Sometimes devotionals are gems...

I get a devo each morning from Back to the Bible, and the last couple of days have been gems to me. Sometimes they are also hard to swallow - those are the good ones. The truth you know is truth, and yet you need to hear it anyway.

Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: A Lamp For My Feet
Scripture Reference: Genesis 39:21 The Lord Keeps Faith




When trouble comes, we are tempted to think we are being punished or that God has forgotten us. He never forgets. He keeps faith--that is He keeps his promises, is faithful to his word, even when it appears that we are forsaken.


Joseph suffered one disaster after another. When, because of the vicious lie of a rejected woman he was put in prison, the Lord was with him there, keeping faith (Gn 39:21). Perhaps Joseph wondered why Almighty God could not have prevented the woman's triumphing over him--or prevented his ever having been victimized by his brothers in the first place and thus being at this woman's mercy. But we are given the complete picture which Joseph did not have while he was in prison--the amazing purpose of God for his chosen people, Jacob and all his family, who because of Joseph's long-drawn-out sufferings, were saved. God keeps faith--He has a perfect blueprint, and He is building according to its specifications.
 
The second one, by the same author, similar themed...
 
Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: A Lamp For My Feet
Scripture Reference: John 17:26 John 17:23


Forsaken? Impossible


Twice in my life I have heard Christians claim, in all seriousness, that God had forsaken them. This is an impossibility. Does Christ live in us? He does. The living Christ dwells in the heart of every true believer--He in them and they in Him. There are no words which adequately describe the intimacy of this relationship. Jesus, in his last recorded prayer for those whom the Father had given Him, asked "that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and thou in me...that the love thou hadst for me may be in them, and I may be in them" (Jn 17:23, 26 NEB).


Jesus Christ, in the extremity of his agony on the cross, asked why God had forsaken Him. In becoming sin for us He experienced a terrible alienation from his Father, a sense of total dereliction. God did not and could not forsake the Son who was one with Him. He cannot and will not forsake us who are not only his sons and daughters, but also the dwelling-places of his only begotten Son. "I will never, never, never, never, never (the Greek has five negatives) leave you or forsake you," is his promise. At times we may be overcome with a feeling of helpless forsakenness. This is surely not from the loving Father, but from the father of lies. The best way to answer that "father" is the way Jesus answered when tempted by Satan: "It is written." Take God's own promise with its five negatives and hold on.
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These devotionals resonated with me. I feel that so much of the time people (me included) base our faith on the mountain tops and valleys of emotion. How a song can make us feel connected to God, or how a trial can make us feel alienated by God. It is comforting and a necessity for me to remind myself that it is not about what I feel at any particular moment, but who God is and what I know to be true about Him. Regardless of how I may feel at any given moment, I am still His daughter, and He is still my loving Father. Nothing can separate us from His hand.

I hope everyone had a blessed Easter!  I also hope that you will always be able to discern when the father of lies is trying to get at you, and you will combat him with the truth that "... is written" from our  heavenly Father.