Manna For Moms

Devotions for Moms Like You!

Megan Breedlove

Zzzzzzzz…

Megan Breedlove No Comments

Originally published on June 14, 2010.

No one ever told me that the biggest change in my life after I had a baby would be in the quality and quantity of my sleep. Okay, maybe that wasn’t quite the biggest change, but if not, it at least rates a close second.

Post-baby sleep is never quite the same as pre-baby sleep for a number of reasons. First, it’s often interrupted by the aforementioned baby. When she’s little, she wakes up during the night to be fed. When she grows a little older, she wakes up during the night to be entertained. When she moves to a toddler bed or big-kid bed, she doesn’t have to resort to crying and waiting for you to come to her. Instead, she comes to you, for any and every reason—another drink, another story, another nightmare—including the old stand-by, that she just plain needs mama.

You don’t get to go to bed on time anymore, either, because you have to stay up late doing all the things you didn’t have time to do while your child was awake. Nor do you get to sleep in ever again, because many kids don’t understand that just because the sun’s up doesn’t mean they have to be up.

Then there are the times you can’t get to sleep because you’re lying there tossing and turning over some issue you’re having to help your child get through. Or you wake up in the middle of the night, and your brain clicks on, trying to resolve the problem.

Most moms I know seem to be walking around with a sleep debt of several years’ worth, at least. I’m certainly no exception.

We moms are made to need sleep. We don’t function at our best without it, though somehow, we do still function.

Fortunately, God doesn’t have to sleep. Ever. Though you and I feel like we’ve been awake for thousands of years, He really has. He is constantly alert and watchful, continually guarding, preserving, and guiding us, and He always has been. He can run the entire universe without a single minute of sleep because He is that powerful. Lack of sleep never causes Him to get confused or cranky, like it does us. He never needs to take a break and get some rest so that He’ll be able to get back to work. No, He is infinitely far above our mortal, limited bodies.

How often we take His constant, unfailing care for granted. We fall into bed, exhausted, without so much as a thought for the One Who’s going to stay up all night taking care of us while we sleep. In fact, He performs the same ministry to us during the night as we do for our own children: He makes Himself available any time we need Him.

So tonight, when you go to bed, take a minute before you fall asleep and thank God for still being on duty taking care of you. You may want to praise Him for His inexhaustible strength and sufficiency, too. After all, when you think about it, He is truly amazing.

Psalm 121:4—Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

Persistence

Megan Breedlove No Comments

My youngest daughter, two-year-old Jessica, went through a phase where she really didn’t like to take ‘no’ for an answer. I mean, really. To her, my saying ‘no’ was little more than encouragement to repeat her request, over and over, louder and louder.

Usually, once I’ve said no, I try to be consistent. I know it’s important to stick by what I say and enforce the rules I’ve made. Otherwise, my children will learn that if they just beg, whine, or argue long enough, I’ll give in.

But I have a confession to make. It may not be the best parenting technique in the world, but sometimes, I decide that the battle isn’t worth it. There are times when I don’t really care enough about the boundary I’ve set to be willing to do battle in order to maintain it. So I give in.

When I can tell that Jessica is just being obstinate about not getting her way, it’s much easier for me to maintain my ‘no’. But when it seems that her request is really important to her, my heart is moved to listen.

It’s like the parable of the widow before the unjust judge. The unjust judge didn’t care about her request, but because of her persistence, he gave in to her so that she’d leave him alone. When Jesus told this parable, He made the point that if an unloving human being would be moved by another’s unrelenting request, how much more would God’s heart be moved by the petitions of His beloved children?

It took years before I understood this parable. I was confused by the fact that we sometimes have to ask God many times before He grants something. After all, shouldn’t once be enough?

Sometimes, it’s not, but not because God doesn’t know about our requests. After all, even before a word is on our tongue, He knows it completely. The reason we have to keep asking sometimes is so we—not He—can see how important something is to us.

Many of our requests, we’re not willing to ask about more than once. If we don’t get what we asked for, we shrug our shoulders and move on. Only if something seems vitally important right now do we pray repeatedly. Over time, our urgency seems to fade.

