Category Archives: Random Devotional Thoughts

Random Devotional Thoughts

Thoughts for the New Year.

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     As we enter this new year of 2022, many thoughts come to mind. The main one being that the only certainty for this year is the uncertainty that we finished up with last year! Plans for this year can’t be made with any certainty, as we don’t know when what freedom we have, will be clamped down on again. Our clubs and gatherings that we have worked so hard to start and keep going are now in limbo. Rules are being put in place constantly changing things that we thought we knew we might be able to do. We hear of things happening in other countries, and know with a sinking heart that it will only be a matter of time before we too, will be bound by the same things.   

      But all is not lost! The sun will still rise each morning, giving us a brilliant promise of another day! Plants in the garden will still grow and flower,  amazing us with their brilliance and beauty. God is still on His throne, and His promises still stand….He said, “I am the Lord, I change not!” His Word, the Bible, still stands true and nothing can alter that. His people can still look back on their experiences in life, and see how He has worked for them….nothing can change those memories! So let’s remember these things and look upwards instead of downwards and take heart to keep going.

    If we do not have these memories,  remember it is never too late to start our journey with the Lord on our side…all we have to do is to ask Him. He has said, “Those who seek Me will find Me!”, and He will never turn down a sincere and repentant person. Once we have done this, then all the rest of this life’s uncertainties that we face this year, will fade into insignificance, and we will be able to go forward into 2022 with confidence!!

Random Devotional Thoughts

Beauty out of Dry Ground.

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    I have been growing amaryllis lilies in pots this year. A friend who was moving away from the district gave me several of these beautiful plants of hers which I had always admired, and I didn’t want to miss a minute of their beauty. So when the flowers began to come, they were brought in to the living room so we could watch them open and develop.

   It always amazes me how such beauty can come out the same soil….how do these plants know when the right time to grow is? How do they know when to send up their flower shoots? Yet each year, we could almost set our clock by them! We have a lot of a certain type of cherry tree that grows wild around our town…how do they know when July comes and that it is time to  begin to flower?

     There is the Belladonna lily that follows a  regular pattern too…every year without fail it sends up long stalks from the ground with its flowers of either pink or white. There are no leaves around this flower stalk and it stands up stark and naked on its own. After two or three weeks, the flower dies down, and the plant is dormant again until about July when the first leaves start to appear. It is a very luxurious looking plant, quite handsome in fact, and fills the empty gaps in the garden. Then about October the leaves start  to go brown and die down, and the whole plant goes to sleep. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you would think the plant had died! But when the next February comes, the whole cycle starts again!

    The creativity of God to put these patterns into the plants He has designed, is amazing!  When we stop to think about it, everything He has made is amazing. Mankind is no less amazingly made, and it is a lesson to us to look for the hidden talents that each one of us has, and to use them for God’s glory. No matter what our surroundings are or the environment we are in, there is always something we can thank Him for. As the Bible says, “Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31)

If you think that you don’t have anything you can do, we can ALL give praise and thanks to Him for what we see in His creation around us!!  (Philippians 4:20)

Random Devotional Thoughts

Famous Last Words!

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     We recently watched a documentary made by a very well known person towards the end of his life. He had everything this life would promise us….fame, money, and a massive business behind him. But, he had received the diagnosis of terminal cancer. Now he had to face the prospect of leaving all this behind. He had nothing to look forwards to as he did not know God.

     But he was still able to leave some good advice which we would all do well to take notice of. He said that even though he had reached the pinnacle of his business world, and could employ anyone he wished to do his work, yet no-one else could bear his illness for him. He said that once good health is lost, it can never be regained.

    None of his possessions gave true happiness….his big mansion was still only a place to keep him dry and warm the same as a pensioner’s cottage did….it did not give happiness, and there was still the same amount of loneliness when on your own.

     His $300,000 car still had to travel the same road as a $30,000 one, and still take as long to get there, up and down the same hills  to the same destination. His expensive watch still told only the same time as a cheaper one, and neither could hold time back. It didn’t make any difference if he drank a $100 bottle of wine or a ten dollar bottle, the hangover was still the same! If you fly first class in a plane or economy class, and the plane goes down,  it is the same end result!

