Devotions
These columns previously appeared in Daily Boost.
For more information about a free e-mail subscription to Daily Boost, click here.
THE WAGES OF DEBT
Worrying about money is an easy thing to do. But it seems the more we are consumed with wondering if we’ll have enough money, the more dire the situation becomes. We can’t really improve our finances by stewing over the situation.
God doesn’t want us to be anxious about finances. Everything belongs to God anyway. We are just stewards. If we truly recognize that God owns everything we have, He has a way of providing in unexpected ways.
My family has had its ups and downs with money. At one point, we had thousands of dollars in consumer credit debt. We didn’t live luxuriously. We didn’t buy a yacht or a summer home or go on an around-the-world cruise. Rather, we lived in the expensive Chicago suburbs, where I went off to work and my wife stayed home with three children. We kept getting deeper and deeper in the hole, eventually putting everything from clothes to groceries on a charge card. My wife became quite ill for several years and medical bills compounded our debt problem.
Finally we had to face reality. We couldn’t keep up on the minimum payments on half a dozen credit cards. We got help. Slowly we paid them off one at a time.
Satan wants us to be in debt, because it’s a way he keeps us from being effective. If we’re paying much of what we earn to a credit card company, it’s hard to be generous with the Lord’s work.
I look back at the hundreds of dollars we paid in interest over the years and shudder. Yet we don’t have credit card debt anymore. Sometimes that means foregoing fancy meals I may want to eat, concerts I might want to attend or trips I would like to take. But that’s OK.
I remember when I paid off the last debt and calling the company to cancel the credit card.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” the man on the other end of the line said. He sounded as though someone in my immediate family had just died. Of course he wanted to know why — and what he could do to change my mind.
He didn’t seem to understand I had grown weary of paying interest fees. “How about if we lower your interest rate?” he asked.
“No thanks,” I said.
“How about if we make your card interest free for six months?” he asked.
When I saw he had a whole bag of tricks designed to sucker me back in, I firmly told him to cancel the card.
The buy now, pay later philosophy can cause years of hurt, as Scripture tells us. Proverbs 22:7 says, “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”
In Philippians 4:12, Paul writes, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
That’s good advice to remember.
ANGEL ENCOUNTER
I’ve rarely been aware of the presence of angels, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t around. My wife, Patty, saw an angel in 1991 without realizing it until afterwards.
Our two older sons, Josh and Jesse, had gone to an elementary school for Little League practice. Our youngest son, Zach, had just turned 5. He asked his mother if he could go watch his older brothers play ball. Patty, who was talking on the phone at the time, told Zach no. The school was four blocks away and Patty didn’t want Zach going there alone. Zach knew the rules: no leaving our property without permission.
But when Patty finished her phone conversation, Zach was nowhere to be found. She went around the house yelling his name. No response. He wasn’t in the yard. Patty called me at work and asked me to pray.
Patty frantically checked with our neighbors, thinking Zach may have wandered over there to play with their young son. They hadn’t seen Zach. Greg drove to the practice field, but couldn’t find Zach.
Most mothers would be frantic in such a situation. But Patty had been praying in the Spirit ever since Zach disappeared. Just then a well-dressed, elderly woman walked up to our house, Zach’s small hand in her hand.
The woman said she found Zach trying to cross a busy intersection five blocks the other way. Zach thought his brothers had gone to the field where they played Little League games, not the field where they went to practice. This intersection had no crosswalks or lights — and it was 5:15 in the afternoon when traffic was heaviest. The woman had walked Zach back those five blocks.
Patty naturally was relieved to see Zach unharmed. She bent down to hug and kiss him. When she stood up to thank the woman, the woman had disappeared. Patty looked up and down our street. Our house was in the middle of the block, not near any corners. The woman had simply vanished.
A couple of lessons here: First, children obey your parents (Ephesians 6:1). The second is also from Ephesians 6, verse 18: “Pray in the Spirit on all kinds of prayers and requests.”
CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR
During Hezekiah’s illness is described in 2 Kings 20. In short, God told Hezekiah to prepare to die, his time on earth had drawn to a close. But a weepy Hezekiah pleaded with the Lord, saying he had been a faithful servant and deserved to live longer. God relented, adding 15 years to Hezekiah’s life.
There are many lessons in this story. One is that prayer can change the will of God. But should we try to change God’s mind?
