God’s Guidance

Many Christians complain that God doesn’t speak to them when they’re in need of guidance. For some reason they have forgotten the first and most basic way God leads His children—through His written Word!

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Relaxing

The smell of homemade clam chowder greeted me as I walked through the front door. After kissing the kids and hugging the cook, I settled into my favorite chair, loosened my tie, and kicked off my shoes—just in time to watch the beginning of the game.

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Don’t Take It Easy

Last fall one day at the church, I spotted a visiting gentleman who was shaking hands with a half-dozen folks he’d never met before. Then he looked at me, and with a grin and a twinkle, he whipped out his hand. It was a hand you could strike a match on, toughened by decades of rugged toil.

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Crucible of Crises

God’s Word is filled with examples of those who believed God and “commenced prayer.” David certainly did. “I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay; And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm” (Ps. 40:1–2).

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Two Questions

Comparing the acts of forgiving and forgetting, I think forgetting is the tougher assignment. Why? Because forgetting is something shared with no other person. It’s a solo flight. All the rewards are postponed until eternity . . . but how great they will be on that day!

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Can We Really Ever Forget?

A question flashes through my head as I write these words: can our minds actually allow us to forget? The way God has made us with that internal filing system we call “memory”—it is doubtful we can fully forget even the things we want to forget.

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Forgiving and Forgetting

“I’ll forgive . . . but I’ll never forget.” We say and hear that so much that it’s easy to shrug it off as “only natural.” That’s the problem! It is the most natural response we can expect. Not supernatural. It also can result in tragic consequences.

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How to Make Forgiveness Happen

There is enough in the past few days’ worth of devotionals to keep us thinking (and forgiving) for weeks. But there are a couple of specific applications that need to be considered. First, focus fully on God’s forgiveness of you. Don’t hurry through this. Think of how vast, how extensive His mercy has been extended toward you, like David did when he wrote “Hymn 103.”

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God’s Forgiveness of Us

When on the cross Jesus Christ paid in full the penalty of our sin, God’s wrath was expressed against Him—the One who took our place. God was therefore satisfied in the epochal sacrifice . . . allowing all who would turn, in faith, to the Son of God to be totally, once-for-all, forgiven. Christ’s blood washed away our sin. And from the moment we believe in Him, we stand forgiven, relieved of guilt, before a satisfied God, thereby freeing Him to shower upon us His grace and love.

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