Dear Ones,
I wrote this early this morning but couldn’t get on our blog site. I just tried again  and it worked but will send as I wrote it earlier. 
It is a rainy day but hopefully sunshine within! I just did food prep and made some bars and soon going to my exercise class and then to get my stitches out. This afternoon is crafts and tonight is Bible study. Hopefully I will be able to send out this devotional as I had trouble yesterday. 
Devotions from Judy’s heart
   How is your soul? Is it well with your soul? I went to order a necklace that had had the message inscribed, “It is well with my soul”. No matter what is going on in our lives, is it still well with our souls? 
   I marvel and learn from the apostle Paul and how he entrusted his soul so completely to the Lord even in the times his very life was at stake. He wasn’t basing his faith and hope on the fact that things would go well for him, but only that the Lord would keep what he had already committed to the Lord. As he told Timothy, his spiritual son in the faith, “I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.” II Tim.1:12 (ESV) His very soul was entrusted to the Lord.  He went on to tell Timothy to share in the suffering and endure it as a good soldier of Christ. Paul didn’t paint a picture of a pain free life but only that the Lord would strengthen him and bring him through whatever happened until the day he would enter heaven.
  We are not in control of all that happens to us, but our soul can be at rest as we give ourselves completely to the Lord, even when it may not make sense to us in the natural. Not everything is good that happens to us, but He works it for the greatest good. Like the song goes, “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrow like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.” The writer of the song was Horatio Spafford who wrote it in 1873 on his way to meet his wife who had been rescued at sea but his 4 daughters had just drowned. He had already lost his only son at age 4 and he had lost much of his business during the Chicago fire. Yet he could say, no matter what, “It is well with my soul!”
  May we also trust the Lord, even when we don’t understand His ways and remember He knows the larger story that will bring Him glory.
Challenge for today:  Ask the Lord to bring out the greatest good of whatever you are going through.
Blessings and prayers and love, Judy