    Some advice he gave to parents was to train  children to know true happiness rather than to strive to be rich. People matter more than things. There is a big difference between being a human being, and being human! We are loved when we are born, and we are loved when we die, but what about the years in between?

    Money does not buy happiness….true happiness comes from within, from the joy that the Lord gives when you seek to know and follow Him. The richest man who has ever lived, who started off well, but seemed to end up poorly was King Solomon who said, “Vanity of vanities, ALL is vanity”, and he would no doubt echo the words of the man in the above story.

   The thing we would do well to remember is that the Apostle Paul who knew what it was to suffer, could say “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4)

Random Devotional Thoughts

Lead Us Not into Temptation….

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  We have been thinking about temptations of different sorts for a couple of weeks now, and these thoughts have come to me yet again….  A young man training for missionary service remembered hearing the following sentence, and he never forgot it…”.There’s no point in praying, ‘And lead us not into temptation’ if you go where temptation lurks “. This statement made a deep impression on him, and kept him from many a compromising situation.

    A lady I once knew wanted badly to give up smoking. She had been convicted about the habit for a long time, but had excused herself by saying, “I know God loves me just the same if I smoke or if I don’t!!”  Someone else asked “If you gave me your smokes today, how would you get on?” She promptly replied, “I’d just go and get another packet!” At least she was honest with that statement!!

   But now the conviction had come more strongly than ever, and besides that she couldn’t really afford the weekly cost of her habit, so she once more asked for prayer to overcome it. We didn’t hear for some time if she had overcome it or not.

     To go back to our original statement, God will only answer our prayer with a “yes” if we do our part by either keeping away from temptation or getting rid of the cause of it altogether. It’s a two-way thing, as are a lot of God’s promises. He will do His part if we will do ours.

     It’s the same with salvation…He has provided it, but we have to take it from Him. When we are given a present, we have to take it and open it before we can enjoy it or use it. Let’s think about these things and get the full benefit from God’s promises!

Random Devotional Thoughts

Winter Fires

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We have just finished putting a load of firewood in the shed at the back of the house. There is nothing more cheerful than a fire burning in the grate on a cold raw winter day, and the mess and wok that a wood burning fire makes is more than worth the trouble of cleaning up around it!

A fire has many qualities….it not only keeps the house warm and inviting, but it can be used to get rid of any rubbish around the place….it cleanses as it burns. It is also referred to as a refining fire, and we know that a fire is used to clean any dross out of metals. Watching a metal worker heating the metal and then being able to twist it into any shape that he wants to, shows us that when we go through the fires of troubles and trials, that we come out at the other end, the better for it. Let us make sure that this is so, and that we don’t become bitter instead of better!

Something else that we can learn from a fire is that if a coal is taken out of it and left by itself on the hearth, it will gradually go cold and black, no more use for anything. So this is a warning to us, to make sure we keep in the fire of meeting with God’s people regularly to keep ourselves glowing with His peace and joy, able to warm and encourage others with our company.

Random Devotional Thoughts

In Fighting!

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      We have just started putting bread in our bird feeder again for the winter months and once again it is giving us a lot of pleasure watching the little birds feeding there. I wondered how long it would be before they discovered the bread slices in it sitting there, but it only took about an hour and first one and then another came along and had a feed.

But you know, even among the birds there is continual scrapping going on. The small silver-eyes stand on a branch nearest the feeder and fluff their little wings angrily at each other. The bold mynah struts around at the base of the tree and even jumps up on the branch to take a few pecks before he gets chased off. The sparrows take no notice of the others and greedily grab as many beakfuls as they can while the others are scrapping among themselves.

    Once again it reminded me of how we as people often scrap among ourselves, sometimes vying for the better places or positions. This is not how we are meant to behave, especially in church situations. The Lord Jesus told us to be prepared to take the humble place and wait for others to give us a higher position rather than angrily (or sneakily)  try to take it from others.

    It is not smart to behave like this anywhere, and only causes hurtful situations that often can never be remedied. People can forgive, but they very seldom completely forget!

Random Devotional Thoughts

Preparing for a Trip.