Most of us wouldn’t pray a mere one time for our child’s salvation, or when our children are sick, when we’re sick, or when we have a significant need that it’s obvious only God can meet. But unless it feels like a crisis to us, we usually don’t pray regularly for other things such as missionaries, political issues, or our church’s ministries.

May we learn to persist in prayer until God responds, with yes, no, or wait. Too often, we give up because we get tired of praying. May God build up our “prayer muscles” so that we have the spiritual stamina to pray as long as necessary, until God answers our requests.

For we know that in His perfect timing, He will answer. And He may grant our request precisely because of our persistence.

Luke 18:1—Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.

A Bunny Did It

Megan Breedlove No Comments

“Mommy! Jessica’s coloring herself purple!”

My five-year-old son announced the news at the top of his lungs. I froze in the midst of my kitchen clean-up duty. Into my mind flashed the memory of a purple marker, lying on the coffee table, which I’d passed by, intending to pick up later. It had been well within two-year-old Jessica’s reach.

“Where is she?” I asked Kenny.

“In the chair,” Kenny said, pointing to our new, leather recliner.

Visions of purple-striped tan filled my head, and I dashed into the living room. Jessica sat looking small in the midst of overstuffed comfort, a purple marker in one hand. Her right leg bore a single streak of purple marker. Her left leg had received the brunt of her artistry.

“Jessica,” I said slowly, in that I-know-what-you-did-so-you-might-as-well-admit-it voice—the one I imagine God used in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve sinned. “Did you color yourself purple?”

Jessica blinked at me. She looked down at the marker in her hand, then back up at me.

“No,” she said innocently.

“Jessica,” I said in a less forbidding voice, hoping that taking the pressure off would cause her to own up to the obvious truth, “you colored yourself purple, didn’t you?”

“No,” she said. “Well, I colored this one.” She pointed to the leg with the single marker streak.

“Somebody else colored the other one?” I asked.

“Mm-hmm,” she said, nodding her head all the way up and all the way down.

“Who colored it?” I asked.

“Umm…a bunny,” she said.

“A bunny colored your leg?”

“Yep.” Clearly, in her mind, that settled the matter, effectively absolving her of any guilt.

Later, my husband called from work, and I told him about the incident. “I caught her with the evidence,” I said later to my husband. “I took the marker from her hand, and she still lied to me.”

“There’s a devotion in that,” my husband said.

He was right.

Too often, we mommies do the same thing Jessica did. We try to find ways around our guilt.

Do any of these excuses sound familiar?

My husband failed to be sensitive when I was having a bad day already, we say, trying to justify our disrespectful words.

But I’ve told those kids a thousand times! we sigh, remembering our tone of voice that was much too harsh and loud.

We’re experts at trying to blame our guilt on others while expecting our husband and children to toe the line.

But you know what? We don’t fool anyone. Deep down, we know we’re guilty. Our family knows it, too. And our omniscient Creator certainly sees and knows.

We need to be willing to do the same thing I wanted Jessica to do—the same thing we all want our children to do when caught in some act. We need to confess to our Father—without excuses and without playing the blame game—that we’ve sinned.

Yes, there may be consequences for our actions. But we will also find, as Jessica would have found, forgiveness and a loving embrace. Remember that Jesus came, not to condemn us, but to save us. God isn’t waiting for us to confess just so He can zap us with lightning. He wants to hear our words of repentance so He can cleanse us and restore our relationship with Him—so that we can start anew.

We may not get to play with the purple markers anymore. But there are many things to do that are more fun anyway.

1 John 1:9—If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to purify us from all unrighteousness.

John 3:16—For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

Believe You Me

Megan Breedlove No Comments

I’m really enjoying this phase of life where my children think I know everything.

Okay, maybe not everything. They know there are certain subjects on which Daddy is the expert, like electricity and computers. But for the rest of life, Mommy has trustworthy answers to everything.

When Ellie was three, she had a friend I’ll call Jane. Jane often told Ellie things that couldn’t possibly be true. One day, when they were playing together, Ellie came to me upset. “Mommy, Jane says she has more Hello Kitty stuff than me,” Ellie said.

