by Stacey | Dec 24, 2012 | The Weekend Visitor
December 14, 2012
Dear Jesus,
It’s a good thing you were born at night. This world sure seems dark. I have a good eye for silver linings. But they seem dimmer lately.
These killings, Lord. These children, Lord. Innocence violated. Raw evil demonstrated.
The whole world seems on edge. Trigger-happy. Ticked off. We hear threats of chemical weapons and nuclear bombs. Are we one button-push away from annihilation?
Your world seems a bit darker this Christmas. But you were born in the dark, right? You came at night. The shepherds were nightshift workers. The Wise Men followed a star. Your first cries were heard in the shadows. To see your face, Mary and Joseph needed a candle flame. It was dark. Dark with Herod’s jealousy. Dark with Roman oppression. Dark with poverty. Dark with violence.
Herod went on a rampage, killing babies. Joseph took you and your mom into Egypt. You were an immigrant before you were a Nazarene.
Oh, Lord Jesus, you entered the dark world of your day. Won’t you enter ours? We are weary of bloodshed. We, like the wise men, are looking for a star. We, like the shepherds, are kneeling at a manger.
This Christmas, we ask you, heal us, help us, be born anew in us.
Hopefully,
Your Children
© 2012 Max Lucado
[A Christmas Prayer] Max Lucado
Copyright [UpWords Ministries, 2012]
Used by permission
Visit Max Lucado’s blog here
by Stacey | Nov 8, 2012 | Devotionals, reflections, and encouragement
Have you ever known someone who lives in the past? It could be the guy who peaked on his high school football team. It could be a mother who constantly dresses like her teenage daughter. It could be a leader or politician who served God faithfully in the beginning but eventually strayed.
It could be a person like King Rehobam. You can read about his family in 2 Chronicles 11 and his depart from truth in 2 Chronicles 12. Rehobam began faithful. He started strong. But by his fifth year as King he had become unfaithful choosing to rely on his own strength instead of God. His days of pleasing God were history.
No one can depend on former correct actions to ensure a future relationship with God. God is concerned with the choices I make today. He is concerned with the current state of my heart.
No matter how I failed yesterday, today is a chance to start over. I do need to address yesterday’s failures and confess and repent as scripture directs, but they do not hold me back from restoring a broken fellowship with my Father. Furthermore, a former spiritual high or walking closely with God for years past means little if I chose to ignore Him today. God is concerned about the current state of our relationship.
Ouch! I know I’m guilty of coasting through days without picking up my bible depending on last week’s prayer to get me through today’s trial. The big question is: What am I going to do about it? How did Rehobam move from a faithful beginning to becoming a King who abandoned the law of his Lord? Did it start with a short stretch of depending on last week’s prayer? Did he stop listening to sound teaching and start listening to his own voice instead?
King Rehobam’s story contains a warning I intend to heed. I’ve started meeting regularly with three other woman. We all attend different churches, we all have slightly different opinions on various topics. But there are many things we have in common.
We want to be found faithful.
We want to glorify God in our actions, thoughts, and words EACH day.
We want to live without regrets.
We want to give sacrificially, love unconditionally, and deepen our walk with God.
We want to be held accountable.
That’s why we meet. That’s why we bring our prayer journals and share from them. That why we confess the ugly truth about our fears, doubts, and trials.
That’s why we hold up one another in prayer.
Proverbs 27:17 “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”
by Stacey | Sep 13, 2012 | Devotionals, reflections, and encouragement
“It’s not about whether I can do this but about whether I am willing to surrender and fall into my Saviour’s arms. It’s about whether I’m willing to let Him carry me through this moment and every moment from here on.”
There are days I feel like a complete and total failure. There are days I think I can’t do it anymore. There are days when the next step feels too huge to even try to take it. These days beg one question:
Will I trust God to carry me through this moment and every future moment?
When the job feels unproductive, when I run like crazy but get nowhere, when the diagnosis is grim. Will I trust God? Not just with my future, but for the strength required for each step?
You see, it’s not about whether I can handle any of these things, it’s about believing that God can handle them.
It’s not about doing my best. It’s about surrendering to God’s will and trusting Him for His best.
It’s not about getting stronger. It’s about knowing God is stronger and depending on Him.
It’s not about pushing through the difficulty on my own strength. It’s about trusting God to provide for each step, one step at a time.
Picture by Morgan Falk Photography
First posted Nov 15th, 2010
by Stacey | Sep 6, 2012 | Devotionals, reflections, and encouragement
Rainy days breed insanity. Maybe it’s being cooped up in the house. Maybe it’s change in the atmosphere. Maybe it’s the crazy mom banging her head against the wall. Who knows?
All I know is the odd rainy day is okay. But string a few together and add three to eight stir-crazy kids and I’m ready to jump onto the back of the loony wagon and hitch a ride to the funny farm.
