Manna For Moms

Devotions for Moms Like You!

April 2013

Eagle Ears

Megan Breedlove 0Comment

Bald eagleYou’ve heard the phrase “eagle eyes”. It refers to a person who can see things from far away or spot things in a crowd of other things. My husband recently coined the phrase “eagle ears”. It means, as you would imagine, a person who can hear faint noises or hear things from far away.

Timmy has a spectacular set of eagle ears. When the front door opens, he hears it, even if he’s at the back of the house and the person opening the door is quiet about it. The other day, my husband was holding Timmy on his lap and cuddling him. Suddenly, Timmy began twisting forcefully out of my husband’s arms, trying to get down. Phil set him down, and Timmy made a beeline toward the front of the house. Then my husband heard the front door open. That time, Timmy had heard me before I even opened the door.

True, there are times I wish Timmy weren’t quite so clingy. But I love it how he’s absolutely delighted whenever I come home. I love seeing him run into the living room to greet me, wanting to be picked up immediately. I love hearing his little voice as he “talks” to me, telling me in his own way that he’s glad I’m home.

I bet God would love it too if we were that attentive to Him. How often does God show up, figuratively speaking, and we don’t even hear Him coming because the sound of His coming makes no difference to us? How often does He arrive, and we stay in the back of the house because we figure being in the same house with Him is close enough—or because we don’t care that He’s home? How often does God make His presence known, and we don’t bother getting down to see Him because we’re more interested in what we were doing before He showed up?

Granted, God’s Holy Spirit lives within each person who believes in Jesus Christ. So in a sense, God is always with us. But I’m talking here about the times when God shows up in a special way, such as when He wants to show us something or tell us something, and we’re oblivious.

If we had eagle ears for God’s voice, I bet we’d hear Him a lot more than we do now. That’s because God doesn’t just show up once in a while. He’s constantly coming to us to commune with us, and we don’t care or don’t know it.

Maybe the problem is that we don’t recognize the sounds of His arrival. We’re so caught up with what we’re doing that we don’t realize what we’ve just heard. It’s not that we don’t want to hear Him or don’t care; it’s that we don’t know how. We’d love to hear Him all day long, in the midst of this often chaotic craziness that is motherhood. But we don’t hear Him because we don’t recognize His daily voice. If He sounded like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, we’d get it. But He usually doesn’t, so we miss Him.

What can we do to fix the problem? It depends on what the problem is. If you aren’t interested in hearing from Him, you repent. You bow before God (literally or figuratively) and you ask Him to forgive you for your hard or apathetic heart. You ask Him to replace your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

If you want to hear Him but don’t know how, you ask Him to teach you. Ask Him to open the eyes of your heart so that you can see the blessed richness of His heart toward you and His desire to communicate with you—and so that you can then respond!

I long for the day in heaven when communication between me and God won’t be hard anymore. When my sin or lack of understanding won’t get in the way. When I’ll be able to see Him face to face and know Him fully, even as I am fully known.

But until then…until it’s obvious when God arrives, and until our hearts always long for His appearing…until then, let’s pray, and ask Him to fix our heart. Because I don’t want to miss out on even one second of when God wants to be with me.

I know you don’t either.

Ezekiel 36:26—“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (NIV)

Ephesians 1:18—I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. (NIV)

1 Corinthians 13:12—Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

2 Timothy 4:8—Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day–and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Dropping Crumbs

Megan Breedlove 4Comments

My youngest son Timmy loves to be played with physically. He loves to be spun, tossed, bounced, and flipped. The other day I was standing in the kitchen, and Timmy walked up to me wanting “up”. I picked him up and let him wrap his legs around my waist. Then I leaned him back into my arms and began swooshing him back and forth.

Timmy immediately began to giggle in that infectious way that makes everyone around him want to laugh too. His mouth dropped open, and crumbs from something-or-the-other he’d been eating fell out as he giggled. He was enjoying life and having a blast.

That’s the kind of enjoyment I want to get from life too. I don’t necessarily want my food to fall out of my mouth, but I want to enjoy life wholeheartedly, in a way that makes others want to join in.

Granted, there are some things in life that aren’t any fun. Timmy would acknowledge that. Getting told “no” doesn’t make him laugh. Neither does getting his nose sucked out with the bulb syringe. In fact, he cries. Screams, is more like it. And there will be times in our lives, too, when we wail in protest.

But the rest of the time…oh, the rest of the time, I want to laugh like crazy! I want to squeeze every bit of enjoyment out of life that I can. I don’t want to miss the moments of laughter because I’m too busy thinking about the unpleasant times; I don’t want to enjoy them any less because I’m so stressed out about the other stuff of life that I just don’t have it in me to laugh when “laugh time” comes around.

Even Jesus laughed. The Bible doesn’t say so specifically, but it does show examples of His enjoying life. Jesus was invited to a wedding, and He went. He was invited to more than one banquet, and He accepted the invitation. He embraced children. And these are only some of the examples.