But it wasn’t true.

“Ellie,” I said, “Jane says she has more stuff because she wishes it were true. She thinks if she says she has more things than you, you’ll be impressed with her.”

“Oh,” Ellie said, satisfied.

That seemed to settle the matter. Ellie returned to play with Jane, and they played happily for the rest of their time together.

I know there will be times, as Ellie gets older, when she questions my assessments of certain people and situations. But that day, she trusted me completely, believing that any answer Mommy would give her would be right.

Maybe that’s part of what Jesus meant when He talked about entering the kingdom as a little child. He knows that as adults, we are all too prone to question God’s ability to accurately assess a situation and to substitute our own judgments for His. Maybe Jesus wanted us to hang onto that childlike faith in God’s wisdom all our lives.

There have been times in my life when I wondered what God was up to, or when I didn’t see how what He was doing could be the best thing. Sometimes, I’ve substituted my judgment for His. Perhaps you have, too.

But what God wants us to learn is not to question Him as we get older. He wants us to continue to trust Him completely and without question, just as a little child trusts her mother.

Though we’re adults now, God’s knowledge and understanding surpass ours to an infinite degree, and always will. So let’s trust Him in any and every situation, not ourselves. Let’s take comfort in the fact that Someone so all-wise and all-knowing watches over us. And let’s thank Him for the fact that He knows everything and takes care of it all so that we don’t have to.

Job 38:18—“Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this.”

Jeremiah 29:11—“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future.”

Intentions

Megan Breedlove No Comments

I didn’t realize how much Ellie was looking forward to celebrating Mother’s Day until she came running into the room and announced, “Mommy! Sunday is Mother’s Day! That means we get to celebrate you! Daddies go to work and make money, but mothers take care of you every day of your life!”

Excitedly, Ellie told me about all her plans, which she repeated several times in subsequent days, for making my day special. She was going to buy me “a bunch” of pink roses. She would let me stay in bed all day and bring me breakfast in bed. She and my other children would be extra-nice to me, because “that’s what kids should do on Mother’s Day”. (I even heard her instructing the other kids in this principle.)

Her excitement at celebrating me as her mother touched a place deep in my heart. Due to her completely sincere, heartfelt offerings, I will remember her words forever…even though things didn’t work out quite the way she had planned.

On Mother’s Day, I woke up while (so I thought) no one else in the house was yet awake. But soon, I heard little feet coming my way, and Jessica walked in, sleepily squinting her eyes, and asking to nurse. So I tended to Jessica’s needs. Soon, Kenny woke up, and I helped him with breakfast.

When my husband got up, we began getting everyone ready for church. Lindsey and Ellie still weren’t up, so we had to wake them up. I thought Ellie might be disappointed that all her plans for me hadn’t worked out. As it turned out, she wasn’t.

In fact, she didn’t even mention the gone-by-the-wayside plans. I considered whether or not I should feel hurt that she had forgotten, but I decided not to. After all, I knew her intentions had been good. Her failure to remember and implement the wonderful plans she had come up with was nothing more than the forgetfulness of a seven-year-old. It didn’t reflect any lack of love for me on her part.

I wonder how God feels when you and I forget to follow through on our intentions towards Him.

We promise ourselves, and Him, that we will spend regular time in prayer or Bible study, and then days go by without our following through. Or we tell Him we’ll serve a brother or sister in a particular way, then never get around to doing it.

I bet God gets disappointed, just like I was when Ellie forgot to carry out the plans she’d promised. God loves spending time with us, and He enjoys it when we do things for Him. So when we fail to do either one, we deprive Him of the relationship or enjoyment He longs to experience. We deprive ourselves, too.

Father, forgive us for all the times we could have spent time with you, and didn’t, and for everything we promised You we would do, then didn’t even remember. Renew us so that our relationship with You is first and foremost in our thoughts and mind, above anything else. Lord, we want to spend time with You because we love You. And we’re so very grateful that You desire to spend time with us.

In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

Psalm 116:18-19—I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the LORD—in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the LORD.

