Dear Ones,
Hope you had a great weekend. We took in the movie, Green and Gold, at our nearby theater and enjoyed it. Our pastor will especially like it as it has to do with the Packers. This morning, I am going to make egg dishes and go to Aldi’s and exercise class.
Devotions from Judy’s heart
Are we self-sufficient or do we depend on the Lord in all our circumstances? Hopefully it is the latter for we were meant to live our lives in complete dependence on the Lord, not on ourselves. Even though we may hear a teaching about depending on Him or read about it, or see examples of it, it still is not easy to practice. Most people in our culture prize ourselves with being strong and self-sufficient and not needing others, or even the Lord. But the Holy Spirit wants to help us to be humbly dependent on the One who designed us and follow His pattern for our life. After all who would know better than the One who uniquely created us in the first place.

Now I would like to learn in a classroom what it means to be fully dependent on the Lord rather than in life’s circumstances but most of the time we learn through adverse times. Troubles come and God uses them to expose our weaknesses and to show us our need to tightly hold onto His strength, not our own. There are things that happen in life’s circumstances like a job loss, and we find out how we depended on our income rather than the Lord. Or maybe our marriage comes to an end, and we find ourselves lost without support and need His. There are also times God uses our circumstances to show a weakness in our character. Maybe we have experienced doing or saying something that we later thought, “I can’t believe I said that! I can’t believe I did that!” I’m sure Peter didn’t know he would deny the Lord three times, but he did. We all have weak areas, and the Lord wants to expose them so we can trust Him and draw our strength from Him.

When facing our troubles it will either make us become bitter or better. If our focus is on the big “I”, our ego, we become bitter. But when we look to the Lord, we will become better and stronger in Him. If our focus is on what we will learn from it, it can be character building, as we will grow through the hard times and become more like Him. Paul wrote in Phil. 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Let us die to self so we might live for Him.
Challenge for today: Instead of trying to get out of your hard situations, ask the Lord to help you learn what He is trying to teach you through them.
Blessings on your week and prayers and love, Judy