Manna For Moms

Devotions for Moms Like You!

September 2011

Play with Me

Megan Breedlove 0Comment

Jessica SwingingAt three-and-a-half years old, Jessica is such a little person. I mean, she is absolutely full of personality (which, fortunately, is usually delightful). She loves to smile, and when she laughs, her laughter makes others want to join in with her. Yesterday, as she escaped giggling from my tickling clutches and darted a short distance away, I watched her go. And I thought, Wow, her legs look really long in those shorts. She looks…tall!

For a moment, instead of a toddler, I saw a little girl, and I realized she’s growing up.

I’m glad for her. I want her to develop as she should. But I hope that she doesn’t grow out of wanting to be with me for a long time.

Jessica has always been a mama’s girl. She loves being with me. Several times during the day, she will seek out my attention or ask me to play with her (“Will you pway wif me?”). Just this morning at church, she snuggled into my lap and closed her eyes.

I don’t want her to grow out of that anytime soon.

True, her clinginess gets burdensome sometimes. There are some days I’d rather she not need to be so close to me for most of the day. At times, I just wish she would leave me alone and play independently.

When it’s one of those times, and she’s needed more attention than I had energy or desire to give, I try to remind myself of this: God never gets tired of giving me attention.

Actually, I think God’s prepared to give me far more attention than I seek. He constantly loves me and continually thinks loving thoughts toward me. He’s never too busy or too tired for me to crawl up into His lap and close my eyes. He never gets annoyed when I want His attention because I’m bored or crabby, or simply because I want to be with Him. I’m the one who keeps our relationship at a distance.

Maybe you do, too. Maybe you know what it’s like to go through an entire day without thinking about God much, except when it’s time to thank Him for your food before eating lunch. But if that’s the only time you or I think about Him, we’re missing out.

You see, God is always available to listen to us, give us wisdom, or share happy moments with us. He’ll share the sad moments, too. He’ll even “play” and have fun with us. But we have to want to spend time with Him. Otherwise, we’re missing out on the best Friend in the whole universe. He’s right next to us—His Spirit is in us—and we ignore Him.

If you’re like me, you struggle to spend regular and consistent time with Him. But maybe it would help to remember that spending time with Him means not just checking off something on a chart, but staying in touch with our Best Friend. Imagine the best earthly friend you can think of, multiply it by about a billion, and that’s Him waiting for you to notice Him.

So why don’t we spend more time with Him? Sometimes, it’s because circumstances arise to prevent it. Other times, it’s because we don’t try very hard. But I believe that it’s usually because we don’t really appreciate what a great time we could have by spending time together.

Why not let God show you? Spend time with Him this week. Today, even. Ask Him to open your eyes to what a great Friend He is. Ask Him to help you get to know Him. Even if you’ve known Him most of your life, you can always know Him better. Ask Him to show you His beauty and desirability. And when He does, be prepared for your heart to respond in adoration. It’ll happen naturally. When you truly get a glimpse of God as He is, the only possible response is worship.

Psalm 27:4—One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.

No Thoughts

Megan Breedlove 0Comment

I have a confession to make. I love writing devotionals; I really do. But sometimes, when it comes time to write one, I sit down at the computer, and I think to myself, I have absolutely no thoughts today. I can’t think of a single thing to write. At those times, I ask God what He wants His people to hear. Then I write that.

Today was a little bit different. This time, even before I had a chance to say “Dear God”, God spoke to me. Even when you don’t have thoughts, He said (not in an audible voice, but in my spirit), I always have thoughts. I am always thinking about you.

Then, He brought Psalm 139:17 to mind. This verse appears only 3 verses after the verse that tells us we are fearfully and wonderfully made. It says, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!” Read the passage in context, and you will see that in this case, His thoughts are about us.

First, let’s look at the “how vast is the sum of them” part. Most of us don’t realize how much God thinks about us. We tend to assume that because we don’t always think about Him very often, He doesn’t think about us frequently, either. That assumption is wrong. The verse says that God’s thoughts toward us are vast in number. Vast. That’s more than 5. More than 100. More even than a million. Vast. An incomprehensible number.