When I Return

Megan Breedlove No Comments

It had been a crazy morning. My husband was sleeping in, having been on call the night before and spent most of the night working. My middle daughter, Lindsey, was sick and needed to stay home from preschool. I was about to walk out the door to take Kenny and Jessica to preschool.

I knew that my husband probably needed a couple more hours of sleep. So I said to Ellie and Lindsey, “Girls, your daddy needs to sleep. I need to take the kids to school. What I need for both of you to do is to stay here and be quiet until I get back. Just watch TV, and don’t wake up Daddy unless there’s an emergency.”

There. That just about covered it, except for one thing. “Ellie,” I added, “if there are any arguments, or anything goes wrong between you two, just let it go. Let Lindsey win the argument if you have to, and I’ll settle things when I get back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ellie said.

I knew I was asking Ellie to do a hard thing. As I closed the door behind us, I hoped that she would do what I’d asked.

And I realized that what I was asking her to do is the same thing God asks us to do.

We’re to try to get along with each other until His Son returns. If we can’t, then let things go. Know that He will return, and be confident that He will make all things right in the end.

It sounds simple. And it is. But it’s not easy.

When someone wrongs us, we don’t want to let it go. We want things to be right now. Why should we have to bear with injustice? Don’t we have the right to insist that other people treat us rightly?

Granted, there are some offenses that cannot and should not be overlooked. Certain wrongdoing or conflict should result in punishment and consequences, or at least a serious discussion.

But most of what we get angry or upset about isn’t worth the emotional energy we put into it. Most of it really doesn’t matter. Many things that we bring up to others in an attempt to get them to act “right” could probably equally well be left unsaid.

When something does matter, it is right to attempt to resolve the issue with the other person involved. Many times, this approach settles the issue. But sometimes, it doesn’t. What will we do then? Will we let ourselves become incensed and bitter? Will we keep the issue alive until the other party sees things our way?

Or will we let it go, and let Jesus settle things when He returns?

It’s hard to let people’s real or perceived sins against us go by the wayside without some sort of recompense to ourselves. It can feel like we’re being taken advantage of, or letting people “get away with” something.

But none of us truly gets away with anything. Someday, we’ll all answer for what we’ve done. That person who offended you will answer for it. She may not answer today, when you want her to. But she will answer—to God Himself.

So do your best to get along with others. When conflict can’t be successfully resolved, consider just letting it go. It’ll be taken care of at the right time, by God Himself.

Our Father will settle it when Jesus returns.

1 Peter 4:8—Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Romans 12:18—If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Even if I Didn’t Notice

Megan Breedlove No Comments

The morning had been productive. I had gotten myself and the kids up and dressed, made sure everybody had breakfast, and gotten us out the door to the YMCA.

I’d also gotten in a good workout. Treadmill? Check. Lifting weights? Check. Drinking enough water? Check.

Now, we were home eating lunch. Ellie, six years old at the time, wanted to tell me about her morning. “At the Y,” she said, “there was this boy, and I kept having to tell the teacher that he was bothering me.”

From the chair next to her sister, three-year-old Lindsey piped up helpfully and earnestly, “Yeah, and I had to keep saving you.” She nodded for emphasis.

I was proud of Lindsey’s loving initiative toward her sister. Ellie didn’t seem as impressed as I was, but at least, she was polite. “Thank you for saving me,” Ellie said, “even if I didn’t notice.”

Ouch.

Ellie’s words made me cringe inside, not only because I was afraid Lindsey’s feelings would be hurt, but because I realized something.

You and I do the same thing to God on a regular basis.

We benefit from His help every single moment of our lives, yet most of the time, we’re oblivious to the fact that if it weren’t for Him, we wouldn’t even take our next breath. We don’t pay particular attention to God’s assistance unless it comes in the form of something miraculous or massive. When it’s “everyday” assistance, we pay it no more attention than we pay to the people who provide the electricity to our homes.

We simply expect His assistance to be there.

I wonder how God feels when we continually fail to acknowledge His interventions and provisions for us.

Even more than that, I wonder why He continues to provide for us when we take Him so much for granted.