Hezekiah had an appointed time to die. What did he do with the last 15 years of his life? He foolishly showed Israel’s enemies, the Babylonians, all the treasures in the temple, which they carried off. But more importantly, when Hezekiah died, his 12-year-old son Manasseh succeeded him — a son that wouldn’t have been born if Hezekiah had accepted the Lord’s timetable for his life. Chapter 21 of 2 Kings tells us that Manasseh ruled for 55 years and he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, reintroducing corruption and pagan practices that had been banished. He rebuilt the sex shrines his father had torn down, he constructed altars to Baal and made poles in God’s temple for the sex goddess Asherah. He bowed down and worshiped stars. He practiced sorcery and consulted fortunetellers. Scripture tells us that Manasseh shed much innocent blood and even sacrificed his own son in a burnt offering.
The bottom line is that the nation of Israel suffered for many decades, because Hezekiah wanted to live on earth more than he wanted God’s will. His remaining years on the throne had tragic consequences.
We shouldn’t cling to life on earth as more important than eternity with God. Heaven is our ultimate destination and reward.
God is merciful and sometimes gives us what we want when we don’t deserve it. When my dad suffered a serious heart attack at the age of 73, family members asked that the Lord extend his life as He had Hezekiah’s. I’m grateful that my dad did pull through, especially since my children were young at the time; Zach was only 4. Grandpa had some great times with his three grandsons.
Pop lived another 12 years, but he no longer had the energy he once had; he had to make multiple medications daily. His final years, especially his last, involved a lot of suffering.
As Pentecostals, it’s a good thing for us to pray for healing. But let’s be careful about telling God specifically what we want in terms of how He should do things. He knows what’s best. He knows the future. He may want to spare us grief by not answering our prayers the ways we think He should.
CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD!
Acts 2:21 tells us, “All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” That verse is talking about eternal salvation. But when we face unexpected danger, the Lord should be the One we think of immediately.
On a winter day in 1986, my wife Patty and I took a short vacation to see our friends in Moberly, Mo. We lived in Fairfield, Iowa, at the time, so it was about a 150-mile journey. We left on a Thursday night after I had finished work. Patty, six months pregnant at the time, drove in the dark and I soon fell asleep, as did our 3½-year-old son Josh and 2-year-old son Jesse.
Just before we reached the Missouri boundary line, the car hit an unanticipated patch of as ice on the road. Patty was driving 55 miles per hour, and the car began spinning out of control. I immediately woke up and instinctively yelled, “Lord, save us!
And He did. The car did turned around 360 degrees and ended up on the opposite shoulder facing the direction we were headed. So many disastrous things could have happened. The car could have flipped and we would have been killed. We could have dropped into a deep ravine on either side of the highway. There could have been a car in the oncoming lane that would have hit us head-on or broadside.
We were powerless in that situation — except for the saving hand of Jesus. We emerged without a scratch, either on us or the car.
The excitement of this trip wasn’t over. I drove the rest of the way. When we reached the city of Macon we stopped at a convenience store to buy some milk for Jesse’s bottle.
En route, Patty had taken her wedding ring off to put lotion on her chapped hands. But she forget, and when she got out of the car the ring fell out of her lap onto the pavement.
Patty didn’t notice the ring was missing until she woke up in Moberly —30 miles away — the next day. Then it came to her what had happened. Again, God was with us. It had snowed overnight. We called the store in Macon but no one answered. So we called the police department. An officer graciously drove over and found the ring in the snow by the front door, 14 hours after Patty dropped it. In another 45 minutes the parking lot was plowed and the ring might never have been found.
As James 5:13 reminds us: “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.”
FREEDOM COMES WITH A PRICE
These days when Americans think of veterans it’s usually veterans of the Iraqi War or perhaps the Vietnam War. But if we didn’t have veterans of earlier wars, we might not be here today, at least as free Americans.
Perhaps the most important war in the past century has been World War II. This six-year conflict involved 61 countries and 110 million soldiers. In all, 55 million people died, including 407,000 Americans.
The United States entered the war in December 1941 after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. At the time, my dad already had graduated from seminary and had been been pastoring for several years. But this was an era of great patriotic fervor, something we haven’t seen since. I remember my dad telling the story of seeking advice from a professor. Would he do more good at home, or overseas?
My dad decided to enter the service, along with many other ministers. He didn’t have to go. As a minister preaching in his first church, already 26 years old and with a 2-year-old daughter, he didn’t face being drafted. But he went to a district ministers meeting where he and a minister friend started talking about all the young men in their church heading off to war. A total of 25 from my dad’s church already had gone into the military. My dad and his pastor buddy decided they needed to join the war effort, too: that would be where they would be most useful.
My dad felt called to serve his nation, and he became a Navy chaplain. It was a scary assignment. Once a torpedo crippled the ship. He ended up crossing the Atlantic Ocean 22 times, on a ship taking new troops to Europe and bringing wounded ones back home.
