Dear Ones,
  Hope you wake to a day full of God’s surprises. Have you ever been surprised by an unexpected road the Lord took you on and later thankful for how it turned out?  Perhaps we have all had those times and it is important to listen and go His way and not ours. 
We had a fun party here at Northern Lakes last night with so much food, games and prizes, and caroling. 
Devotions from Judy’s heart
  How focused are we to seek the will of God in our lives and then do it? Maybe we feel we have taken some side roads and veered off at times from the path God wants us on. All of us can get distracted and also influenced by others and sometimes we find we have missed an opportunity God had for us and we try to get on track again.
  When I was doing my homework for Women’s Bible Study and it is on the book of Ruth, I noted how she followed God’s plan for her life. She was a Moabite woman married to an Israelite man who died and left her a widow. She could have gone back to her home country and people but instead she went into the unknown of a new country and people with her mother-in-law.  She followed God’s plan for her life and didn’t get sidetracked and later married Boaz and became the great-grandmother of King David.
   Sometimes we miss the best God has for us when we get distracted by something good but not God’s best. We need to listen carefully and well for it could be that the good is the enemy of the best! Each time Al got a call for another church we had to pray and seek God’s will. One time it was for a church in Hawaii and the kids and I all said, Surely that is the will of God!! But of course, we knew it was our flesh responding to what seemed like an opportunity to spend our days on the warm beach!
  For many of us it would be hard to uproot and move across the country to a new job or perhaps to a foreign country; but it takes praying and listening and seeking to hear the Lord so we can discern His will. It doesn’t always seem logical or practical but later when we look back, we can see His hand moving us just where we need to be. As it says in Heb. 10:36 (ESV), “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised” Let us not settle for what is comfortable but seek to do His will.
   Challenge for today: Listen carefully and follow in obedience to what you hear the Spirit saying to you.
Blessings on your day and prayers and love, Judy