Daily devotion

The Everlasting Arms

/ pastorpete51 / Leave a comment

Years ago when our forty something year old boys were small we used to swap baby-sitting duties with friends. Whenever it was our turn to watch theirs I usually ended up being the one to rock the two year old in my arms at bedtime while my wife put down our boys and their two older girls.

Debbie liked nothing better than hanging out with me as long as I kept rocking or walking around with her. It seemed the only thing that gave her the feeling of being safe enough to eventually get to sleep. That memory reminded me of Deuteronomy 33:27 where it says

The eternal God is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms! What a comfort in these tense times to know that God is holding us and he will keep us safe. This week’s song session includes Leaning on the Everlasting Arms and Bind us Together. I hope these will be an encouragement to you to trust more deeply and rest more completely on the Everlasting Arms of God!

God Still Has a Job For Us To Do

/ pastorpete51 / 7 Comments

I Confess that this election has been tough to deal with, but moping isn’t going to help much and as I’ve been praying, God comforted my heart with four things from Matthew’s gospel.

Then he got into the boat and His disciples followed him. Matthew 8:23. Jesus is still in my boat! As the disciples traveled across the Sea of Galilee they got caught in a storm. But no matter that water was coming over the sides and they were exhausted they had the most important thing going for them. Jesus was still on board!

All the storms we face in life have one thing in common. We get afraid, but Jesus is not! The disciples went and woke him saying, “Lord save us! We’re going to drown!”

Jesus is still in control! He is not wondering what to do next! …Then he got up and rebuked the wind and the waves and it was completely calm. Matthew 8:26b

God still has a job for us to do on the other side of the storm! Matthew 8:28 when He arrived at the other side… If we will just stick close to Jesus we will discover that He always brings us to the other side and that when we get there he has something for us to do!

Tree of Calvary

/ pastorpete51 / Leave a comment

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14 ESV

This week on the election day, my wife spent almost 13 hours as I poll worker leaving me with I lots of free time alone. So during the day on Tuesday I worked on something God had been speaking to my heart about over the last week on learning to accept the passing of seasons in life. Slowly what began as a journal entry evolved into a rough poem and then into a song. Today I thought I’d share the first verse and chorus from Tree of Calvary. A video with this should be ready soon. Change is never easy because true change is irreversible and it means letting go of some things dear to us in order that we may take hold of things even better. May God bless you this week in your own life as with God’s help you are learning to let go so that you may reach out to all the great things that God has in store!

 
 
 

 To every life a season will come
 When autumn’s in the air
 And the cold winds blow, and the leaves do fa
 And change is everywhere
  
 Then I’ll lift my heart and sing to Him
 For His pardon rich and free
 His forgiveness washing all my sin
 From the tree of Calvary 

Tree of Calvary by Peter Caligiuri © 2020 All rights reserved