking within our God-placed purpose. Comparing our lives to those around us, and the mold of societal acceptance, chokes our ability to live uninhibited. But life exposed to the Light sets us free.
Hidden Heart Health
When I first earned the freedom to drive, I began to exit the highway early on the way to my family’s favorite summer hangout. Windows down and Alanis turned up, I dreamt of what it would be like to swap the suburban hustle for a sleepy lake-town life. Little did I know at 16, that roughly fifteen years later God would move our family onto a piece of land that my ’86 Nova passed by hundreds of times.
We unwrapped and repacked Christmas the year that we moved from our beloved starter home. The tree was reassembled and each ornamental reminder was placed back on it’s branches, and everyone in that sleepy little lake town noticed. Â Suddenly the plethora of windows we choose to fit our house with, along the only busy road in town, seemed like a questionable idea.
“When I’m afraid …”
Charles F. Stanely points out that “the psalmist does not say, ‘if I am afraid,’ he says, ‘when I am afraid.'”
David was afraid of Saul. He was on the run, and hoping to be considered insane, so he could continue to run further away from who he was. “He pretended to be insane in their presence; and while he was in their hands he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard.” 1 Samuel 21:12-13 (NIV)
Is this seriously the King David that killed Goliath? Fear is a slippery slope. They bought his act, and he continued to run.
“Look at the man! He is insane!” 2 Samuel 21:14 (NIV)
We all face something in life that makes us want to close all the blinds and hide from the world. God promises never to leave us, and forgive our sins when we confess them. Fear causes us to assume we are alone and unforgivable, re-confessing and running from sin that He has already forgiven.
Legitimate Labels
In an attempt to stretch farther than I could reach, a vase teetered and came crashing to the ground in pieces. I picked up the pieces, but the tiny shards were too small to be glued back together.
“I put my trust in you.”
The MacArthur Study Bible states that “Confidence in the Lord is a purposeful decision, replacing an emotional reaction to one’s circumstances.”
David was definitely having an emotional reaction as he ran from King Saul, but he eventually remembered what the Lord had said. God’s Truth can snap us out of temporary insanity. Hiding with his men in the back of a cave, King Saul entered to ‘relieve himself.’ David snuck up and cut off a piece of Saul’s robe, and then has an attack of conscience. (2 Samuel 24: 1-5)
Labels can be leveling, especially the ones that we are hesitant to claim. There are certain thing we don’t post on social media, or bring in up in casual conversation, because it’s hard to believe they belong to us. We’d rather close the blinds.
The redemptive power of Christ pieces every tiny shard back together. He rolls on grace like gorilla glue. We don’t have to stop living life or hide our progress. The journey back to who He says we’ve always been is a testimony to His great love. Don’t draw the blinds on that.
Charles F. Stanley says in his Life Principles Bible Notes, “God does not tell us to ignore our anxieties, but to bring them to Him and realize that He can overcome any terror we ever have to face.”
Reverse Roles
My husband and I didn’t think about the ramifications of everyone being able to peer into our lives through the windows, because we were attracted to the beauty of natural light. Living in fear of what others might see draws the blinds. We hide from exposure. That’s not the life God gave us to live. That’s not the life Jesus died to grant us. “I came so that you may have life, and have it to the full,” Jesus said in John 10:10
“God, whose word I praise …”
When Saul was finished relieving himself, David followed him out of that cave. “My lord the king!” He bowed as Saul turned around. (1 Samuel 24:8) He stepped out from the dark cave and into the light, exposing his truth, and the pieces were put back into place.
Living our lives exposed to the light grants us freedom. When we turn up the volume on other voices, opinions, worries, shame, and regret, we become self-focused and selfish in protecting what we fear are unforgivable mistakes and missteps.
Authentically living for Christ begins with a real relationship with Him, in prayer and Scripture. David walked out of that cave to face Saul, reaffirmed by remembering who God said he was. Our stories, labels, and lives, exist so that others may experience the love of Christ.
Father, Praise You for this day, and Your purpose for it. Thank You for the blessings we woke up today, and those that will riddle our minutes and we walk throughout it. Forgive us for hiding the parts of our lives that are hard to face. We want to fully trust in You, God. Give us hearts like Jesus’. Help us to live authentically because we trust in You. Make us aware, as we travel through daily conversations, of those that we are meant to encourage by sharing parts of our struggles. Bless all those who hide in the darkness, ashamed and scared. May be a bright light of encouragement to every person You purposely place in our lives. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Happy Brightening,
Megs
The Low-Flying Plane (#jammed daily devo, day 43)
Posted on February 12, 2018
February #jammed: Dunked in Grace
Day 43: Grace is Stable.
To which we say, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” Revelation 22:20
Anymore, it’s nerve-wracking to witness a low-flying plane.
“Why so low?”
“Is everything ok?”
“I wonder where it’s going…”
And the memories flood back of the lives changed forever and the course of the world headed into a disarray it will never recover from.
Grace grants us stability in an unstable atmosphere. It doesn’t magically make the world safer, but it does assure us that after it gets worse …it will be better. We know who wins.
In today’s verse, we hold onto the end. The very last verse of the Bible assures us He is coming soon.
And until then, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all.” Rev. 22:21
In the wake of chaos, we’re left with a lot of worry about what might happen again. And sometimes, we’re right. And sometimes, it does happen. The worst. The worst becomes someone’s reality everyday, and we will all have to live through a season of “worst” on this earth. We’re promised it won’t be easy, and that we won’t understand.
Just like discoveries are made in slow progress, though the study of God’s Word and obedient steps of faith in stride with Jesus we hold onto the hope of our Father and find happiness in this life.
Until “soon…”
Father, Praise You for time, and the perfect way You string together our days. Thank you for revealing what is necessary for us to know in Your perfect time. Forgive us for filling in the blanks with doubt, and bless us with hearts of pursuance in Your Living Word. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Get the conversation started by commenting below, and let’s encourage one another as we face life in 2017 armed with grace!
#greatgrace17
Happy Hoping,
Megs
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