Even though he was young and inexperienced, my dad felt he needed to be obedient to the assignment. He felt compelled to preach to and counsel those sailors and soldiers facing eternal decisions.
He might have been guided by Proverbs 24:10-12. It reads:
“If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength! Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those who are staggering toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it’?”
My dad survived the war and returned to the United States, meeting the 2-year-old son he hadn’t seen since shipping out. He went on to preach until 2001, retiring a couple of weeks before his 85th birthday.
If you’re facing a challenge today, be assured that God will help you with your decision. Courage and intelligence aren’t just qualities needed in wartime. As James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to him.”
TAKE TIME TO CELEBRATE YOUR WIFE
“A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies” (Proverbs 31:10, NIV).
I believe it’s important to let my wife know I appreciate her. This is especially true on special days, such as our anniversary or her birthday. We took a Caribbean cruise on our silver wedding anniversary and it will be something we’ll always cherish.
We don’t take such an extravagant trip every year. But a vacation, whether an overnight getaway or continental tour, can help keep a marriage vibrant.
It’s not that spending is the answer to making a marriage happier. And a trip isn’t something to go into debt over as a way to reward yourself for hard work.
But 51 weeks of the year we stick to routines — out the door at 6:30 in the morning for work, in bed by 9:30 at night. For one week of the year we can live it up, do something that doesn’t require a schedule, and have meals that aren’t part of the normal menu. In other words, enjoy life.
Two years in a row in October we’ve stayed a week in a condo thanks to the generosity of North Carolina Pastor Wallace Phillips. Eating fresh scallops, shrimp, tuna and clams is something we can’t do in Missouri every day. Crowds are gone that time of year in the Outer Banks, and usually the hurricanes. But the weather is still warm enough to be on the sandy shore of the Atlantic Ocean.
We’ve enjoyed pleasures such as looking for shells on the beach, feeding seagulls, or splashing in the surf. We’ve heard the waves from our condo, witnessed dolphins jumping in the water, gone kayaking, and seen wild horses running on an island. Driving to our destination we saw red, orange, gold and yellow leaves on the trees of the Great Smokies in Tennessee. We saw rice and cotton fields while still in Missouri.
It’s easy for husbands to react like the onlookers who became indignant when the woman at Bethany anointed Jesus with expensive nard (Mark 14:1-9). (Maybe we should spend that vacation money on something more practical, like a 235-piece tool set and solid maple industrial workbench). But an investment in marriage is a wise one in this day when so many relationships go sour.
THE UPSIDE OF UNPLANNED EMERGENCIES
“Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls — yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17,18, NKJV).
After months of work, our yard no longer looks like a war zone. In fact, grass I planted where half a dozen tall trees once stood now makes our 1-acre property look fairly normal.
In January 2007 the situation seemed grim. During the great ice storm that struck Springfield, Mo., and much of the Midwest we lost power for eight days in the dead of winter. The 2-inch layer of frozen precipitation destroyed or damaged all the trees around our house, with fallen trunks and broken limbs covering huge patches of ground.
Certainly the spoiled food, home displacement, dog kenneling, tree topping and stump grinding cost money better spent elsewhere. And all the hours of sawing, stacking, hauling, burning, landscaping and replanting filled my weekends for longer than I care to remember.
While I lament the loss of trees that provided wonderful evening shade, there are many reasons to be thankful for such a disruption of the normal.
• No tree toppled onto our house. No one inside got hurt.
• The Branson motel my family stayed in gave us a special “winter storm” rate, showing compassion on the displaced. Some local lodging establishments hiked rates to take advantage of the plethora of customers.
• Our cockatiels survived eight days in subfreezing temperatures.
• I can now see where my neighbors live. Trees that are no longer there had shielded both sides of the house. I got to know my neighbors better as we all worked in our yards after the disaster.
• Working outdoors every weekend this spring improved my health.
• I gained a deeper appreciation of my brother Dave and his wife, Betty, who provided hours and hours of labor to saw down trees, rake limbs, burn debris and stack wood.
• We will have wood for the fireplace for several years.
• I gained a renewed sense of awe at God’s power. The fact that frozen precipitation could uproot a 70-foot tall tree and leave a hole in the ground 5 feet deep shows how marvelous God’s creation is and how we need to revere Him.
DO I REALLY NEED TO LOVE MY NEIGHBOR?
Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 10:27). Did He really mean it?
I think so.
In America today it’s easy to exist without ever really knowing our neighbors if we so choose. The only contact we might have with them is to complain about the dog that barks all night, grass that doesn’t get mowed as quickly as we’d like, or the old junker that’s been sitting in the driveway a bit too long.
