Daily devotion

Feel Like Giving Up?

/ pastorpete51 / 9 Comments

Years ago, we had a poster on the wall, of a young boy sitting hunched over on the sidelines of a football game, with the quote, “I quit!” Then, just to the side of that was a picture of the cross with the words, “I didn’t!” If that is you today, then I pray that this little devotional which I wrote several years ago would give you hope.

And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word 
I will let down the nets.”  Luke 5:5 ESV

Peter was like the farmer who has just finished his spring planting only to have his field washed out by a rainstorm. We all sometimes come face to face with our inability and failure no matter how hard we try. Maybe you were the last to get picked for your neighborhood team and only got to play because they ran out of other people. Maybe your marriage is struggling or has failed. Maybe you don’t have a friend. Whatever you may be facing, that is also how Peter felt that day.

But Jesus doesn’t come to choose the best fishermen, fathers, mothers or pastors. Jesus came to pick people for His team who have worked all night and have nothing to show for their efforts. And the call of Jesus is not to just try harder. Jesus only asks us to believe and obey His word!  When Peter simply did what Jesus asked him, he saw immediate results. When he cast the net on the other side of the boat, it became so full that it took all of the efforts of Peter his friends to pull them in. But Jesus doesn’t stop with filling our nets. We think it would be great if Jesus showed up to give us blessings like Peter’s full nets, but this story is about more than blessings. The call of Jesus then, as now, was to come by faith and follow Him wherever He chooses to go!

And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him! Luke 5:11
Photo by Cassiano Psomas on Pexels.com

Time to Bloom

/ pastorpete51 / 5 Comments

But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 1 Corinthians 12:18 ESV

Once we were edging and weeding several hundred feet of perennial beds on a large estate, in preparation for the owner’s weekend visit. On the crew that day, we had a new employee named Waldemar. So as not to overtax him, I started Waldemar on a stretch of the bed which only needed some light weeding. After working on the other side of the house for an hour, I came back to check on my new friend and found to my dismay that he had not only pulled out every single weed, but he had also taken out all the primroses which were just beginning to pop out of the ground. “Waldemar, where are the flowers?” I asked. My poor friend stopped what he was doing and glanced back along the empty bed with a bewildered look.

“Just because they aren’t blooming yet, doesn’t mean they aren’t flowers.” I explained

Looking back, I can see that I should have spent more time training and I had forgotten how many years it took for me to learn which were the weeds and which the flowers. The church is a lot like that perennial garden. Just as in today’s verse, God has planted each of us where He designed and each of us blooms in our own season. While we are just beginning to grow, we might not look much different than the weeds. So, let’s be careful this week in how we treat others. Every part of God’s garden has something growing, and even flowers that have finished blooming still have value. Some older plants with only green leaves give a nice backdrop to the younger blossoms that are just opening. Others, even with only wilted tops, give quiet example as they simply rest, knowing that surely one day it will be Springtime again!

I hope you like today’s video that tells the story as well as includes the hymn “In the Garden” (It’s my favorite!) I was so blessed to have a new volunteer come along with me this week to visit my Thursday morning memory care friends.

Did He really say that? – Praying for enemies

/ pastorpete51 / 9 Comments

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Matthew 5:43-44 ESV

Many of us (myself included) have been earnestly praying for the people of Ukraine during this last 6-8 months as we have seen the terrible suffering of her people. But the current media reports over the victories that Ukraine has been winning lately, also brings us face to face with a heart issue that Jesus addressed about our attitude towards our enemies. When I read of soldiers being wiped out or large numbers of casualties on the Russian side, it is too easy to fall into a celebratory mood, saying under our breath, “serves them right!” But we cannot call ourselves Christians forgetting the fact that our Lord Jesus commanded us to love our enemies and to pray for them.

You see, the people of Israel faced some very real, very evil enemies, like Pontius Pilate, who slaughtered a number of people from Galilee while they were going to the temple to worship. Then there was Herod, who had John the Baptist decapitated and Pharisees who were plotting some way to have Jesus killed. None of these guys would have been anywhere on my prayer list, and that is a shameful disobedience to Christ’s command. So, as the sunsets tonight and we start our prayers, we need to add some people to the list. There are poor young teenagers from Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and farmers from little villages in the Caucuses. They have chosen a different side in this war than we would have liked, but their lives are also precious to Jesus. He also chose to die on the cross for them, as He did for us, and for all of us, He cried out, “Father forgive them; for they know not what they are doing!”