Mark 10:46-52 (NIV) | ⁴⁶Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging. ⁴⁷When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁸Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁹Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” ⁵⁰Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. ⁵¹ “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.” ⁵² “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you. ”Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

On the day before a major surgery, I shared with my friend that I was really scared about the procedure. “What part scares you?” she inquired. “I’m just so afraid that I won’t wake up from the anesthesia,” I replied. Immediately, Anne prayed: “Father, you know all about Cindy’s fear. Please calm her heart and fill her with Your peace. And, Lord, please wake her up after surgery.”

I think God likes that kind of specificity when we talk to Him. When Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, called out to Jesus for help, Jesus said, “What do you want me to do for you?” And the blind man said, “My Rabbi . . . I want to see!” Jesus said, “Go, for your faith has healed you” (Mark 10:51–52). We don’t need to beat around the bush with God. While there may be a time to pray poetically as David did, there are also times to say bluntly, “God, I’m so sorry for what I just said,” or to say simply, “Jesus, I love You because . . . .”

Being specific with God can even be a sign of faith because we are acknowledging that we know we’re not talking to a far-off Being but to a real Person who loves us intimately. God is not impressed by a flurry of fanciful words. He is listening for what our heart is saying. —Cindy Hess Kasper

The heart of prayer is prayer from the heart.

Psalm 42: 9-11  [NIV] |  ⁹I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?” ¹⁰My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?” ¹¹Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

THE STORM – Part 2

Thoughts and feelings will come like waves on the sea and seek to capsize us. When these thoughts and feelings flood our hearts and minds and like water into a boat, we are barely able to stay float. You may be afraid to face a new day troubled with thoughts and feelings like:

• A strange sense that the there is an abominable sea monster lurking beneath the surface, circling around and waiting for an opportune moment to emerge from the depths and ruin your day.
• The feeling that since you struggle with anxiety there must be something “wrong” with you. If you were a good Christian you wouldn’t have this problem, right? You struggle with the idea that having anxious feelings or thoughts means that you are failing or that you area failure.

• A subtle dread of what seems to be inevitable and the temptation to do whatever you need to do to avoid dealing with it. This avoidance can take the form of keeping distracted with social media, projects, tasks, to-do lists, shopping, self-medicating, etc.

Jesus taught that we would have trouble in this world. Each day would have trouble enough of its own. Not only will the world bring us trouble, but we have trouble residing within. Even when we have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and accepted Him as our Lord and Savior, our sinful nature remains and that nature is at enmity with the Spirit of God. So we don’t have to go anywhere to find trouble. Trouble is within and without. This is enough to make anyone anxious! Is there any hope?! YES! If you are in Christ, He is in you and you are in Him. Because His Holy Sprit lives inside of you, there can be calm within.

The truth of God and His Word is not only our anchor in the storm. In Christ we can actually experience calm in the storm. In Psalm 103 David sets a good example for us as he instructs his soul to praise the LORD and bless His name. He reminds himself who he is and reminds himself not to forget who God is. Although he is aware of his sin and his weakness, rather than fret and worry, we see him worship. We can learn from his example how to train our hearts and minds in the storm. In fact, the way to care for our hearts is by caring for our minds. We must keep our minds fixed on the truth of God’s Word. When we do, we will begin to experience the calm of Christ.

Love in Action:
God is my Rock! I will put my hope in Him and receive His peace.

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Ephesians 3:14-21 [NIV] | ¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Paul’s main prayer for the Christians at Ephesus is that they would know Christ’s love for them. He did not mean that they should know Christ’s love in their heads but in their hearts. Paul feels so strongly about this request that he gives it a three-fold emphasis:

• “Being rooted and grounded in love”

• “To comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth”

• “And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge”

It seems like Paul does not have the words to express how deeply he feels about this request. These believers simply must know how much Christ loves them.

Why? Why is this so important?