We’ve lived in a rural subdivision for eight years. No one ever welcomed us to the neighborhood. We figured we had picked an area where people deliberately buy one-acre lots because they don’t want to be bothered.
Oh, we’ve borrowed tools from one neighbor and solicited computer advice from another. But, for the most part, we don’t know those who live around us. We wouldn’t know some of our neighbors if we saw them on the street.
But if we are to take Jesus’ admonition seriously, how can we love people we never speak to, or acknowledge? My wife, Patty, and I determined to become better acquainted with those who live nearby.
So we decided to have a neighborhood barbecue on our deck. A new catty-cornered neighbor provided the perfect incentive for the gathering.
A couple of weeks before the event we hand-delivered invitations to the 11 houses surrounding us. The invitation distribution took up several evenings. These neighbors — most of whom have lived on this street much longer than we have — really did want to know us. At some homes we chatted for half an hour.
The grapevine already had branded us. Most knew we worked at the Assemblies of God headquarters. Some identified us as having the sons who hit a tennis ball back and forth in the street. Others viewed us as the wife who rides the mower and the husband who does the trimming.
We discovered our neighbors lead interesting lives. For instance, one fellow has a collection of 19th-century high-wheel bicycles, one of which he rode across the nation in 32 days.
The evening of the barbecue, two dozen people from seven houses showed up. We learned most of those close to us are churchgoers. We have Sunday School teachers on both sides of us. A choir director lives across the street. In three households, couples are sacrificially raising children of relatives.
We saw a different side of our next-door neighbor. Our infrequent contact with him before had been mostly unpleasant, especially after his pit bull ran onto our deck and slashed open our dog’s neck. On the same deck during the barbecue, this neighbor — a Pentecostal — talked mostly about the Lord.
Some of the neighbors sat and talked for more than six hours.
Subsequently, we better know how to pray for our neighbors and interact in their lives. And the waves as we drive our car down the street are now a little more genuine.
REMEMBERING COMMUNITY AND COMMUNION
In 2006 I attended my 30th high school reunion in my small hometown in Iowa. While there I had the opportunity to visit the church I attended when I worked at my first newspaper job in the 1980s.
I hadn’t been to the church in years. Fortunately my pastor, Jim Cecil, is still there. Of the four communities I’ve lived in during the past quarter century, Pastor Jim holds a special place in my heart. He was a great mentor to a new Christian, both as a pastor and a friend. He is a powerful preacher, has a good sense of humor, is tenderhearted, and remains an eager learner.
This is the church where I was filled with the Holy Spirit and the place I served as a deacon while still in my 20s. I remember going to the church to pray weekdays before work. Jim would already be in the prayer room interceding. Now Jim is in his mid-60s, plunging into a sanctuary construction project in his 23rd year at the church.
Visiting after so many years I saw some familiar faces, but also many new ones, especially young couples with small children.
The service featured freedom to not only raise hands, but also to dance and sing in the Spirit. At first the informality of the service seemed a bit jarring. Over the years I’ve grown accustomed to well-choreographed services while sitting in comfortably padded pews. I became disconcerted by the babbling children, some of them wandering from relative to relative during the service.
Near the end of the service an informal Communion time occurred. The elements weren’t passed along in gold-plated trays during solemn silence. Instead, families went up to a table and took Communion together, celebrating with great exuberance as music played. This church always has been a place where former drug addicts, recovering alcoholics, and the poor are welcome, and they worship the Lord not in frivolity but in gratitude.
Soon I got over my concern about the lack of decorum and realized this might be exactly the way Jesus would do it. To Jesus, Communion was all about relationship.
“And he said to them, ‘I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God’ ” (Luke 22:15,16, NIV).
Jesus told His disciples to let the little children come to Him (Luke 18:16). He improvised when He preached, instructing crowds to sit on the ground (John 6:10). He didn’t need ornate buildings with stained-glass windows and towering steeples.
Afterwards the church had a picnic and softball game. I watched in amazement as Jim related so well to men 40 years younger than himself. I hope I’m so in tune with young people when I reach Jim’s age.
THE RITES OF PASSAGE
I’m enjoying parenting more now that my sons are adults. During this phase of life I no longer need to fight battles about getting a tattoo, whether a certain compact disc is satanic, or the hour of a curfew.
Now my oldest son, Josh, is seeking my advice about buying a house and purchasing a car. He borrowed our van recently to haul some new outdoor furniture and I drove his car back home. What musician was playing on the CD player? Eminem? No, Louis Armstrong.
