I suddenly stopped my walk. I saw something there on the ground before me. It seemed out of place, but also had a sense of serenity to it. There on the sidewalk was a white feather. The whiteness of the feather gave it a sense of being special. I had no idea what bird lost a feather that day. As I picked it up to have a closer look, I thought did the bird even know it had lost a feather? Was losing a feather like losing some of your hair?
I have a lot of hair. That means strands of my hair are around my house, at work and probably that sidewalk. I do not notice most of the time when I lose a piece of hair. Does the bird live the same type of life? With no thoughts to where a feather might have gone missing?
Within a couple of minutes my spirit reminded me what God has said about our hair. Luke 12:7 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows (NKJV).
That is amazing! My family, friends, neighbors and coworkers could not even guess how many hairs I have on my head. Even if one of them knew. How could you keep track of the number day in and day out?
I went on healthline.com just to get some basic numbers to help us out. We have about 100,000 hairs on our head on average. We lose about 50 to 100 hairs a day. About 90 percent of our hair is constantly growing each day. All this depends on sex, hair color, texture and follicles. This just gives us an average.
The Word of God speaking to us, tells us that someone knows how many hairs you have right now, today on the top of your head. The Lord loves you that much and has a profound interest in everything about you.
Maybe that bird has no idea it lost a feather. Maybe you have no idea that you left some of your hair on that chair you were sitting on an hour ago. The Lord took notice, when one hair fell from its place and no longer was a part of you. What amazing attention we have from our Father!
Lord thank you for noticing the big things in my life, but also the small things. Thank you that your attention is so focused on me, that you know if anything changes in me. I want to remember this act of love from you. I want to Praise you!
This is from the book Bold Love by Dr. Dan B. Allender & Dr. Tremper Longman III
The Apostle Paul does the same kind of paint job in the first three chapters of the book of Romans. Paul builds his case from the premise that we are all excuse makers. We believe that if our hearts were known, we would be found innocent. It seems so reasonable. Our thoughts run along this course, “If you only understood the unbelievable tough decisions I am called to make every day, you would not hold me accountable to make any more. Indeed, if you truly understood how hard I’ve labored to make any godly and honoring decision, you would get off my back. Even more, if you only understood how much I’ve been hurt, neglected, and abused, you would know that God requires little (or next to nothing) from me.”
God has promised to give you His strength. Don’t make excuses. Just love like you are suppose to do. Just believe that God knows what He is doing!
For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee.
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.
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.
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.
Prodigal: Yes, it does, but remember to have the Lord with you at all times.
Me: 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: and by it there is profit to them that see the sun.
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.
