Powerful People

Me: Can you help me?

Prodigal: If I get a notion.

Me: Please, it would mean a lot.

Prodigal: I will help and you can share.

Me: Agreed!

This is from the book Keep Your Love On by Danny Silk

If you heard someone described as a powerful person, you might assume he or she would be the loudest person in the room, the one telling everyone else what to do. But powerful does not mean dominating. In fact, a controlling, dominating person is the very opposite of a powerful person.

Powerful people do not try to control other people. They know it doesn’t work, and that it’s not their job. Their job is to control themselves.

Leave that person to God. Focus on yourself. You can’t control, you just have give it to Christ.

Romans 10:1

Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

A Busy Street

Me: That street looks busy.

Prodigal: I will be careful when I am crossing.

This is from the book Where Angels Walk by Joan Wester Anderson

Mother Angelica has told the story often. About eleven years old, and feeling especially lonely and sad, she was walking downtown one evening, oblivious to everything around her. “I started to cross a busy street, then heard a woman’s shrill scream behind me,” she recalls. Rita looked back expecting to see someone in trouble, and instead realized that a car was speeding toward her, the headlights shining in her eyes. There was no time to get to the safety island. Rita froze, closed her eyes and waited for fatal impact.

Instead she felt two strong hands lift her high in the air. A moment later she blinked and looked around in disbelief. She was standing on the sidewalk!

A bus driver who witnessed the event from his higher perch later reported, with disbelief, a somewhat different scenario. He insisted that Rita had jumped or somehow been catapulted into the air, easily clearing both the safety island and the onrushing auto. Such a feat seemed impossible, and the man was dumbfounded.

Mother Angelica hasn’t forgotten that extraordinary moment when she felt the hands of a comforter and knew that God’s love would never fail.

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

MATTHEW 11 : 28

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Women Lovin’ Jesus

Prodigal: Butter my buns and call me a biscuit.

Me: Reminds me, of breakfast….

This is a short video devotion on Proverbs

click here to watch the video

Proverbs 12:12 The wicked covet the catch of evil man, But the root of the righteous yields fruit.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

The Miracle of the Rain

Prodigal: It looks like rain today.

Me: Perfect time for me to tell a good story.

This comes from the book Angels Beside you by James Pruitt

The following is a story that began on October 21, 1942. The participants were members of the United States Army Air Corps, Transport Command, and one famous American civilian.

The Transport Command had the duty of flying newly constructed aircraft to forward operations areas in the Pacific and returning to the States with older aircraft that had been replaced. On this particular flight, the pilot was Captain William T. Cherry. His co-pilot was Lieutenant James C. Whittaker; Second Lieutenant John J. DeAngelis was the navigator; Staff Sergeant James W. Reynolds was the radio operator; and Corporal Johnny Bartek was the flight engineer.

Bill Cherry’s crew was returning from a forward base where they had delivered a new B-17 bomber. They were now on the return trip, and after a stopover at Hickam Field in Hawaii, the would be headed home to the States.

On the morning of the nineteenth, they arrived at the field to find that their orders had been changed. They had their Flying Fortress had been reassigned to carry the famous Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and an aide on a secret mission for the War Department. The crew was disappointed, of course. They had hoped to be home in a few hours, but orders were orders. Besides, they all wanted to meet the World War I ace who had knocked down twenty-six German planes and had become a hero in that war.

The famous visitor arrived at the runway at ten-thirty the following day. Rickenbacker was now a civilian, and Washington had insisted that he have a military aide with him. The man he had chosen was Colonel Hans Adamson, a friend from his World War I days. Accompanying them was Sergeant Alex Kaczmarczyk, another flight engineer, who had been released from the base hospital and was returning to his unit.

Things immediately began to go wrong. As Captain Cherry headed the huge Fortress down the runway to take off, a cable in the brake assembly broke, sending the plane into a sideways skid. Cherry groundlooped the plane a few times before bringing it safely to a stop. Rickenbacker complimented him on his excellent reaction and left the plane with is aide. Cherry went about checking on his crew. Everyone was all right, but he noticed Lieutenant DeAngelis checking his octant, which had flown across his plotting board and hit the side of the aircraft. (An octant is an optical instrument similar to a sextant. It is employed in navigation to measure angles and distances and ascertain latitudes and longitudes.)

“Equipment all right?” asked Cherry.

“As far as I can tell,” replied DeAngelis.

