Guidelines For Living Devotional

"I don't understand God," were the words that came up in a conversation that I had with a young man.

Your home can be an ark of safety or a prison of isolation.  What it is depends on what you want it to be.

“Gray hair is a crown of splendor,” says the writer of Proverbs, but most of us would just as soon avoid what it represents—growing old.

Anyone who has ever visited ancient Jericho can testify to the reality that in the summer it can be unbearably hot.

OK, you have decided to take five minutes a day and focus on God.  You've made the decision to try it.  What can you expect?  For one thing, you'll discover that Murphy's law, "Anything that can happen, will happen," has your name on it.

It's a rather sobering thought to realize that the world judges God by what they see of Him in the lives of His children--in my life.  So we look at our lives, and recognize that instead of mirroring His love, justice, character, and peace, we often project a somewhat distorted picture of God, one fogged over by our human failure.  "Not good enough!" cries our incriminating conscience.  Then in failure we feel like turning away.

Have you ever had one of those times when all of a sudden something that you’ve read a thousand times jumps out at you, and you then see something that has been there all along and it just hadn’t grabbed you before?

Is it a holiday, an attitude, or the reflection of your heart?

You may have heard of the sad plight of the man who, greatly discouraged, crawled out on the ledge of a very high building and contemplated suicide.

For a few moments take inventory.  Ask yourself, “Am I programmed from the time I wake up in the morning until I go to bed at night?”  More to do today than, say, you did last year or the year before? After a while you begin to think of your self-worth strictly in terms of production and output—whether it is the number of trips to take your kids somewhere, how many hours you can work, or how many meetings or church services you can crowd into your schedule. Saying “No” gets more and more difficult.