Category Archives: Random Devotional Thoughts

Random Devotional Thoughts

The Story of Queen Esther (Part Six)

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                             Esther’s Preparation.

Esther 4: 1-17

     Mordecai had heard the news of the Jews’ danger. He was very upset and grieved, and wore rags of mourning as he marched past the palace. Esther tried to give him decent clothes to put on but he refused, so she made a point of finding out what was wrong….

The lesson for us in this is that if we deliberately do wrong and sin, we grieve the Holy Spirit and we are told to not do this (Ephesians 4:30). We cannot cover sin up, we have to get to the bottom of the matter and put it right with confession and repentance if the fault has been ours.

Mordecai told her that she had to go to the king and tell him what Haman’s wicked plan was. If she didn’t,  her own life was in danger along with the rest of her people. Esther knew what the ramifications were…. if she went to the king before he wanted to see her, she could lose her life even sooner!

It wasn’t enough for Esther to find out what was wrong…. she had to DO something about it, and it was Mordecai who told her what to do. In the same way, the Holy Spirit prompts us to do what is right to fix problems (Psalm 51:3-12).

Esther went into a three day fast and prayer session with her maidens before going to the king, and we too must spend much time in prayer before attempting to fix any problem.

Esther’s cousin was very sad,                                                                                     She wondered why the news was bad,                                                                 But when she heard she then did care,                                                               And took it to the Lord in prayer.

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Random Devotional Thoughts

Thoughts from PROVERBS  ONE….(v.1-6)

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PROVERBS  ONE….(v.1-6)

Verses 1-6                                          James 1:5

             Solomon was the wisest man who  ever lived. His wisdom was a special gift from God, bestowed on him at his request. But knowledge alone was not enough….. it had to go along with  knowing God and obedience  to Him.

So we see that Solomon’s great desire was to pass onto his sons the wisdom that God had given to him. But the wisdom that he had would do no-one any good unless they were willing to receive it, to know it, and to perceive it…. in other words, take it and use it!

God’s wisdom gives prudence to the simple….. do you feel as though you don’t have enough brains to understand God’s truths? Have you ever asked Him to give you the wisdom you lack? James says that we don’t have because we don’t ask! These things don’t just fall into our laps with no effort on our part….. there is no such thing as instant spirituality!

Salvation is instant, but God’s WISDOM only comes with a conscious effort on our part…. asking and seeking, and then obeying and doing it. The first steps in being wise are to listen and seek to increase one’s knowledge in the things of God.

If you take one step towards your  God.                                                                   He will take more than you’ve ever trod                                                               Read His Word,  obey its way,                                                                                    And walk in it from day to day.

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   The  mandarins on our trees are just about finished, and I was peeling one of the last  the other morning. It was firm and round with a beautiful sheen to it, and  looked to be a perfect specimen. But as the skin was being peeled back. I could see a small black patch deep inside the fruit. This was going to spoil the whole thing, as each segment had a tinge of the black on it. The mandarin was unfit to eat, and I had to throw it out.

How often we are like this mandarin! We put on  good clothes to go to church and sit there listening to the sermon, but inside we may be day dreaming miles away, or perhaps we have some resentment against someone else and are secretly seething about it. Afterwards, our friends greet us by saying, “How are you?” and we reply by saying with  bright smile, “Fine, thanks!”

Everything appears to be great, but we know deep down that it isn’t. We aren’t fine at all. We are like that mandarin, and that patch of resentment inside taints every part of our life. We dodge that person when we see them in the street; we can’t say anything nice about them and perhaps start a whispering campaign about them.

For that mandarin to become edible, a lot of it had to be cut away. It hurts us when the bad stuff gets cut out, but until it does, we are useless to God and man. Jesus Christ could see right inside the hearts and minds of the priests of His day, and He told them they were hypocrites, saying one thing and doing another. Don’t let’s be like this; remember that He can see right inside us too.

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Truth in a Nutshell.

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    BIBLE2             There seem to be so many people these days  contracting that dread “C” disease….cancer. A young friend had a brain tumour towards the end of last year and it was only a matter of weeks before he went to be with the Lord. His funeral service was a triumphant testimony to the fact that he knew where he was going, and that all his family knew where he was at that very time…he was rejoicing with his Lord who he had endeavoured to serve in his short time on earth.

Another friend visited a neighbour of his recently who only had a very short time to live. Our friend tried to talk to him about the Lord, but only met with a blank refusal to listen. “I don’t believe that rubbish”, the man said, “when we die we just disappear into the cosmos”.

“Would you like me to get my pastor to come and talk to you?” our friend persisted.

“No, I wouldn’t”, the man said, “I’d be very angry if you did that!” he said definitely and the conversation finished abruptly.

What a sad state of affairs to go into eternity with! It reminded me of this parable that  came through my mail box not so long ago, and is worth passing on again…

Parable of the Unborn Twins….

Wonder if there’s life after birth?              Of course not! Whoever heard of such a thing!

But what if there is? What would it be like?  No one’s ever come back to tell us!

I wonder what it would be like to be free?   At least we know what it’s like here.

Would there be light and food we could eat?  Rubbish! We are adequately fed by the umbilical cord!

Don’t you want to meet Mother?      Mother?       Whoever heard of a mother?

But we can sometimes hear her voice as she talks and sings from up there….

Rubbish! It’s all imagination!

Well, I’d like to meet her and have her hold me in her arms! It would be all light and freedom then!

You do talk a lot of nonsense! I’m going to turn over….ooh, it’s getting awfully tight in here!

Well, I don’t care what you say. If you are right and I’m wrong, we’ve got nothing to lose. But if I’m right and you’re wrong, then there is everything to lose, and I’m positive I’m right!

