The Devotional -100 - Family

A Thought for the Day – 100 – Family

 

Proverbs 30:7-9 – The two main things that cripple mankind is falsehood and poverty. These are never removed totally in one’s life; but through prayer and petition to the LORD God. He will prescribe the path to follow. Also there is a caution in that there is trouble in too much or too little, therefore be wise as this may be a cause for cursing, now do not say “been there done that!” but say “Amen” it means the same thing, it just sounds more holy.

 

Comments and challenges

Today I am seeking to change over from Yahoo to AOL, I spent the morning creating a new account with the latter email account and this is the new email address: jess.abel01@aol.com anyone interested in receiving the Devotional by email can contact me through the new email address. For a while I will continue with Yahoo, but for some reason unknown to me the Yahoo email is breaking down.

It is already late in the day, so I believe this should be short so hang on to your hat and let us see what the LORD can do in a short period of time.

I like those prison epistles of the apostle Paul and the epistle to Philippi is one of them so we will take a look.

Most of us who read these devotionals have never felt the pain and despair of being locked up in prison cell or even imprisoned in the local jail for a day or weekend. I used to go and bail out my father every Friday, when I was a teenager in Florida. It was a joke really; on Friday’s he would go out and get a snoot full of beer and the wait for the local police to pick him up for being drunk.

After bringing him to the station they would place him in the cell for an overnight stay. Then the three officers on duty in the station would move the mailing table into the cell with my dad and in the cell they would play poker into the wee hours of the morning. Around 5:30 my mom would get the call that my dad was in jail again and to send someone to pick him up. My mom would wake me up and down to the station I would go. After collecting his belongings, he and I would walk home as if we were just out for a morning walk.

Now that story does not have a happy ending, my dad died in July of 2003; as far as I know, he did not know the LORD Jesus Christ as his “Personal Savior” I am looking at the eulogy that I presented on his day of burial, sometimes stuff just seems to choke you up since comments made can be so foolish when you know what to say and don’t say it. Like in my discourse I said: “Once I fell asleep in the shower; so I used that as an excuse to join the U.S. Navy; my dad was in the Second World War in the U.S. Army. I say that just to say… this is how far apart we were throughout our lives together”.

We never hide our battle scars well, but it is not the battle scars of war that I am projecting here; it is those scars of being raised in a family where there is no HOLY BIBLE, these scars are exposed and translated into the lives of every one of the future generations. The Holy Bible says to the third and fourth generations. See Deuteronomy 5:6-16.

So what has all of this to do with the incarceration of the apostle Paul and Philippi?

His life was centered around the Holy Bible as a Jew first, but his religion as a Pharisee was aimed at works involving the Law of God and not at faith in God, after his conversion to Christ circa 33/34AD inherited a new family. This family’s character is reveal by the apostle Paul as he writes to them in his epistle to the Philippians.

I wish that I had time to write out the whole epistle, it is full of personal encouragement and testimony of the love that the apostle has for the children of God. I do challenge you to take the time to read the epistle today. Philippians is only four short chapters. You see; most of my family is unsaved, only I am the one who left that family of unbelief in God and turned to Jesus. Now I am also full of encouragement; so I encourage you to join us by believing in Jesus Christ and be adopted into God’s family.

Well there is little else to say, except Romans 8:31-39, this works for me and it will work for you too, all you need to do is believe.