Sure, we think, He thinks about me a lot when I’ve messed up. But those aren’t the kind of thoughts this passage is talking about. The Psalmist wrote this entire section because He was so overwhelmed at how much God loves us. He didn’t say, “God really loves us. He thinks irritated thoughts about us most of the time, but He really, really loves us.” No, God thinks so many loving thoughts toward us that we can’t even count them all. It’s such a big number the writer of the psalm didn’t even want to limit it by putting a number on it.

Now, let’s look at the first part of the verse. “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!” Are they really? I think most of the time, they’re not. That’s because we don’t really get it. We don’t truly understand how God lovingly thinks of us all day long, every day. How He’s in love with us. If we really grasped that, His thoughts would, indeed, be very precious to us. After all, what could be better than to know that God thinks loving thoughts about us all day long, so many that we can’t even count them?

I have a specific reason for telling you the process I went through in writing this devotional. My reason is this: I want you to know that God was thinking of you in telling me what to write today. You. I didn’t have any thoughts of my own until He filled my mind with today’s theme. I believe this is His extra way of emphasizing to you how much He is, indeed, thinking about you. He thought about you and planned something specific for you to read today because He loves you.

So how do you respond when faced with a love like that? I suggest you spend some time with Him today, thinking about Him. He’s always thinking about you; it would be an awesome, loving response on your part for you to reciprocate out of love. How long should your time be? I don’t know, but I do know this: God is the Lover of your soul. Spend some time with the One who, as the song says, “knows you best and loves you most.”

Psalm 139:17—How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

Don’t Hit the Camel

Megan Breedlove 0Comment

Recently, we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese. This was a different visit from the one when Kenny got his tokens stolen. This visit wasn’t for dinner; we just took them so they could play all the games.

Lindsey is a fun kid to trail after as she chooses game after ride after game. Once when I was following her, she chose a game designed for little kids where the player has to steer an actual car along a wide, gentle track. The idea is to try to stay in the middle and not run over anything on the sides. Lindsey did pretty well for the most part, even though that game doesn’t have very responsive steering. But at one point on the track, where she was supposed to steer left, she kept failing to turn and running over the picture of the camel standing just to the right of the track in the grass.

It was kind of funny, actually. Every time she approached, I would say, in a funny voice, “Here comes the camel! Don’t run him over!” or something similar. Lindsey would giggle, do her best to steer to the left, and run over the camel anyway.

And the thought hit me, about the third time the camel met its demise: Someday, I’m going to hand this girl the keys to my car and turn her loose on streets full of unsuspecting citizens. Yes, this girl who can’t even stop running over the camel.

It was a kind of scary thought (though I hope—I pray!—Lindsey’s driving skills will have improved quite a bit by then). But then, I realized something even more mind-blowing: Jesus did the same thing, but in an even more important context.

When He ascended into heaven, Jesus entrusted the furtherance of His kingdom to His apostles and other followers. True, they would have the Holy Spirit, but even so, Jesus was depending on these guys who didn’t even understand what “rising from the dead” meant to spread His kingdom all over the world. He was entrusting the most precious thing on earth—the gospel message—to guys who only weeks before had run away so as not to be associated with Him and even denied Him.

He still does the same thing today. He still trusts imperfect people with the responsibility to spread the good news. And we, in our own power, are far less competent to make an impact for Him than Lindsey is to stop running over the camel. She, in her natural human abilities that God has granted her, will probably learn to drive a car quite well one day. We, in our merely human abilities, can do nothing of eternal value on our own. That’s right, nothing. Jesus Himself even said it: “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.” Yet He has chosen us to be His fellow-workers, and He has granted us the privilege of serving Him in spreading His glory throughout the world, starting right here in our own homes.

So what does all this mean? It means that apart from Him, we’re guaranteed to blow it. Maybe we’d still be decent moms by the world’s standards, but we’re going to blow the chance to be the kind of moms we could be. We need to live in serious dependence upon the Holy Spirit for His wisdom, help, and enabling, every second of every day.