An inspection of the damaged aircraft determined that repairs were out of the question. They would have to take another plane. It was well after midnight by the time all equipment and personnel gear had been switched over to the new aircraft. They departed Hickam Field at one twenty-nine A.M, October 21.

For the first few hours everything seemed to be all right, but soon DeAngelis came up to the cockpit with a worried look on his face. They had passed their ETA (estimated time of arrival) and there was no island in sight. The octant had given them a false reading. By the time they realized the malfunction, they were down to four hours of fuel. In Captain Cherry’s words, “We were totally lost.”

Whittake and Cherry agreed that they would have to fly a box pattern–in other words, make a turn, fly one hour, then make another turn for another hour, then turn again, and so forth until they completed a box pattern. By doing this they hoped by chance to spot the island–or any island, for that matter.

In the meantime, Rickenbacker organized the crew and the equipment that would be needed should they have to ditch. By the time they had made the last turn, it became apparent that there were no islands in their area and they were going to have to crash-land in the sea.

A talented pilot, Captain Cherry brought the giant Fortress in at just the right level and pancaked it across the waves with minimum damage. Immediately three life rafts were inflated and the crew abandoned ship. All told, there were eight men in the three rafts. However, the plane had begun to fill with water so fast that the person designated to recover the food and water had forgotten those two precious items in his rush to exit the sinking aircraft. The only food they had when the plane went beneath the waves were four oranges found bobbing in the water.

Staff Sergeant Reynolds had sent out SOS signals over his radio until the very last minute. As the sun set on their first night, the survivors were not overly concerned. They were certain the signal had been heard and that once they were discovered to be overdue at the island, an immediate search would begin. Cherry busied himself taking inventory of what they had saved. There were two air pumps for the rafts, two knives, three Very pistols with eighteen flares (half of which turned out to be duds), two 45-caliber pistols, oars, some fish hooks, and some line.

The second day passed and there were no signs of search aircraft. Still they were not overly worried. There was a war going on, after all, and a rescue would take considerable organizing.

By the third day, the men began to realize the hardships facing them. From about eleven in the morning to four in the afternoon, the sun bore down on them as if they were ants on a huge griddle, cooking them unmerciful. That night, the waves rose to heights of ten to twelve feet, tossing them about and covering them with spray and mist that became unbelievably cold during the early morning hours. Each man was soon hoping for the heat of the sun.

By the fourth day food was becoming a major concern. The small pieces of orange that were passed out each day did little to sustain them. It was afternoon when Staff Sergeant Reynolds remembered the fish hooks and line. Captain Cherry used an orange peel for bait, but after a few hours realized that fish were not attracted to the peeling.

On the fifth day Cherry made another attempt with the peeling and again found it useless. The discussion suddenly wen to more formidable bait. When Cherry asked aloud if fingernail parings would work, Johnny Bartek replied, “Naw, the only things we’ve got for bait is our hides.”

Everyone went quiet. This presented a startling possibility.

“What part would you use?” asked Whittaker.

“The earlobe,”, said Bartek. “You don’t need it and you wouldn’t miss it.”

“How about the fall of the little finger?” said Whittaker. “A small slice wouldn’t cause much pain and there would be little chance of infection.”

“I think a piece of toe would do,” said Reynolds. “That way no one would ever know you’d been disfigured.”

However, the part of the anatomy that they would have selected will never be known. For a few moments after the others asked Captain Rickenbacker’s opinion, a startling event occurred.

Just before, the air above them had been void of anything but the burning sun. Now there was a loud flapping of wings. Totally without warning and seemingly coming from nowhere, a sea swallow landed on Eddie Rickenbacker’s head. A bird about half the seagull, the sea swallow sat precariously on Rickenbaker’s head and stared at each man with understandable curiosity.

Slowly, Rickenbacker moved his hand up to his chin, then long his eyebrow. No one in the boat breathed. In one quick motion, Rickenbacker snatched the bird from his head. Holding it firmly, he began to tear it apart and divide it among the starving men.

Where had this bird come from? Whittaker himself estimated that the box pattern they had flown revealed that there were no land masses within a 165 square-mile radius of where their plane went down. Yet this small bird appeared from nowhere to provide the desperate men with a small amount of food, but more importantly, with the bait they needed for their hooks.

Within minutes of eating the sea swallow, they caught two fair-sized fish. As the fish were being prepared for distribution, young Johnny Bartek unzipped his small New Testament and gave a silent prayer of thanks.

Whittaker noticed this and commented, “Do you think that had anything to do with the Bird, Bartek?”