On one hand, I know that He continues to sustain us because He loves us and because He has promised that He will. But from an earthly perspective, I simply can’t understand His ways.

If Ellie never noticed Lindsey’s assistance and rarely thanked her, or only mumbled obligatory, meaningless thank-you’s right before she took advantage of what Lindsey had done for her, I’m certain Lindsey would be tempted to stop helping. I know I would, and I’m an adult.

But despite the fact that we rarely give God the appreciation He deserves, He continues to lavish His love and care upon us.

That is truly amazing.

How God must long to see His children become aware of all He does for them and to hear them rise up in gratitude.

This week, let’s ask God to open the eyes of our hearts to see everything He does for us. As we move through our days, may He cause us to realize how much we need Him every moment.

When He has been gracious to do that, may we realize how incredibly much He has done for us already and is continuing to do every second. May we repent of every single time we failed to recognize His hand or took it for granted.

And just as our hearts are glad when our children express their thanks to us, may we bring joy the Father’s heart by pouring out our gratitude from hearts that overflow.

John 1:16—From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.

Hebrews 13:15—Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name.

Fleeing

Megan Breedlove No Comments

My children and I love to go to the park. There is a nice park two blocks from our house, and lately, I’ve been trying to take them there as much as possible while the weather is still nice (before it gets too blistering hot). My three older children ride their bikes, and I pull Jessica in our Radio Flyer wagon. We park our vehicles in our usual spot, a grassy area near a tree and a bench, and the kids head off to play.

Last week, we had played for awhile and were ready to head home. Ellie was in the lead on the sidewalk leading to the street, with Jessica and me bringing up the rear, when a stray dog loped into the park.

Ellie saw him, and she immediately got off her bike, dropping it to the ground, and ran towards me, arms outstretched, calling my name. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

Ellie is scared of dogs that move unpredictably or quickly, and once, a large pit bull (who was actually trying to be friendly) jumped up on her to lick her, and wound up scratching her cheek with his front paw. So when she saw this dog running towards her, she was understandably terrified, and fled in the opposite direction toward me as quickly as she could.

Everything turned out fine. The dog didn’t hurt anyone, and we made it safely past him. But I learned an important lesson that day.

My daughter knows how to flee: immediately, quickly, and completely. I need to learn from her. Perhaps you do, too.

Too often, when you and I see danger coming, we don’t flee. Sometimes, the threat is something that can cause us physical, emotional, or financial harm. We know our Father is right there with us, yet for some insane reason, we don’t flee to Him. We try to meet the monster ourselves.

It’s a foolish strategy. Why in the world would we try to deal with the hazard ourselves when our Father is right there? Yet too often, we do. Maybe we’ve come to believe the proverb “God only helps those who help themselves” (which is NOT in the Bible), so we muster up our own puny abilities and deal with the problem. Possibly, we overestimate our capacity for dealing with it. Or maybe we don’t realize that God cares about our problem and wants to help us.

Whatever the reason, we confront the menace ourselves, and we lose.

Other times, the danger isn’t direct and immediate. Temptation rarely looks as dangerous as it is. We see temptation coming, and we don’t flee, because we figure there’s no need to go running. After all, we can stand our ground and refuse, can’t we? Or maybe we simply don’t want to flee the temptation. Maybe we want to do the thing we shouldn’t.

If we saw a tornado heading straight for our home while we were playing outside with our children, what would we do? Would we say, “Kids, it’s getting a little windy out here, so we’re going to go inside in about ten minutes”?

Of course not. We’d gather up our children as fast as we could and run into the house, crowd into the safest closet we had, and pray.

Why would we do any less when temptation approaches?

Whenever we’re threatened, whether by temptation, by an obvious physical danger, or by any other thing that troubles us, we should flee to our Father. Let’s admit that we don’t have the strength to fight anything on our own. We’re desperately in need of God’s assistance every single time—whether it comes in the form of His giving us strength to do the right thing, or of His slaying the dragon on our behalf.

Let’s take a lesson from my daughter. This week, let’s learn to flee.

Genesis 39:12—But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.

John 15:5—Apart from me you can do nothing.

