To Help or Not to Help - Martin Wiles

Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it! Hebrews 13:2 NLT

He stood on a busy intersection, holding a sign we couldn’t read. To help or not to help, that was the question. Although the town where we lived wasn’t large, we had begun to see more homeless and indigent people standing on corners near our local restaurants and retailers.

As we pulled out of one parking lot after our meal, my wife and I strained our necks but couldn’t read his sign. After visiting the pharmacy to pick up medicine, we passed the man again on our way home.

“I’m going to circle around to see what the sign says,” my wife remarked.

I was glad. Lately, we had been paying it forward. Perhaps this was another opportunity. As we neared the gentleman, we noticed he didn’t look like the others we’d seen requesting help.

The man’s sign read, “Trying desperately to help my family. Waiting on my disability check.” He didn’t appear disabled, but then again, many who are don’t. We pulled to the stop sign next to him. My wife said nothing.

“What do you think?” I finally asked.

“I don’t feel the tug,” she said. And we drove on.

God regularly places opportunities in our path. More if we ask Him too. But I can’t take advantage of every good opportunity, nor does God expect me to. I’m not a wealthy man. Even Jesus, with all of heaven’s riches at his disposal, didn’t heal every sickness or meet the needs of every person who wanted his help. There were times when he left the crowds to pray to his heavenly Father or to move to another region.

Knowing which helping opportunity God wants us to seize takes much prayer. This helps us look and listen with spiritual eyes and ears. We must ask God to send the opportunities, but we must also ask him to let us see them. Busyness and selfishness will often cause us to miss out.

The tug my wife mentioned is what we call God’s Spirit. We both feel it when it’s an opportunity God wants us to take. It’s an overwhelming pressure to intervene—a feeling of guilt when we let the opportunity slip by.

Ask God to show you the situations where he wants you to intervene. You can’t do it all, but you can do something.

Father, guide me to those people and situations where you want me to intervene. 

If you seek hope and healing because of hurts you have faced, then Hurt, Hope, and Healing is for you. Click on the title above to order your copy. And thanks to all our faithful followers who share our posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.

Fear Not Life’s Noises - Martin Wiles

The Lord is my light and my salvation—so why should I be afraid? The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger, so why should I tremble? Psalm 27:1 NLT

I dropped the pans on the floor. A loud scream followed.

When my son was an infant, my wife and I worried that ear infections had affected his hearing. Rather than take him to the pediatrician, we decided to perform a home test. As my wife sat at the kitchen table with him cuddled in her arms, I dropped a heavy pan. His screams reassured us that his hearing was okay.

Humans are born with two innate fears: falling and loud noises. I saw the second in my son; I witnessed the first in one of my grandsons. After he started walking, I noticed he hesitated when approaching a ledge or when he got too close to the edge of a chair or the couch. I didn’t have to say, “Watch out. You’ll fall.” He naturally knew something was different.

I’m sure David was frightened by many things, but he had the sense to know he shouldn’t be. God saved him from lions, bears, enemies, and a jealous king. He lit his path and provided a protective wall.

I may have been born with only two fears, but I’ve accumulated many more: fear of those who can harm me physically, fear of financial failure, fear of relationship demise, fear of not being loved, fear of emotional abuse, fear of unemployment, fear of depleted retirement savings. Yet I’m reminded of what Paul told Timothy: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV).

Fears seem to come naturally in our human experience, but if we’re only created with two, they shouldn’t. As with David, experience should teach us to depend on God for salvation and protection. He has saved us from the greatest fear we could ever have: eternity apart from him in payment for our sins. But even if our lives are taken by others, our souls are secure.

We can also depend on God to guard our daily steps. We may incur sicknesses—even life-threatening diseases—but He provides ultimate protection. Since the imperishable part of us is safe in his arms, we can live without fearing the other things that assault us during our life’s journey.

Don’t live with a spirit of fear when God says, “Fear not.”

Father, I thank you for allowing me to live life free of fear. 

If you seek hope and healing because of hurts you have faced, then Hurt, Hope, and Healing is for you. Click on the title above to order your copy. And thanks to all our faithful followers who share our posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.

