Delightsome Land

You can’t stay here. The journey of grief is one that you must ultimately decide to complete. You cannot remain where you are right now. Time moves forward, and so must you. “You can’t stay here because God’s Word is always going forward,” says Dr. Ray Pritchard. In Philippians 3:14 Paul says that he moved forward toward “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”. The Christian life is not static. It is a walk with God that moves you forward into a larger life with God. The Lord’s plan for your life is pure and simple during this time of grief: What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.  — Micah 6:8. Prayer Lord, may I simply walk with You. Take my hand and guide me through every moment of this day. Amen.   * Go Forward with God When it’s hard to look forward and it’s painful to look back, you need a new perspective, a new focus. Look to the Father and keep your eyes on Him. Every time your thoughts drift away fro...

“My one purpose in life is to help people find a personal relationship with God, which I believe comes from knowing Christ. ”  —Billy Graham   A few years ago, Billy Graham proclaimed with resolve, “When I die, tell others that I’ve gone to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—that’s where I am.”  The greatest promise ever given to the human race came from the lips of our Redeemer when Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me…I go to prepare a place for you…I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:1–3). Billy Graham preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ to some 215 million people through his crusades and simulcasts around the world.  Although we are grieving, we know Heaven rejoices. Here is one of our favorite devotions by Dr. Graham. We hope it will uplift and comfort you today. Who can describe or measure the love of God? Our Bible is a reve...

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” – Matthew 6:25 NIV Worry is a choice that displeases God. When you worry, you reveal that you don’t really trust God to provide all that you need. – June Hunt Depending on context, words translated as “cares” and “concerns” or “fear” and “anxiety” can be either right or wrong attitudes in a Christian’s life. Fear is right when it is reverence toward God because of his holiness (Isa 8:13), and care is good when showing concern for others (1Co 12:25; 2Co 11:28). But worry is always wrong, for it paralyzes active faith in your life.  When you worry, you assume responsibility for things you were never intended to handle. Jesus repeatedly taught, “Do not worry” (Gk. merimneo, lit. “to divide the mind”), even about the basic essentials of life (Mt 6:25–34).  Worry divides your mind between usef...

The virtue of strength is determined by how it’s used. Strength. If it’s used to love and to protect, it’s good. Unfortunately, it can also be used to inflict harm, and that’s not consistent with what we see of God’s character in the Bible. He calls us to fight for what’s right. And a warrior is only as worthy as his cause. A man without a cause from God is often just an angry man who doesn’t know where to direct his pent-up energy and aggression. A warrior with a cause from God directs that warlike energy for a cause greater than himself. Gentlemen, God created you with the heart of a warrior. Until there’s something you’re willing to die for, you can’t truly live. You were created to fight for righteousness. Until you tap into that divine cause, you’ll be bored, destructive, and frustrated.  Find something more . I thank God I get to live my divine cause. I honestly believe I’m on the front lines of the most important war:  the one between heaven and hell . The kingdom...

God, I’m worn out,  you pray as the hours tick by. You know your alarm is set to go off in just a few hours, but you haven’t had any sleep. You feel too overwhelmed to relax your shoulders and breathe deeply. You may be facing a personal, heartbreaking crisis right now — and don’t know how to deal with the pain. You may feel that at the end of each day you got nothing accomplished, even though you skipped lunch and didn’t sit down until 10 p.m. Maybe you committed to something that you now realize was way too big for you to handle, and you feel frazzled and fearful. Whatever the circumstance, you’re now wrestling late into the night with the heavy burden of feeling inundated by life’s demands. You’re carrying more than you’re able, but you fear if you let go, everything will come toppling down. Fellow traveler, listen to the words of the psalmist in Psalm 142:3 (NLT). He said, When I am overwhelmed, You alone know the way I should turn. Do you know the way you should turn when you...

We love to root for the underdog. We love to see good triumph over evil and courage defeat cowardice. We love to see righteousness prevail and unrighteousness punished. And we love a hero who refuses to give up the fight no matter how impossible the odds. Right now we’re starving for heroes. We’re no longer surprised when men we once admired and respected – elected officials, superstar athletes, gifted pastors – tumble in a sex scandal, an embezzlement scheme, or a domestic abuse arrest. We’ve almost become jaded, half-expecting our leaders and favorite celebrities to be hiding something. Most are, right? We hope they’ll make sacrifices, take risks, and make hard decisions to do the right thing, but we aren’t surprised when they don’t. We lack real heroes, and Hollywood fills the void with a glut of superheroes – Iron Man and Batman and Thor and Spider-Man and Avengers and X-Men – dazzling us with their powers in 3D and on Blu-ray. But we still long for someone to show us what an aut...

His name is Hubert Mitchell. He was without question one of the most awesome and formidable men I will ever know. The day I met him, the two things that stood out the most were his booming voice and the fact that he had no inhibitions. Hubert was a missionary whose calling was to places where no one had ever heard of the gospel, and further, to go into the depths of the worst jungles on the earth and preach to tribes that did not even know there was a God. He went to the wild Kubu tribe in Sumatra when it was almost impossible to get to that isolated and forsaken island. Some of the stories Hubert told defied belief, but my purpose for meeting him had nothing to do with his work as a missionary. His reputation, as far as I knew, lay in the fact that he was known to be one of the most effective personal soul winners. I met Hubert when he was old. In Hubert’s declining years, he had moved out of the jungles of Sumatra to the jungle of downtown Chicago. Hubert met with groups of business...