Daily Devotional Day

 Jan 1st, 2012    Caths Blog    No Comments »

  BY:  Catherine Martin  catherine@quiettime.org 

When you find yourself falling into discouragement because of pressing circumstances or just need a time of refreshing, I encourage you to make your quiet time a daily devotional day. I sat down for quiet time with the Lord today and felt my heart sinking under numerous responsibilities. I began by writing my thoughts in my journal, just being myself with the Lord. And the thought came to my mind, “Why not just pull together all your favorite daily devotionals and meditate on the words and Scripture?” I have done this in the past and reaped rich results. So I grabbed some favorites:

• Daily Light on the Daily Path
• My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers
• Streams in the Desert by Mrs. Charles Cowman
• Springs in the Valley by Mrs. Charles Cowman
• Voices from the Past — Puritan Devotional Readings
• This Day with the Master by Dennis Kinlaw
• A Blossom in the Desert — Reflections of Faith in the Art and Daily Writings of Lilias Trotter

My time with the Lord was so rich as I lived in each of these devotionals. Amazingly, each devotion seemed perfect and directed to me personally with my struggles, challenges, joys, and current life experience. God knows exactly what we need and knows exactly when we need to hear specific encouragements and challenges. Here are some of the best nuggets from these wonderful devotionals:

This Day with the Master — Are you willing to do whatever God asks of you as you begin the new year? Or are you living in a state of continual frustration because of your own stubborn grip on life? Remember: God knows the job for which you were made. You can trust Him.

Voices from the Past — It is not the mouth, but the heart that matters in prayer.

Blossoms in the Desert — the early stages of faith are reaching upward, like the eaglets for their food when the mother-bird is overhead. It is an older faith that learns to swing out into nothingness and drop down full weight on God — the broken-up next of former “experiences” left behind — nothing between us and the abyss but God Himself. Trained faith is a triumphant gladness in having nothing but God — not rest, no foothold — nothing but himself. A triumphant gladness in swinging out into that abyss, rejoicing in every fresh emergency that is going to prove Him true. “The Lord alone” — that is trained faith.

My Utmost For His Highest — Disobedience in mind to the heavenly vision, (given by God’s Spirit through His Word of what He wants), will make you a slave to points of view that are alien to Jesus Christ. Do not look at someone else and say — Well if he can have those views and prosper, why cannot I? You have to walk in the light of the vision that has been given to you and not compare yourself with others or judge them, that is between them and God.

Springs in the Valley — When we cry to God we are impatient to see God’s finished answer all at once. We rise from our knees, and because the heavens do not hang heavily with clouds we are too quick to think that God is withholding His showers of blessing. But God usually gives us by slow degrees the things we need. We grow impatient because we have not the sensibility of soul to detect the faint beginnings of God’s mercies. The first gray tints that touch the eastern skies are a promise of the coming day. The first flickering ray of light that steals across our soul when we cry to God is the beginning of His answer. The first indefinable feeling of comfort that slips into the distress soul is a little cloud bearing promise of refreshing showers…Broken heart, crying to God for comfort, take courage from moments which come like respites when the weight of sorrow is for a little while lightened! How delicately God deals with us! These are intimations of the peace which in the process of God’s providence shall at last come. Perplexed heart, crying to God for guidance, be assured by the events that seem to turn your life in a particular direction and by the light that every now and then falls on your problems — be assured that God is beginning to answer your prayer…Our skies are dotted with little clouds, faint beginnings of God’s mercies. They assure the waiting heart of greater clouds just beyond the horizon, laden with His blessings.

May the Lord richly bless you this day — a daily devotional day. “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life…Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 20-25).

God bless you as you continue on in the great adventure of knowing Him.

A Quiet Time With Catherine – DVD | Downloadable M4V Video

Quiet Time Moments For Women – A Devotional Book