The airmen nodded and replied, “The Lord’s angels can appear in many shapes and forms, Lieutenant Whittaker.”

The lieutenant started to criticize the statement, but let it go for the time being.

By the sixth day, water was becoming a critical need. That afternoon, Bartek removed his small Bible and asked if the others would mind pulling the three rafts, which were attached by a line, together so that they could hold a prayer meeting.

Lieutenant Whittaker commented, in his book, We Thought We Heard the Angels Sing, that he had been exposed to religion and Bible teachings at an early age, but had long ago lost any interest in such things. When Bartek began reciting the Lord’s Prayer, Whittaker could only remember a word here and there. He never seriously thought that the open-air revival meeting was going to do much good. But they were in trouble, there was no denying that, so what harm would it do?

Colonel Adamson, Rickenbacker’s aide, volunteered to read at this first meeting. Thumbing through the small Bible, the colonel found the Scripture he was searching for. It was Matthew 6:31-34. In a reverent tone that seemed natural to the man, he began to read aloud.

“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

When he had finished, Whittaker was surprised to find himself rather impressed and said so, aloud, adding that the evil had certainly been sufficient unto the last few days.

The colonel quickly explained that these verses did not mean tomorrow literally, that perhaps they meant soon.

Whittaker thought of the words all through the cold, wet, dreary night that followed, finally dismissing them with the decision that he would “believe” when he saw the food and water. Whittaker would not have to wait long. He would receive a sample of startling proof the following night.

The sweltering sun beat down on the group as they drifted into their seventh day on the sea. The last orange was carefully divided and its minimal liquid was gone in seconds, leaving Whittaker even thirstier than before. His hopes stirred the previous night had now vanished in the face of hard reality.

By the time the evening prayer session began, Whittaker’s cynicism had reached epic proportions. As Colonel Adamson began to read, Whittaker thought to himself how ridiculous it appeared for men as practical and as hardboiled as these to expect a mumbling voice bobbing about in the middle of an ocean to summon help for them.

When the colonel had finished, Captain Cherry repeated the passage from Matthew about the food and water on the morrow.

“Yeah, always tomorrow,” thought Whittaker bitterly.

Captain Cherry then began his own version of a prayer, referring to God as the Old Master. He spoke simply and directly.

“Old Master, we know this isn’t a guarantee we’ll eat in the morning, but we’re in an awful fix, as you know. We sure are counting on a little something by day after tomorrow, at least. Please see what you can do for us, Old Master.”

Finishing his prayer, Cherry fired off a flare just as they had done each evening, in the hope that someone would see it. This time the flare’s charge was faulty and the fireball rose only fifty feet or so into the air, then fell back among the rafts. It hissed and zigzagged in the water like a small red snake, giving off a brilliant red light, illuminating the sea for a hundred yards. In the glow the men could see a school of fish attracted by the light. They were being pursued by a number of barracuda.

Two large fish, fleeing one of the razor-mouthed predators, suddenly broke the surface of the water and dived straight into one of the rafts. The men only had seconds to grab them before the flare faded and darkness closed in around them. Once again, food had been provided.

By the eight day, water became more important than food. On this afternoon, Captain Cherry again called on the Old Master.

“Old Master, we called upon you for food and you delivered. We ask you now for water. We’ve done the best we could. If you don’t make up your mind to help us pretty soon, I guess that’s all there’ll be to it. It looks like the next move’s up to you, Old Master.”

It was a prayer that had everything a prayer should have: a petition to God, an expressed resignation to God’s will, and the belief–the faith–that the petition would be answered.

As the rafts drifted apart, Whittaker thought to himself that if God ever wanted to make a believer out of Lieutenant James C. Whittaker, this was the time for it.

His thoughts continued along that line for a while. It wasn’t until he looked off to his left that he saw what had earlier been a bank of fleecy white clouds, They were darkening by the second.

He shouted, drawing the attention of the others to the beautiful sight. They all watched in silence as a bluish curtain unrolled slowly from the cloud to the sea. It was rain–and it was carrying straight for the rafts. Prayers rose from the excited group. It was less than a quarter mile away when a perverse wind suddenly rose and began pushing the curtain away from them.

For the first time, Lieutenant Whittaker found himself leading the group in prayer. Not sure what to say, he simply began, “God, you know what that water means to us. The wind has blown it away. It is in your power, God, to send back that rain. It’s nothing to you, but it means life to us.”