Banana Pudding

 

Ingredients

6 Bananas

1 large box Vanilla Instant Pudding

1 can of Sweetened Condensed Milk

1 large tub of Cool Whip

3 cups of whole milk

8 ounces of sour cream

1 box of Vanilla Wafers 

Directions

Mix pudding and whole milk.

Add Sweetened Condensed Milk and fold in Cool Whip and sour cream.

In a bowl, layer bananas and vanilla wafers.

Pour pudding on top. 

Refrigerate. 

I invite you to try my book Hurt, Hope, and Healing in eBook or paperback. If you seek hope and healing because of the hurts you have faced, this book is for you. Click on the title above to order your copy. And thanks to all our faithful followers who share our posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.

The Cure for a Sin-Sick Heart - Martin Wiles

No, it’s because of your wickedness! There’s no limit to your sins. Job 22:5 NLT

“Have you anointed her and prayed for her healing?”

My wife suffers from various physical ailments—too many, in fact, for her years. She has undergone numerous surgeries to remove tumors that could have turned malignant. Then came surgeries to repair hernias, remove a gall bladder, remove plantar warts, and repair carpal tunnel. She still suffers from herniated disks in her back and neck. To top off these issues, she suffers with fibromyalgia, degenerative arthritis, and neuropathy. Every trip to the doctor seems to entail another medicine or a further diagnosis.

Had my wife lived in Job’s time, she would certainly have been classified as a notorious sinner by any number of pious church folks. Although a righteous man—declared so by God and himself—Job faced real accusations, not hypothetical ones. Several fair-weather friends accused him of sinning against God. Why else would he be afflicted by boils and have lost most of his family and possessions? Even his wife told him to curse God so he could die and get his miserable life over with.

Job, however, maintained his innocence, and at the end of the story God corroborated his testimony. Sickness is the bane of living in a world tainted by sin. The world God originally created was free from sickness—and all the other results of sin—and the new world he will create at the end of time will be identical.

While sickness came when sin entered the world, all sickness is not the result of individual sins. If this were true, my wife would be one of the greatest sinners in the world—when, in fact, she is quite saintly. God can and does use sickness as a means of disciplining or punishing those who revel in willful sin, but having a cold, flu, COVID, or some other illness or disease doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve committed a particular sin.

When my friend asked whether I had anointed and prayed for my wife, I answered, “Yes.” But she hasn’t been healed. Just as sickness is not always the result of sin, so God doesn’t always choose to heal our sicknesses when we ask. He is sovereign. We must trust his plan.

If you’re sick, examine your spiritual life. If it’s in order, pray for healing, but leave the results to an all-wise God.

Father, we entrust our health-related matters to you. If sin is the cause, convict us. If it’s not, then give us the courage to trust you and endure. 

I invite you to try my book Hurt, Hope, and Healing in eBook or paperback. If you seek hope and healing because of the hurts you have faced, this book is for you. Click on the title above to order your copy. And thanks to all our faithful followers who share our posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.

The Hunt for Truth - Lynne Phipps

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Matthew 7:7-8 NIV

Easter morning is always an exciting and bustling time within our household as my granddaughters search for Easter eggs. These goodies have been cleverly hidden by their parents, and the girls must search diligently to find them. What happiness ensues when all have been discovered, and their Easter baskets are overflowing with yummy treats. But the hunt for truth should bring even more excitement. 

Searching for Easter eggs brought to mind the treats of truth and wisdom God has hidden for us within his Word. The Scriptures hold the secrets of life. They reveal who God is and how we may come into a relationship with him through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. They teach us how to deal with any situation life can throw at us. We learn how to praise God and the best way to treat our enemies. 

God’s Word has the power to correct our behavior and convict us of wrong thoughts and actions. It can restore us spiritually and emotionally. The Scripture makes the simple wise and promotes hope and joy. It prepares us for the future and relieves us of the burdens of our past. Indeed, within God’s Word are found treasures beyond compare.

Like hunting for hidden Easter eggs, however, we too must be prepared to hunt for these gems of truth within the Scriptures. We must be willing to ask God for a hunger in our hearts for his Word as well as guidance as we read it. We must be persistent in searching the Word for new truths that we may have missed. Some, we may not have been mature enough to see or understand at a previous time. We must also be tenacious in seeking enlightenment regarding how to apply these precious truths to our everyday lives.