Can’t we just hear the truth in this parable! People say there is no life after death, no-one has ever come back to tell us, that there is nothing to be set free from and there is no such thing as “God”. As for His Word, the Bible, it is all just imagination, a collection of fairy tales! We think our ideas are the truth of the matter, but what if we WERE wrong? What then? There is everything to lose then, so it pays to search these things out and see what the truth is. God says, “My Word is Truth”; Jesus Christ said, “I am the way, the truth and the life”. Let’s look into these things for ourselves, and then make our decision!

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What Next?

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LILYOur young friend has gone. Cancer is a cruel thing, asking no pardon but taking its allotted course. There are no “beg your pardons” for the pain it causes, both the physical pain and the mental and emotional pain of those who are left behind. No-one expects to see their grand-son born, married and then attend his funeral. Likewise the pain of seeing your son born, grow up, and then going through the trauma and pain of caring for him while an all pervading tumour gradually takes him away. We cannot imagine the pain of seeing your young husband of less than two years being in so much pain and gradually fading away, getting weaker and weaker, then not knowing you and eventually having to watch him taken from you.

We know that God’s ways are perfect, but that doesn’t lessen the grief and loneliness when the funeral service is all over. We can only hold onto Him and trust Him for the future knowing that He can see the end from the beginning..

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God Knows.

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 lily                                                     “As for God, His way is perfect” (2 Samuel 22:31)….this thought has been running around in my head ever since hearing that a young friend had an inoperable brain tumour. A godly young man, newly married, with the promise of a life to serve God all his days, to be struck down like this! We do not understand the ways of God. We are told that His ways are not our ways and His thoughts not our thoughts  (Isaiah 55:8-9).

We know that we are told to pray earnestly and in company of others seeking the same thing, but we have to remember that God is Sovereign…each one of us belong to Him and He has control over us….we cannot demand things of Him, even when our wishes seem to line up with Scripture. Our times are in His hands…everything we have has come from Him, and we are to hold them lightly, not grasping them and saying, “They are mine!” We have to be thankful for the good things we have and have had in the past, and be ready to yield them up to the One who gave them to us.

It is so hard to know what to say to the family concerned that will be a comfort to them. They know all the Scriptures, they have faith that God can and does heal at times, but there are many godly people who have had to watch their loved ones slip away leaving them bereft… they have only God to turn to then and He can be more precious to them than ever.

What more can be said? We can only say in our prayers the words of our Lord Jesus….”Oh my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as You will!”  (Matthew 26:39)

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Our Good Friend Rameka

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                                           Our Good friend Rameka……

pemen061    Many years ago we had a good friend by the name of Rameka. He had come to know the Lord from a dark background and the difference in his life was noticeable to all who had known him previously. He now had a perpetual smile on his face, and went around singing all the hymns he knew. It was always a joy to meet him and to hear what he had been discovering as he read his Bible every day. He was growing in his Christian life noticeably from day to day.

But there were things we learned from him too. His infectious grin was always heartwarming. He was always very careful where he put his Bible down. Never would he put it on the floor beside his feet when he was sitting down. To him, this was an insult to Almighty God. As far as he was concerned there were plenty of other places to put it, rather than on the floor. This was one thing we never forgot.

One day he came to us very concerned. “I feel so ignorant of the Word”, he said, “How can I remember and learn it better than I do? I was never very good at school,” he went on, “What can I do about it?”

“Well, you know what a sieve is like?”, we asked

“Yes,” he said, “And that is just what I feel like, not able to hold anything at all!”

“Ah,” we said, “But the point is that the water going through all the time keeps it clean. In the same way, the Water of the Word keeps you clean as you read it, even if you don’t remember much later.”

His face broke into a big beaming smile. “Oh, I see it now”, he said, “It’s just a matter of keeping on keeping on!”

Another time he was still worrying about his lack of knowledge. “What should I do about it?” he asked.

“Well, the Lord knows all about it and how you feel so inadequate,” we said, “But the main thing is to be obedient to the little bit you DO know, and then tomorrow or maybe the next day, He will show you the next step that you should do!”

“Oh, that’s great!” he said, “I’ll do it that way then!”

“It’s just a case of one step at a time…..as we do that one, then we will see the next step to take!”

We moved away from the district shortly after that and heard of him periodically. But always, he was still going on for his Lord and rejoicing in Him until the day of his death some years later. We still smile as we remember our good friend Rameka and the things that he taught us as we interacted with him.

 

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One Stick at a Time

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100_4921                                              I was visiting a friend the other day and watched a house below her place.  A starling was carrying sticks of straw into the corner of the roof. It seemed a laborious task, just one straw at a time. But it would eventually build a nest there to lay its eggs in and hatch the next generation of starlings.

I thought of a book I read recently that told the story of a young girl who had always had the desire to go to India as a missionary. She was neither a nurse or a teacher, just an ordinary girl with a strong  sense of duty to her fellow man. She had no encouragement from her mother who was opposed to her going, and the older lady missionary she approached who was already working there didn’t exactly encourage her either.

But she continued with her ideas and set about preparing herself. She was always strongly attracted to the Indian people, and her feelings of compassion grew immensely when she got there. These people were so poor! Especially the Anglo-Indian people who didn’t seem to fit in anywhere properly. These were the people that the young missionary began working amongst.

From there, her work began and in time it became a large organization which today comprises medical clinics, soup kitchens feeding hundred of people each day, and an orphanage looking after unwanted children. Several churches have been formed and a group of responsible Indian men have become her main support. She has seen many children grow up, and become self sufficient adults with good jobs, all because she obeyed the call of God in her life. She could have thought the task was too great.

But the little we have, with God, is much in His hands. One step of obedience at a time was all it took. One stick at a time is all it takes to build a nest. Let’s make sure we never say “Never, not for me!” God can do wonders with an obedient person resting in His will.