Prodigal: I heard you had a long day.
Me: You can say that again. I am ready to hit the hay.
Prodigal: Before we fall into sleep, let’s remember to gain encouragement from a short video.
This is a short video devotion about proverbs
Proverbs 5:3
For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil;
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
Prodigal: This is a comfortable seat.
Me: Good, then you can listen for awhile.
Prodigal: Yes, that is true. I am all ears.
This is from When I’m On My Knees by Anita Corrine Donihue
Thank You, Father, for Your Holy Spirit, Your Comforter. What peace it gives me to know You are with me through out my day. The world can’t see Your comfort unless they choose to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. Otherwise, they can never recognize Your sustaining power and grace.
I have so many questions to ask You about things I can’t understand. I realize some answers may not come until I see You face-to-face. This is where I learn to trust You and depend upon Your Word. Guide me into truth and knowledge, so I can make right decisions. Let me learn from Your stories of old so I may grow in You.
I wonder what it was like that evening long ago when Your disciples hid in fear behind bolted doors, not knowing what to do next. Would I have been so fearful? I think so.
Past the bolted doors You came and stood before them. “Peace be with you!” You assured them.
I would have been thrilled and frightened at the same time if I could have see Your hands and feet and side.
“Peace be with you,” again You charged. “As the Father has sent me, so send I you.” You breathed on them, and they received Your Comforter, Your Holy Spirit!
Breathe on me now, I pray. Fill me with Your Spirit. Grant me Your Comforter. Give me Your power so I may share the gospel in my life to everyone around me.
He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.
Psalm 78:16
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
Prodigal: We have to keep moving.
Me: I know but I want to share as we walk.
Prodigal: You can go ahead then.
This is from the book Where Angels Walk by Joan Wester Anderson
One mother and her little daughter were walking down the street when, a few feet from a wall, the child stopped. The mother urged her on, but the child seemed rooted to the spot. Suddenly there was a crash–the wall had fallen. Had they gone on, they undoubtedly would have been crushed to death. Pale with fright, the woman asked her daughter why she had stopped at that precise moment. “Didn’t you see that beautiful man, dressed in a long white gown, Mommy?” the child asked. “He stood right in front of me so I could not go on.”
Thus saith the LORD of hosts; If thou wilt walk in my ways, and if thou wilt keep my charge, then thou shalt also judge my house, and shalt keep my courts, and I will give thee places to walk among these that stand by.
Zechariah 3:7
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
Prodigal: Sometimes it feels like you are in the wilderness.
Me: Yes, but the Lord can be found in the wilderness with you.
Prodigal: Praise the Lord for that!
Here is a short video devotion on Proverbs
Proverbs 5:2 (NKJV)
That you may preserve discretion, and your lips may keep knowledge
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
Me: You looked all packed.
Prodigal: I am. I also I’m ready.
Me: Maybe this will help prepare your heart.
A missionary doctor spent forty years of his life ministering in the primitive villages of Africa. Finally, he decided to retire. He wired ahead that he would be returning by ship and gave the date and time of his arrival.
As he was crossing the Atlantic, he thought back over all the year he had spent helping to heal the people of Africa, both physically and spiritually. Then his thought raced ahead to the grand homecoming he knew awaited him in America because he had not been home in forty years.
As ship pulled into port, the old man’s heart swelled with pride as he saw the homecoming that had been prepared. A great crowd of people gathered, and there was a huge banner saying, “Welcome Home.” As the man stepped off the ship onto the dock and awaited a great ovation, his heart sank. Suddenly he realized the people had not gathered to pay tribute to him but to a movie star who had been aboard the same ship.
He waited in anguish with his heart braking. No one had come to welcome him home. As the crowd disbursed, the old man was left waiting alone. Tilting his face heavenward, he spoke these words, “Oh God, after giving all those years of my life to my fellow ma, was it too much to ask that one person–just one person–be here to welcome me home?”
In the quietness of his heart, he seemed to hear the voice of God whisper to him, “You’re not home yet. When you come home to ,me, you will be welcomed.”
Michael Broome Retold by Alice Gray
And everyone who has left houses or brother or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my safe will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.
Matthew 19:29
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodialpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
Me:Â It looks like a good day.
Prodigal:Â Yes, it does, but remember to have the Lord with you at all times.
Me:Â That is true.
This is from the book Bold Love by Dr. Dan B. Allender & Dr. Tremper Longman III
Sin, or hatred of God, is a defiant movement, sometimes unwitting and other times quite conscious, which refuses to depend on God for His direction and strength. In that sense, we become enemies of God whenever we seek to find satisfaction for our deepest longings apart from relationship with Him.
It is too easy to forget God. I wish it was not so, but the busy world that has left Christ out makes it real easy. Does that mean I have an excuse, well the Lord forgives, but life in relationship with the Lord makes a huge difference it how our life will turn out.
Wisdom is good with an inheritance:Â and by it there is profit to them that see the sun.
Ecclesiastes 7:11
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
Prodigal: It’s hotter than egg fryin’ on a skillet out there.
Me: Yes, so get in the shade to watch this video
This is a video devotion on Proverbs
Proverbs 5:1
My son, pay attention to my wisdom, turn your ear to my words of insight.
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
Me: You should read the sign.
Prodigal: Yes, we need information from signs at times.
Me: I agree.
This is from the book Small Miracles for Women by Yitta Halberson & Judith Leventhal
One morning in 1975 in Greenwood, South Carolina. Dorothy Nicholas sat scribbling at her kitchen table. She was trying to compose an appropriate slogan. Even though Dorothy is an award-winning writer and former advertising copywriter, she sometimes has trouble finding just the right words. And she sensed that these needed to be perfect.