Well, God’s love for us is the most important thing in our lives. If we do not feel loved by God, then we will not love God back. At best, we will have a religious duty, but we will not have a love affair with Jesus. We will not fulfill the first commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). If we do not feel loved by God, we will not trust him, not for the big things. Will you trust God if you don’t believe he loves you and that he wants the best for you? Not a chance. If we do not feel loved by God, we will not obey God. We’ll obey the easy commands, the ones we would do anyway, but not the hard ones. We won’t obey God because we don’t believe that he has our best interests at heart.

We could go on and on. Every aspect of the spiritual life hinges on the love of God for us. If we do not know, in the deepest places of our soul, that our God loves us so much, then we will not love him, trust him, obey him, serve him, enjoy him, worship him, rest in him, or seek him.

This is the foundation of the spiritual life. Nothing is more important.

No wonder Paul’s greatest prayer focuses on Christ’s love for us. No wonder Paul places such inordinate emphasis on this love that he wants others to know the “breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”

No wonder.

Love in Action:
If you pray only one prayer for your loved ones, if you pray only one prayer for your church, if you pray only one prayer for yourself, make it this prayer: “O Lord, may we know how much you love us.”

Ephesians 2:1-10 [NIV] |  ¹ As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ² in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³ All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Helen, 8, and Brandon, 5, squealed excitedly at the sight of a small petting zoo set up in the middle of the mall. “Can we go, dad? Can we? Please?”

Smiling, their dad gave them each a quarter, and then stepped into the hardware store to pick up the items they had come to purchase. A few minutes later, Helen wandered into the store. Mildly alarmed, he asked, “Helen, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you in the petting zoo?”

“Well, the entrance fee wasn’t a quarter, it was fifty cents,” replied Helen. “I knew how much Brandon loves baby animals, so I gave him my quarter and let him go in instead of me.”

They walked back out to the petting zoo and watched Brandon playing with the baby animals. The dad knew he had two more quarters in his pocket, but he didn’t give them to Helen. He wanted her to understand that love requires sacrifice.

Now that is a great display of love from a sister to her brother. Love costs; if it doesn’t cost, it isn’t love. That story gives us a small glimpse of what God is like. His love was willing and sacrificial, without thought of what we could give to Him in return.

In this story, we also find all three people being blessed. The dad was blessed to see his daughter give out of love. The daughter was blessed to watch her brother play, and of course the boy was blessed to be able to go in and play with the baby animals. That day, all three caught a glimpse of what love looks like.

Love in Action:
Which of the three people in the story do you connect with the most?

1 John 4:7-12 [NIV] | ⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 

One snowy winter day, Philip Bliss and his wife were enjoying the holidays in Pennsylvania when they were summoned by Dwight L. Moody to return for a special service. They left their one-year-old and five-year-old sons with their grandparents and boarded the Pacific Express.

While passing over a new trestle bridge, the train suddenly plunged into a ravine as the bridge collapsed beneath them. The wooden train cars fell 75 feet and were on fire within minutes. Philip found his wife pinned inside and determined that if he could not save his wife, he would die with her. He stayed with her till the end, and both died in the flames. Philip was only 38 years old.

A few days after the tragedy, Philip’s trunk arrived in Chicago. His friend opened the trunk, took his last lyrics and wrote the melody to Philip’s final song, “I Will Sing of My Redeemer”. Although Philip didn’t know it at the time, his last song would become one of his greatest works and was one of the first hymns ever recorded on a phonograph.

Philip knew God’s love was the best subject to write about. If we understand and rest in God’s love, it will make us better husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, teachers and servants because it affects how we love other people. Even when tragedy happens, God is love. In the middle of painful situations, we hurt and get emotional and forget that we are deeply loved.

Sometimes, we need to be reminded that God sacrificed His only Son out of love for us. He suffered so we could be redeemed.

Maybe you don’t feel loved right now. Whether you have lost a loved one, are facing a disease, or are in a terrible marriage, God loves you. He sees every tear that falls. Through it all, He can teach you how to love as He loves and He will bring beauty from the ashes.

Love in Action:
Make a list of your blessings, both great and small. Thank God for all of them.

Devotion provided by Adonis Lenzy, and BroadStreet Publishing.