Dear Ones,

Happy weekend! Hope you are enjoying this extended holiday weekend. We plan to go to the lake tomorrow afternoon for our annual 4th of July picnic with lots of relatives. That is a time for swimming and saunaing, tubing, picnicing and time to catch up. This morning I studied and made egg dishes and pork chops smoothered in apples slices. 
Devotions from Judy’s heart

Vacations are wonderful to get away from our usual work and to see friends and new vistas but we never never need a vacation from God. He should be our constant factor and  not someone we live for one day and the next day live for ourselves. He waits for us each day to come to Him and to listen and rest in His presence.

   Knowing God is far more than mouthing the right words and having the right information about Him; it’s desiring Him and having a deep personal relationship with Him. I think back of when Al and I were first married how we could hardly stand to be apart to go to work each day. But when I remember those days, I realize my love him is far deeper now as I know him so much better and there are always new things to discover about him.

   With the Lord, we will never never plumb the depths of Him or run out of the new things to learn about Him and experience. Each day is an opportunity to move forward and deepen our relationship and we are being changed as He transforms us to become more like Him

   Like Paul said in Phil 3:10 (Amplified), “(For my determined purpose is) that I may know Him (that I may  progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly), and that I may in the same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection (which it exerts over believers), and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed (in spirit into His likeness even) to His death, (in the hope).”

   Do we have a passion to know God, the One who is always with us and for us, even when we fail? Paul gave up everything to know the Lord and are we willing to give up time to spend in His presence, and to give up our reputations when the world disagrees with us?  Will we keep moving forward rather than taking a vacation and slipping backwards?

   May our desire for God not diminish, but increase that knowing Him will permeate everything we do!

   Challenge for today: Seek to know God in a new way…perhaps spend time sitting before Him in nature, or singing a song that comes expresses what is in your heart.

Blessings on your holiday weekend and prayers and love, Judy