Some of the others had already given up, saying that the wind would blow in that direction for the next forty years. But Whittaker wasn’t about to give up. He had already seen things happen that had renewed a long-lost faith within him. Now, shouting with all the strength he could force from his lungs, the lieutenant screamed, “God, the wind is yours. You own it. It is in your power to have your angels bring that rain back to us, your children, who shall surely die without it.”

Now, there are some things in this modern world that defy all the rules of logic or nature. What occurred that day in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was witnessed by every man present, including the highly respected Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, a man whose character was without reproach.

No sooner had Lieutenant Whittaker finished his heartfelt appeal than the curtain of rain stopped exactly where it was. However, the wind did not change direction, nor did it decrease in velocity. Nonetheless, the curtain of life-giving rain, ever so slowly, began to move back toward the rafts–against the wind.

In all, the men survived twenty-one days of their torturous ordeal before being rescued. One of their number, Sergeant Kaczmarczyk, who had been released from the hospital the day before the flight had departed and who had not been in top physical condition, lost his battle with the harsh elements during the rigorous ordeal.

If you were to ask Lieutenant James C. Whittaker to explain these happenings to you, his answer would be, “God and his corps of angels reminded us that they are always with us. We have only to ask for their help.”

Psalms 34:8

Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

To The Promised Land

Prodigal: Y’all wait for me, I wanna chow down too.

Me: Be quick about it, can’t promise how long the food will last.

When I die

Bury me deep

Place a jug of molasses at my feet

Place a biscuit in my hand

So I can sop my way to the promised land.

Saying from Franklin Bowers

1 John 4:9

In this love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Women Lovin’ Jesus

Prodigal: Workin’ in the field today.

Me: You darn tootin’

This is a short video devotion on Proverbs.

Click here to watch the video

Proverbs 12:11 Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who fallows worthless pursuits lacks sense. (ESV)

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Genuine Individuals

Prodigal: We need you to come over right now!

Me: Don’t pitch a hissyfit, you have to wait a minute.

Prodigal: Fine, we will be patient.

This comes from the book Christian Caregiving: A Way of Life by Kenneth C. Haugk

Genuine, congruent individuals are not liked by everyone. Sometimes others find it hard to like a person who, by being congruent, shatters their illusions. Perhaps the best example of this is Jesus. When he acted congruently, it aroused anger and hatred sufficient to lead to his crucifixion.

Sometimes you may feel that you are being “crucified.” When you open up in a courageous act of caring by being genuine, not all will be appreciative. Some might resent your freedom. No matter. Your caring results from a deliberate decision to care in a given situation and to care through the pains and burdens that reveal your own brokenness. Being a servant is not easy, but the reward of spreading genuineness to others is worth the price.

Philippians 2:3

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

The Crown and Glory

Me: We can appear that we have it all going on, but it doesn’t mean sin is not still there.

Prodigal: That is why Jesus is so precious in our eyes.

This is from Charles Spurgeon

Alas, it has gone deeper: it has ruined our souls. Sin has unmanned man. The crown and glory of is manhood it has thrown to the ground. All our faculties are out of gear; all our tendencies are perverted. Beloved, let us rejoice that the Lord Jesus Christ has come to redeem us from the curse of sin, and he will undo the evil of evil. Even this poor world he will deliver from the bondage of corruption; and he will create new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. The groans and painful travail of the whole creation shall result in a full deliverance, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and somewhat more.

We have access to the throne room of heaven! The most amazing place that was created. We are able to spend eternity with Love and or creator. Even if no other blessing are before us today, we have that. This cannot be taken away and we praise God for loving us first!

Psalm 56:12

Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Women Lovin’ Jesus

Prodigal: I usually go to bed with the chickens’

Me: That is a nice pace.

This is a short video devotion.

click here to watch the video

Proverbs 12:10 A righteous man regards the life of his animal, But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. (NKJV)

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

A Process With God

Prodigal: What do you have here?

Me: The beginning of the quilt process. I have the design and the fabric I picked out.

Prodigal: I am going to enjoy watching this process.

This is from the book Just Enough Light for the Step I’m on by Stormie Omartian

Learning to walk with God is a process. And just when we think we have it all figured out, God leads us into a new place where our old tricks won’t work. In fact, it may seem like we’re learning how to walk all over again. And in a way we are. We enter unfamiliar territory and are soon reminded that, on our own, we stumble. Yet when we take His hand, we fly. God wants us to soar far above the limitations of our lives and ourselves. He wants to take us to a place we have never been before and can’t get to from where we are without His help.

You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 16:11

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org