When the girls hunt for their eggs, they are rewarded for finding them. They gather them and eventually pop them into their mouths to enjoy the tasty morsels. Likewise, when we seek, ask, and knock to discover the truths in God’s Word, we too are blessed as we discover, embrace, and taste their goodness by putting them into practice and seeing that they are good.

Make sure your hunt for truth takes you to God’s Word daily. 

Father God, thank you for your precious Word. Encourage and motivate me to hunger for its truths.  Strengthen me to be tenacious when asking, seeking, and knocking. Grant me enlightenment, wisdom, correction, and teaching through them, so that I might live a good and productive life. Help my life to be a witness of your lovingkindness and mercy to all those around me. In Christ’s name I pray, amen.

Lynne Phipps and her family live on a small hobby farm in the heart of Alberta, Canada’s farming country. She has been writing devotions for forty years and never tires of the spiritual correlation the Holy Spirit blesses her with. He uses normal everyday events and the behaviors of the multitude of glorious creatures He has brought across her path to point her to the truths of God. Lynne is a devotion writer for VineWords: Devotions and More, Christian Devotions, and Love Lines from God.

I invite you to try my book Hurt, Hope, and Healing in eBook or paperback. If you seek hope and healing because of the hurts you have faced, this book is for you. Click on the title above to order your copy. And thanks to all our faithful followers who share our posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.

 

 

How to Stop Chickening Out - Martin Wiles

So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites: “The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge.” Numbers 13:32 NLT

I was young when I learned chicken wasn’t necessarily a chicken. Chickens ran around my grandmother’s yard during the day and were locked up in the coop at night. But if my cousin asked me to do something I was scared to do and I didn’t do it, he labeled me a chicken. And since I was somewhat afraid of adventure, I often wore the label.

“I bet you won’t jump off the tractor shed,” he might say.

“Are you crazy?” I’d respond.

“Chicken. Bak, bak, bak.”

Or if it was something I initially said I’d do but then changed my mind about at the last minute, I would be accused of chickening out. Either way, I was a chicken.

Of the twelve spies Moses sent into the Promised Land, ten chickened out. Four hundred years of Egyptian slavery was behind the Israelites. Now, they stood on the border of the land God had promised their ancestors. Out of fear—or good sense—Moses sent twelve men to peruse the land. It was promising all right, but was also guarded by giants and walled cities. Only Joshua and Caleb maintained they could take the land. The majority’s disobedience cost the Israelites forty years of wilderness wandering.

It sounds reassuring to tell people God won’t ask them to do anything they can’t do—but most of the time that’s not true. God often asks us to do things we can’t do. If we can do it, we don’t need him. If we can’t do it—but He helps us do it—then the spotlight shines on him, and he gets the glory for what’s accomplished.

What God asks of us, he enables us to do. He would have enabled the people to conquer the land—and he did for another generation forty years later. The walled cities and giants were no problem for them when God was their guide.

I wonder how many things we’ve missed doing for God because we chickened out and never started. Living the Christian life involves faith and trust, and sometimes the faith must be blind faith—the kind children have.

Don’t chicken out on what God asks of you. He’ll always supply the strength, the way, and the courage.

Father, help me to trust you for the wisdom and power to do everything you ask. 

I invite you to try my book Hurt, Hope, and Healing in eBook or paperback. If you seek hope and healing because of the hurts you have faced, this book is for you. Click on the title above to order your copy. And thanks to all our faithful followers who share our posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.

Banana Nut Muffins

 

 

Ingredients

1 BOX SPICE CAKE MIX

2 EGGS

1 CUP MILK

1/3 CUP CHOPPED PECANS

1/3 CUP OIL

1 BANANA (MASHED)

Directions

MIX ALL INGREDIENTS TOGETHER.

POUR INTO GREASED MUFFIN PANS.

BAKE AT 350 DEGREES FOR 15-20 MINUTES.

I invite you to try my book Hurt, Hope, and Healing in eBook or paperback. If you seek hope and healing because of the hurts you have faced, this book is for you. Click on the title above to order your copy. And thanks to all our faithful followers who share our posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.