After being married for five years and living in an apartment, Josh has just purchased his first house and is about to graduate with a teaching degree.
My wife, Patty, and I have grown closer to Josh and his wife since they moved. They have had us over repeatedly for barbecues, as Josh is able to play chef on a gas grill for the first time. We’ve watched baseball games on their TV and played croquet in their back yard. Now that Josh is in his 20s, it’s nice to relate to him as an adult.
We’re flattered that our children are seeking our advice, but grateful Josh has reached a point of maturity on his own: relinquishing his annual habit of buying Kansas City Chiefs football season tickets.
Proverbs 22:6 advises, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” (NIV).
Christian parents need to do their part and raise their children in a godly environment and pray they turn out all right. But we need to remember that children have free wills. I know many godly men and women whose children have strayed, despite the longsuffering prayers of their parents.
We hope that, even as adults, all our children will value our opinions on financial, medical and especially spiritual matters.
Josh’s first house is one of life’s milestones. His first career job will follow soon. That doesn’t mean there won’t be rough spots and crises as he heads his family. One of these days he’ll be having battles with his own children, and I pray he is prepared.
TURNING AWAY WRATH
I saw my physician recently because of a persistent pain in my chest. A few weeks earlier I had received a head butt at the net while playing volleyball. I suspected I had a broken rib, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything more serious.
So I made a doctor’s appointment. I have a middle-aged doctor I like a lot. He’s kind and gentle; he listens to my complaint before dispensing advice; and he takes time to examine me thoroughly. In short, he knows what he’s doing.
As usual, there were several sick people in the waiting room, including a burly guy about 35 years old, dressed in a T-shirt and sweat pants. Soon after I arrived at 11:30 he started complaining loudly to the girl at the desk about how he had been waiting for 45 minutes and he had a schedule to keep. Just then my doctor walked by the front desk — and this patient started yelling at him.
My doctor kept his cool. “Well, partner,” he said in all sincerity, “we’ve had some medical emergencies back here today and we’re doing the best we can. You’re next on the schedule.”
The reply didn’t really appease the patient, who again announced he had things to do, including going to school.
“What time is your class?” the physician asked.
The impatient patient replied, “Two o’clock. But I have to eat lunch.”
The doctor responded, “We’ll get you in as soon as possible.”
“Do I have time to go outside and smoke a cigarette?” the patient asked, by now somewhat sheepishly.
“Yes,” the doctor responded calmly.
My physician followed the advice of Proverbs 15:1: “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (NIV).
In another few minutes I made it into an examination room, probably half an hour after my scheduled appointment. That’s to be expected; if doctors are doing their job, they probably are going to be running late.
I could tell my doctor needed some encouragement. He probably was working through his lunch hour because of the unanticipated traumas of the morning. I told him that I could have gone to an Urgent Care facility three weeks earlier, but I waited for him because I trust him and I respect his diagnoses. His eyes brightened, and he simply said, “I appreciate that.”
As 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, “Encourage one another and build each other up.”
When dealing with service personnel in a public setting, whether it’s a doctor, police officer, librarian, schoolteacher or some other worker, take time to say thank you once in awhile. Few of them receive gratitude for doing a good job, even if they deserve it. A kind word can defuse a tense situation. Remember, everyone’s time is important, not just yours.
KEEPING THE FAITH
In 2006 my brother returned to northeastern Pennsylvania for his 45th high school class reunion. His class had never held a reunion before and he hadn’t been in the town for many years, so what he found there discouraged him.
The once-bustling downtown he remembered from the early 1960s had turned into empty storefronts and vacant lots. Even his high school had been converted into public-assistance housing. Perhaps saddest of all, the mainline church where my dad preached for nearly a decade was struggling to stay open. When Pop left in 1963, about 1,000 people attended each Sunday; now there are 40 going to the cavernous stone building that takes up a city block. The parsonage is up for sale and the pastor position has been cut to part-time.
Certainly changing demographics played a role, but so did decreasing denominational standards. My mom recently came across an outline my dad had typed around half a century ago for a new members class. Those wanting to be a part of the church had to recite answers to 48 questions, including naming the Ten Commandments, repeating the Beatitudes, naming all the books of the Bible, listing the apostles, describing the gifts of the Spirit, defining sin and repentance, and on and on.
I’m not advocating months of study to join a church today. It wouldn’t fly in today’s culture. But perhaps we’ve made being a church member too easy. Many of us do a pretty good job of fellowshipping, praising and giving. But how are we doing in knowing the basics of our faith, the tenets that Jesus cherished and taught? Consider Christ’s words:
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand” (Matthew 7:24,26, NIV).