The words were for a sign hanging over the self-service gas station Dorothy managed with help form her disabled husband, Fred. They had started working a week ago, pulling their trailer from Orlando up to Greenwood, and the job seemed simply enough, just sitting at a drive-up window, taking money from customers.
“It was a bit of a lark,” Dorothy admits. “Fred and I called a lot of places “home” during those years, because we both yearned to travel, and with our children grown, we could do it.” Sometimes they settled for a while and took jobs, and this was one of those times.
There was already a lighted advertising sign on top of the building, but Dorothy’s new boss had told her she could replace the message with anything she liked. “I had heard that this chain of stations was frequently robbed,” Dorothy says, “so I was thinking about a safety-related slogan.” At the same time, she felt that God was nudging her, encouraging her to make her trust in Him known to others. She tried several ideas; then inspiration struck.
“What do you think of this?” she asked Fred.
He studied her scrawl: GOD IS OUR SECURITY GUARD–ALWAYS ON THE JOB. “That says it pretty well,” he told her. The next day, he spelled it out on the lighted board.
The sign was impressive, but it seemed to have little or no effect on anyone. Few customers commented on it.
After five months, the wanderlust struck again, and Dorothy and Fred resigned and took off in the trailer. Time passed.
“Sometimes we would travel that route, going from Florida to North Carolina, and I always felt a little glow as we’d drive by the sign,” Dorothy says. Subsequent managers had liked it well enough to keep it up. But, remembering her strange urgency to find just the right words, Dorothy wondered if the sign had really mattered to God, after all.
In 1988, Dorothy and Fred found themselves in Gainsville, Florida. At church they met Janet and Larry, a young couple living nearby. The four got along well, and when Dorothy and Fred had temporary health problems, their new friends proved to be a blessing, running errands, providing an occasional meal, and just being there. “I don’t know what we would have done with out you.” Dorothy told Larry more than once. She was growing quite fond of this kind clean-cut young man.
One evening Dorothy invited Janet and Larry over for dinner. The four sat around table, talking in a leisurely way. Fred and Dorothy were surprised to hear that Larry had grown up in Greenwood.
“Why, we worked there once….,” Dorothy began. Had they ever met Larry? She started to ask him, but having begun to talk about himself, Larry couldn’t stop.
“I’ve had a pretty rough past,”he went on, pent-up words suddenly tumbling out. At 16, he gotten involved with the wrong crowd and had spent a year in reform school. After his release, he’d wanted to start over again, but because of his record, he couldn’t find a job.
“One night in 1975,” Larry continued, “I decided to rob a gas station for money to leave home.” There was a self-service station nearby, so he stole his father’s gun and car, and just before closing time, he drove up to rob the woman sitting at the window.
But before pulling his gun, he glanced at the roof of the building. There had always been a sign there, but someone had recently changed the words. “When I read the message,” Larry said, “I knew I couldn’t rob that place–or do anything else illegal.” He went home, prayed all night, and begged God to help him straighten out his life.
Dorothy and Fred looked at each other.
“What did the sign say, Larry?” she asked gently.
“I’ve never forgotten those words,” the young man assured her. It said, “GOD IS OUR SECURITY GUARD–ALWAYS ON THE JOB.” And he is, Dorothy. He guarded me from danger that night, and he has ever since.”
Dorothy’s heart lifted. It had taken 13 years, but now she knew the source of that strange longing, the need to find just the perfect words. God used her small act of faith to bring a lost child safely to his side.
–Joan Wester Anderson
For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which ye have showed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.
Hebrew 6:10
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
Prodigal: I am impressed with the dessert table.
Me: How they taste will determine if you should be impressed or not.
Prodigal: I am not concerned that they will not taste good!
Howard G. Hendricks once said “Great impressions can be made from a distance, but reality can only be tested up close.
Has your impression of someone ever been disappointment when you start viewing them up close? That has happened to me. I think we tend to forget that some people are really good at giving off a good impression, but all they are showing us is an impression.
As a therapist, I often hear I want to change no matter what it takes. I really believe most people want to change, when they say this. I also can see how they want to show others that they really want to change.
After weeks or months though it becomes a different story. Some will stop the process completely. Others are not consistent. Then there are those, that have a block to change. How do I know what will happen. I have to get up close, to figure out what is really taking place, and not the impression they are trying to give.
Disappointment fills my spirit, when I get up close and realize someone did not really want to change at all. They were saying they wanted to change, but had another motive.
How do we deal with all of this in people around us? Did the bible tell us?
Matthew 7:16-19 (NKJV)
You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.
The word of God tells us that we are not to focus on just impressions that people give us. We are to look at fruit. Fruit is not an abstract concept but something that is concrete. It is something that can be examined. You can smell fruit, taste fruit, look at fruit and feel it.
An impression of someone is just a picture of a fruit. It does not tell us all about that fruit. We need to examine behaviors, relationships, speech and spirit. When we look at these concrete areas in their lives we are able to get up close. We look beyond a pretty picture that is presented to us.
If no one could speak suddenly, what would that say about their lives? Would they still have fruit? Could we see Christ in how they treat others? Could we see Christ in if they serve others? Could we see Christ in if they attempt to learn His words and spend time alone with Christ?
Examine some people’s fruit this week. God doesn’t want you to be disappointed. He is trying to warn you. Some people are just showing you a picture of fruit. Don’t take this picture for the real thing.
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodialpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
Prodigal: Y’all are a mighty fine couple!
Me: Y’all sure are….enjoy the video!
Below is a short video devotion
Proverbs 4:27
Turn not to the right or the left; remove your foot from evil
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodialpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