The Bible doesn’t tell us Jesus ever enjoyed the warmth of the sun on a beautiful spring day, or the peacefulness of being out on the water on the Sea of Galilee. But He must have. He made those things! And if we, being human, enjoy them, how much more must He enjoy His own creation?

There must have been times He laughed till He cried. There must have been times, when He was a child, that He enjoyed His mother or father’s embrace. Maybe He even enjoyed playing with them in the same way I played with Timmy, giggling until everybody else joined in, crumbs falling from His lips.

Maybe you and I should take a lesson from Jesus. And from Timmy. Let’s deal with the unpleasant parts of life when they have to be dealt with. But when life brings out the giggles in us, let’s enjoy it to the fullest.

Psalm 118:24—This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (NIV)

Someday Heroes

Megan Breedlove 0Comment

Before I became a parent, I was pretty sure that training and disciplining a child would be easy. My child would do A, I would calmly respond with a well-thought-out and right-on-target B, and I would get result C—cheerful obedience or successful completion of the task. For the more stubborn issues, the process might repeat itself once or twice.

I didn’t realize that my kids wouldn’t always “get it” as soon as I thought they should.

Your kids probably don’t always understand or comply with your instructions the first time either. You know how frustrating it can be to remind a child to do a task he’s already forgotten (or resisted doing) several times, or to have to repeatedly explain something before your child says, “Ohhhhhh, I get it.”

Jesus understands the need to explain yourself over and over because, although He didn’t have children, He had the disciples. And they required plenty of explanations and repetition for what they should have been able to understand sooner.

Check out what Jesus says in Luke 24:44. “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (ESV) He had already told them that He would be put to death then raised on the third day. But they didn’t really understand until Jesus said, “See? This is what I was talking about all those other times” (my paraphrase).

These twelve guys, Jesus’ chosen ones, didn’t always understand their Master the first time He said something. They couldn’t always do something the first time they tried (see Matthew 17:14-23). Yet despite the fact they were adults and might have been expected to know better, Jesus didn’t give up on them. He was willing to invest His life in them and even repeat Himself a few, or a million, times, so that He could build men who would one day become the pillars of His church. Men who would become heroes of the faith.

Precious mom, as you rear your children, you, too, are building men or women who will one day become the pillars of Christ’s church.

That little boy who won’t stop throwing expensive things into the toilet? Someday, he may be a pillar of the church.

The little girl who still has to be reminded to wash her hands after she uses the potty? A beautiful pillar in the house of her God.

The older boy who can’t keep his room clean to save his life? One day, a hero of the faith.

Even little Peter, James, and John probably had to be told a million times to shut that door. Even the Apostle Paul, when he was a child, had to be taught to strap on his sandals. And yet these same kids who didn’t “get it” the first time or the tenth or the fiftieth, went on to become heroes.

It doesn’t matter if your kids don’t look much like heroes today. God can make them heroes, mighty men and women who contend fearlessly for their faith and their God in the marketplace, in their homes, and in their churches. He can take that child you devoutly hope won’t pick his or her nose during the school play and embarrass you, and turn him or her into a mighty warrior for His cause.

So when it seems like you’ve already told your children something a million times…when it seems like a particular discipline problem will never get resolved…when you wonder why your children just don’t get it, remember that someday, they probably will.

Someday, they just might be heroes.

Matthew 17:14-23— When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.” “O unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. ” When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.” And the disciples were filled with grief.

No Potties

Megan Breedlove 2Comments

Recently Ellie (who’s almost 10) and I were going through a set of question cards designed to encourage conversation. Her answer to one of the cards let to a conversation that both confused me and made me laugh. Let me share it with you:

Me (reading from the card): “What would be the worst place to visit?”

Ellie: “Hawaii!”

Me: “Hawaii?? Why would that be the worst place??”

Ellie: “Because they don’t have any potties.”

Me (totally confused): “What?”

Ellie: “They don’t have any potties. You have to use the community outhouse.”

Me: “Sweetie, Hawaii is part of the United States. They have potties there.”

Ellie: “The Schmidtkes said they didn’t. They also said that when it was really cold and snowy, like when there was a blizzard, they had to use a bucket because they couldn’t even get to the outhouse.”

Me: “Hawaii doesn’t have blizzards. Were they talking about Alaska or somewhere?”

Ellie: “I don’t know.”

Me: “Hawaii is one of the United States. They have the same technology we have. They have potties there.”

Ellie: “Oh.”

Even typing this conversation makes me laugh. I found it pretty amusing, and I still do.

What’s not nearly so amusing is when we get confused about what God has said. He said one thing, and we think He said something else.

God says, “I poured out all my wrath over your sins on Jesus when He hung on the cross.” Yet we think He still gets really angry at us when we blow it.

God says, “Don’t sin,” and we think what He actually meant was, “If you sin, you are no longer acceptable to me, and I won’t love you.”