Just as Lindsey will eventually need Driver’s Ed and lots of practice at somewhere other than Chuck E. Cheese, so we as moms need practice. We need training guided by the Holy Spirit. We need to ask Him each day to help us do the job He’s given us to and to make us the kind of moms we want to be.

Consulting Him doesn’t have to take long. It can be as brief as a minute. Each of us has at least a minute per day we can go before God and ask Him to correct us where we need it and build us up when we need that. Let’s do it. Otherwise, we’ll do “nothing”.

John 15:5—”I am the vine; you are the branches. If a [mom] remains in me and I in [her], [she] will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Gooooooooooal!

Megan Breedlove 0Comment

I can’t wait for the London 2012 Olympics to start. There’s nothing better than watching together with my children as athletes from more than 200 countries give it their all, competing against each other for the gold medal. There’s not much that makes me feel more patriotic than seeing an American athlete standing on the top step of the podium, wearing a gold medal, hand over his or her heart, listening to The Star-Spangled Banner being played for millions of people to hear. (And not much cuter than seeing my kids stand on the coffee table in the same posture, knowing by identification with the athletes that they’re winners, too.)

Olympic athletes all have a goal: to be the best. They spend years of their lives and thousands of hours (not to mention dollars) pouring themselves into their sport. Everything, from what they eat to when they sleep to how they fix their hair is designed to enhance their performance.

In other words, no one becomes an Olympic champion by accident. Each athlete knows what goal he or she is pursuing. No one stands atop the podium as a result of consistently trying to avoid training, and not a single person has a gold medal placed around his or her neck as a reward for hating sports and spending eight hours a day sitting in front of the TV.

If you want to become the Olympic champion—or the champion at anything else—you have to constantly, consistently hold that goal up in front of you and pursue it. Anything less won’t get you there.

Too bad more of us (myself included) don’t care much about being champions at serving others. We don’t even desire the goal. When we’re called to serve, we often resent it, unless somehow the service seems like fun. We certainly don’t spend hours a day practicing it. We’re usually willing to serve (albeit reluctantly) when service is thrust upon us, but we sure don’t hold up “being a good servant” as a goal in front of us constantly and consistently. We don’t want to be the Olympic champion of servers. We want to spend those eight hours a day on the couch watching TV. We want to eat what we want, sleep when we want, and do our hair how we want. We see no reason to discipline ourselves to reach a certain goal when the goal doesn’t really matter to us.

We see being a servant as an obligation to discharge, not a worthy goal to pursue. We’ll do it because Jesus said it, so we know we’re supposed to. But we don’t really want to.

What difference it would make in my life and yours if we were to decide that being a servant is a worthwhile goal and actually desire to pursue it? If we were to start each day by saying, Today, being a successful servant (one who has, in fact, served) is my goal?

I’m not suggesting that it is never appropriate to rest and relax. There are clear examples in the Bible of Jesus resting and instructing His disciples to do the same. But what was the purpose of His life? Was it to enjoy those times of resting? No. In His own words, His purpose was “not to be served, but to serve.”

Jesus dedicated His entire life to service and commanded us to do the same. He didn’t say, “Serve when you have to and hide your resentment that service interrupted you from other activities.” No, He said to do all things with an attitude of love. I’m pretty sure He meant a positive, willing attitude, as well.

Then He left it up to us to decide whether or not we’ll enter training for the life track He has laid out for us. Are we willing to devote ourselves to what He said should be our goal in life, pursuing that goal with everything that’s in us? Or will we resent the demands placed upon us in training for something we don’t care much about being good at?

I hope and pray for all of us that it’s the former. Because in terms of being a servant, we all have the ability to be the Olympic champion. In the arena of serving, millions of people reach the goal, because you get there not by defeating someone else, but by being fully obedient. One day, Jesus Himself can place the gold medal around our neck and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Will you and I stand on top of the podium to hear him say that, or will we be at home on the couch watching the ceremony on TV, because we never trained?

Mark 10:45—“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

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