All it takes for a dreary grey day to dampen my spirit is a few crying kids hanging off my leg, dinner burning in the oven, and endless phone calls.
These crazy moments always seems to coincide with my children wanting extra cuddle time or needing to engage in serious conversation. Some days two hands, two ears, and 24 hours feel dreadfully inadequate!
I regret missed opportunities. I lose my cool when asked the same question for the millionth time. I wonder if I’m expecting too much or settling for too little.
Misgivings like these send me to my knees grateful for grace. Grace that covers all my sins. I know I need to take every opportunity to prepare my children for tomorrow. I know I need to use every moment to reinforce how much God loves them and how He has a plan for their future, a plan only they can fulfill. I also know I accomplish this through His strength alone.
Large decisions loom ahead. Friends. Education. Dating. Spouse. Career. Our kids need self-confidence, faith, and wisdom to navigate through middle school, high school, college, university, and marriage. I will not guide them perfectly because I am not a perfect parent. But I serve a God who is perfect, a God who promises to never leave me nor forsake me, a God who promises wisdom when I ask and delights in my request. God loves my children even more than I do and He longs for me to I bring them before His throne in prayer confessing my inadequacies and claiming His sufficiency.
In chaos of the moment may I never forget God is with me. That doesn’t mean dinner will never burn or my patience won’t run thin. Trust me, it has and it does. It means I have someone to turn too in those hairy moments of life. I have the opportunity model what a real dependence on God looks like.
Based on Sept 27th 2010 post.
by Stacey | Aug 30, 2012 | The Weekend Visitor
It’s been said that life is not about the breaths you take, but about the moments that take your breath away. An amazing sunset. A first kiss. A walk down the aisle. They all qualify. For our family, a stretch in time about two years ago contained a series of moments that took our breath away.
One of those moments has found a permanent home in my memory. It was the day we met our boys, Jonathan and Nicholas, for the first time. We had just finished an hour-long meeting with our caseworker that had given us their brief life history. Their story was fleshed out with some background details about their parents, grandparents, and a few aunts and uncles.
When that part of the meeting ended, she led us down a hallway and through a door. And that’s when it happened, a sort of surreal moment that seemed to be crawling in slow motion. About thirty feet away, in a different room, we saw our boys for the first time through a glass wall. I was supposed to be listening to our caseworker give us some final instructions before meeting them, but I didn’t hear a word she said. My eyes were fixed on my boys, a knot in my stomach, and a lump in my throat. The moment took my breath away.
In Psalm 139, the Bible says that God knows every one of our days before they came to be. The larger context of the passage tells us that not only does God know every one of our days, but he has known about them since before the creation of the world.
That means God knew about July 18, 2005 long before I did. He knew that on a blistering hot summer day in a crowded hotel in mainland China, we would get to hold our little girl for the first time. He knew that on a cold rainy day on November 22, 2010, we would get to meet our boys for the first time. Psalm 139 means that before any of what we see around us even came to be, God knew the day I would be born. He even knows the day that he will call me home to be with him forever. And he knows the same about you.
But this night I realized something pretty amazing. On the way home from our visit with the boys, Stacey said that had we not moved to Niagara years ago, our lives wouldn’t be changing in the ways they are right now. That’s not what amazes me; even in my limited understanding, I was able to put that together. Nor does it amaze me that Jonathan was born on July 11, 2007, and only three weeks later we moved to Niagara.
What amazes me is that God knew all of that before it came to be. He knows the beginning from the end. What amazes me is that God is the grand orchestrator of all things, and in the midst of weaving together his perfect plan, he is gracious enough to give us these simple yet profound moments that take our breath away.
A visit at the boy’s foster home ended by putting them to bed, Jonathan in his Thomas the Tank bed, and Nicholas in his racecar bed. As soon as we got home, Katie was off to bed, too.
Only then did I realize something else pretty amazing. That night was the first night that I got ‘good nights’ from all three of my kids. First from Nicholas. Then from Jonathan. Then, from my little girl and new big-sister, Katie.
And it took my breath away all over again.
First posted Nov 29th, 2010
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Check out Kevin’s blog at 22:30
These are the ladies in my life for whom I will gladly stand in the gap. And these are the young warriors I will gladly train to stand in the gap for their God.
I’m a pastor at a church in southern Ontario, Canada, and I love what I do. Like most guys, I want my life to count for something and I want to help other guys learn how that can happen for them, too.
I love Jesus, my wife, my kids, my friends, the Bible, the Toronto Maple Leafs, preaching and teaching, writing, a good cup of java, being bald (kinda), a free cup of java, saying java, beautiful sunsets, romantic dinners, long walks on the beach . . . wait . . . what?