God says, “I so loved the world that I sent my only Son.” We think, “Okay, so He loves the world, but He doesn’t really love me.” We forget that He also said He exults over us.

It didn’t really matter much that Ellie mistook Hawaii for Alaska. It does matter when we misunderstand God.

It matters that we understand what makes God’s heart glad, and what breaks it. It matters that we understand why He considers certain things sin. It matters deeply and profoundly that we understand Who He is, as well as how much He loves us.

How do we make sure we get it right? How do we keep from getting misled into thinking that Hawaii has blizzards?

We have to know the Bible. Inside and out. Cover to cover. Every bit.

Why? Because, as John R. W. Stott says, “The Bible is God preaching.” It’s His Word to us. It’s His love letter to us. It’s what He wants us to know and one of the primary means He uses to reveal Himself to us. Therefore, it should be our primary go-to reference when we want to know what He says.

It’s great to listen to those who claim to teach the word, but what matters is not what they say, but what the Bible says. It’s fine to read books, but what matters is not what the author says, but what the Bible says. Hopefully, the speaker or author will indeed be teaching the Bible, but you have to know your Bible to be sure.

Do you know your Bible? Do you know what God says to you through it?

The Secret Service is the division of our government charged with dealing with counterfeiters and counterfeit money. In order to carry out their jobs, they have to know the difference between a fake bill and a real one. To learn the difference, they study not the fake bills, but the real ones. They study genuine bills over and over and over, so that when they see a bill that’s counterfeit, they will recognize it because it differs from the real thing.

That’s how we should study the Bible—so deeply and so well that we will recognize anything that differs from it.

Do you want to know what God says? Study your Bible. It’s fine to read or listen to what others have to say about the Bible, but you need to study it for yourself too. If you’re not sure how to do it, there are many great resources online or in print that will help you.

That way, you’ll know truth, and you’ll recognize anything that differs from it.

You’ll know that there are, indeed, potties in Hawaii.

2 Timothy 2:15—Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. (NIV)

Brushing Off the Crumbs

Megan Breedlove 0Comment

Recently, I made two cheesecakes to take to a party. No, I couldn’t have chosen the easy way out and simply bought a couple of cheesecakes. I had to make them myself.

The actual recipe isn’t too hard, and I’ve used it before. The whole experience went pretty well, except for a minor glitch that had to do with my brand-new Springform pans.

I had never used that kind of pan before; previously, I had always bought prepared crusts. This time, I wanted to make my own. So I made the first cheesecake, then had to remove it from the bottom of the pan to slide it onto a serving tray so I could reuse the pan for the second cheesecake.

Everything went fine with the transfer of Cheesecake #1 to Platter #1. Mostly fine, that is. With all that jostling of the crust, some of the crumbs somehow—I still can’t remember how—wound up on top of the cheesecake.

“How am I going to get those crumbs off?” I asked my friend Rea, who was going to the party with me. “I can’t just blow them off.”

Rea came up with the idea of using my basting brush to gently brush the crumbs from the top of the cheesecake. That worked. Until I stepped in.

As Rea gently brushed the crumbs from the dessert, some of them fell onto the platter. I used my fingers to scoop the crumbs into my other palm, and then, for some inexplicable reason that still eludes me, I dumped them right back on the cheesecake.

There was a moment of confused silence before Rea said, “What did you do that for?”

“I don’t know,” I said, as puzzled as she was. And this devotion was born.

You see, what I did with those crumbs is just like what we sometimes do with sin. We realize there’s a problem, we get the sin brushed off of our lives, then we add it right back in.

What in the world was I thinking? we wonder, just as I wondered that day in my kitchen.

I hadn’t stopped to consider the options of where I could put the crumbs. I simply didn’t think about the ramifications of what I was about to do, and I dumped them right back where they came from.

Yep. That’s definitely what we do with sin. We just. Don’t. Think.

Whether we put the crumbs back on the cheesecake on purpose isn’t really the point. The point is that there they are, back where they shouldn’t be. Whatever our motives, we still messed up, undoing all the work that had just been done.

Have you ever been in that place, in terms of sin in your life? Where you got rid of it for a time, then found yourself right back in it?

Sure you have. We all have. That’s part of the insidious nature of sin. It can have a hold on us without our even realizing it.

So what do we do to make sure that we don’t sin without thinking? That we don’t just let the words come out of our mouth that shouldn’t have been said, or fail to do something we should have done, without even thinking about our actions?

We ask God to help us, and we ask regularly. We ask Him to warn us when we’re about to do something wrong. We take those areas in which we know we are prone to sin, and we put those areas to death by establishing plans for dealing with our wrongdoing and preventing further sin.

It’s hard. Believe me, I know. But I don’t want to put the crumbs right back on my cheesecake. You don’t either.

We want that cheesecake to look like it was supposed to.

Psalm 139:23-24—Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (ESV)

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