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       We are heading off this week for a trip of several weeks around this beautiful country of ours. At the moment Covid restrictions are lifted in our part of the world, so we are free to go where ever we want to in our country. How thankful we are that we took the opportunities to travel overseas while we were younger and we were free to do so!

      This time however, we aren’t dependent on public travel having our own motor-home, and a daughter and her husband who can travel with us in their vehicle. Whenever we make preparations for going away, it always reminds me how careful we are to make sure we have everything we need, and  we would be foolish indeed not to think of every eventuality. Yet how many people go blithely through life without giving a thought to what would happen if the worst came to pass and their life was cut short.

   It behooves each one of us to make preparation for the biggest trip of our lifetime, that of when we depart from this world for ever and have to face our Maker. There could be nothing sadder than to hear those words, ”Depart from Me, I never knew you!” Yet we are told in God’s Word, that this will be what we will hear if we go from this world unprepared and not knowing Him.

   We wouldn’t dream of walking into a house if we didn’t know the owner personally, yet that is what people seem to think they have the right to do with God. Besides, would they really want to spend endless time in an atmosphere of singing God’s praises eternally when they haven’t gone into His presence here on earth! But then the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about either! This is a choice that we each one of us have to make….don’t put it off, it’s the most important decision we can make in our entire life!

Random Devotional Thoughts

God’s Word at Work.

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    I was reading the verse from Hebrews 4:12 where it describes God’s Word as being ” quick (living) , and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”.

     There is nothing so convicting and convincing as God’s Word if we allow it to sink into our minds. It IS possible to shut one’s mind to it, but if we do that, it won’t be long before its influence on our ways and thinking will disappear and we will become hard and unyielding.

    This verse shows that it is like an extremely sharp two edged sword, cutting both ways, as it goes in and as it comes out…there is a story that illustrates this point perfectly….

   There was a man once who said he didn’t believe in all this God rubbish (as he put it). One of the old time evangelists came to his district and was holding meetings several times a week. One of our man’s friends persuaded him to go to one of these meetings.

“You know I don’t believe in all that stuff”, he said complainingly to his friend, “I’ll go just the once, but no more, mind!”

He sat through the meeting, working out all his arguments against the preacher in his mind. His chance came when the preacher offered to take him home.

“Well, Sir,” our man said, “I don’t believe all that stuff you told us tonight. What about…..?” and he presented his first argument.

The preacher was silent a moment and then he said, “I don’t know about that, all I know is that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ cleans us from all sin.”

Our friend was a bit taken aback. He hadn’t expected a reply like that. But he rallied and then put out his next argument which was guaranteed (he thought) to get the preacher’s hackles up.

    Again the preacher was silent a moment, and then he said, “Well, I haven’t heard that one before, but all I know is that the blood of Jesus Christ cleans us from all sin.”

Our friend wasn’t going to be deterred, and he thought of several more arguments that he felt sure the preacher had no answers for.

    But each time the preacher just quietly said, “Well, I don’t know about that…..all I know is that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ cleans us from all sin!”

     By this time they had reached our friend’s house and the preacher pulled up to let him out. Our friend gave one more parting shot as he left the car…”Well, I’m not coming back any more to hear that stuff!”

“That’s fine friend,” the preacher said, “But just remember,” as our friend went off into the darkness, “the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleans us from all sin!”

   The preacher went home, prayed for our friend and didn’t expect to see him again. But God’s Word which had been used as a sword, and as a strong hammer which can break rocks began to work in his mind. A couple of nights later, the preacher heard a knock on his door just as he was going  to bed. He opened the door, and there stood our friend looking rather distraught and haggard.

“I haven’t been able to sleep a wink since that meeting the other night,”  he said, “All I can hear in my mind are those words, the blood of Jesus Christ cleans us from all sin….I can’t get rid of them. What do I have to do to put my mind at rest?”

“Come on in,”  the preacher said, “It’s never too late to talk about the things of God”. He was able to explain to our friend that the way to have peace in his mind, was simply to tell the Lord that he realised he was a sinner and needed to be made clean from all the bad thoughts and habits he had formed over the years.

   He gladly did this and became a different man as a result. He had different aims now, and went to different places. The old ways didn’t attract him any more. Now he could say, and mean it with all his heart….. “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleans me from ALL sin!”