Weekly Devotion

Sometimes on Facebook I’ll infinitely scroll, looking for one funny, memorable, or newsworthy prize after another, only to realize I’ve just wasted 30 minutes doing nothing. This time was different. My friend doesn’t post whimsical or provocative things. She’s authentic and going through real things now, battling cancer for the second time.

For years, one of my friends has asked my wife, Jennie, what her story or testimony is. Not every believer has an earth-shattering, lightning strike, bottom-of-the-barrel experience, but if we have a relationship with Jesus, we have a story to tell.

God’s love is abundant. It’s evident from a friend’s hug to a loved one’s tears. We might think no, no, no, this is our love, but God’s love permeates every relationship we have. The clay pot can’t decide what to be on its own; the potter creates it for the specific purpose He has in mind.

Unlike God, I didn’t have the patience and wisdom to handle the situation as I should have, but like a loving father, I also realized its insignificance in our relationship and reached out to her.

I knew how to sail from sailing a sunfish around the bay for years as a kid. While I’m no expert, the principles are basic. Knowing the direction of the wind and putting myself between the wind and the sail is all I needed to remember.  Applying this principle to windsurfing made a world of difference. To learn and progress, I had to do one thing before I could do another. This is equally true when it comes to knowing the will of God. We can’t know His will if we don’t first walk with Him.

Alignment is the process of adjusting the angles of our vehicle’s wheels to be perpendicular to the ground and parallel to each other. Our spiritual lives should also be perpendicular to the ground — pointing upwards to God, not horizontally.

“Because he was from Oklahoma, the Yankee great Mickey Mantle was my favorite person. Every year, when we started a new season, we all argued over who got to be number seven — Mickey’s number,” my Oklahoman friend (B) told me.

Knowing Scripture is a crucial aspect of being a Christian. God gave us the Bible so that we would know His word, feel His love, and touch His heart. But knowing the Bible doesn’t mean we’re living it.

While most Christians share common beliefs for the cornerstone of our faith, too many times we also feel tiny chards of glass that create discord and disagreement.

Sometimes our plans align with God’s purposes and other times, they don’t. Proverbs 19 shows us how to trust God’s sovereignty and submit our plans to His will.