Good Enough

Megan Breedlove No Comments

As I write, I’m listening to children’s music about the color yellow blasting from the CD player in the kitchen. The kids have been in the kitchen and dining room for an hour now, alternately dancing to the music and playing with other toys.

Are they having a good enough time?

There’s a lot of laughter at our house. We make silly faces and tell silly jokes; we say silly things and laugh together. Sometimes, we chuckle in delight or laugh so hard we can’t stand up straight.

Yet at times, I wonder…on the whole, are they happy enough?

Every night, I tuck them in bed. Sometimes, I sing over them. Always, I pray for them. Then, I tell them, “You’re great kids, and I love you, and God loves you.”

But are they secure enough?

Most of us moms struggle, at least from time to time, with wondering if we’re doing enough. Are we providing our children a good enough childhood? Are we good enough moms?

The question is so important because the answer matters so greatly. We don’t want to fail our children. We want them to be deeply convinced that they’re loved and lovable, to have the right kind and amount of self-esteem, and most of all, to love God and be like His Son Jesus.

But how can we know if the job we’re doing as parents is sufficient to produce these results?

The issue becomes especially complicated for a mom who didn’t experience love, stability, and security in her own childhood. This mom knows what kinds of things not to do, but she doesn’t fully understand how a strong and loving bond is produced because she never saw it in action. When she makes a mistake, she’s never sure how bad of a mistake it is. So she lives with the constant, nagging fear that the things she’s doing might not be enough to give her children what she never had.

Precious mom, let me share with you what God, in His grace, taught me.

We don’t have to live in constant torment that we might not measure up. Our life as mothers is meant to be so much more than endlessly trying to measure up to society’s expectations, our best friend’s abilities, or even our own standards. The only One we have to please is God, and He does not make it difficult to know whether or not we are pleasing Him.

For one thing, He sets forth some clear, specific guidelines in His Word, the Bible, about how we should treat our children. We don’t need to wonder whether or not we should forgive our children or treat them kindly. That’s spelled out as plain as He could make it.

For another, when we have the Holy Spirit in our hearts, we have God Himself and His wisdom available right inside of us to tell us when we aren’t doing right. And we can be completely certain that He will tell us when we’re doing something wrong, and He’ll tell us specifically.

God’s ultimate desire for us is that we be conformed to the image of His Son—in other words, that we act like Jesus. So if anything we are doing, or failing to do, gets in the way of that, He’ll tell us what it is so that we can repent of it and uproot it from our lives. God won’t leave us with some vague, undefined sense of guilt. He won’t tell us we’re doing something wrong or insufficiently, then refuse to tell us what, exactly, He’s talking about.

What that means for us as mothers is that since God is the only person we ultimately have to please, if He’s not telling us we’re doing something wrong, then we are good enough.

The next time we wonder whether or not we’re being the kind of mom we should be, let’s simply ask Him. If we’re not, He’ll tell us. If we are, He’ll tell us that, too.

May we learn to rest in the fact that though we’re not perfect, we can be the kind of mom who pleases God. And ultimately, that kind of mom is good enough.

James 1:5—If any [mom] lacks wisdom, let [her] ask of God, who gives graciously to all without finding fault, and it will be given [her].

Almost

Megan Breedlove No Comments

My precious daughter Lindsey turned four last week. One gift we got her for her birthday was a game she had really wanted. She was eager to play it, so we worked on setting up the game together.

Part of the setup involved making nets by threading the plastic net frame through the channel on the piece of netting. I sat on the floor, putting assembling one net. Lindsey chose a frame and a piece of netting and began trying to pass the curved frame through the netting. Finding it difficult to force the plastic through, Lindsey held the plastic steady and brought the netting down over it as far as she could, then reached up and threaded the next section on.

I watched her working diligently and bit back my offer of help. After awhile, though, the netting got all bunched up, and she couldn’t get it to go any further. “Will you please help me?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s almost done,” I said, making a minor adjustment and sliding the rest of the netting on. “You were so close. You almost had it.”

Lindsey had been so close to success. Had she persevered just a little bit longer, she would have made it. But she quit, believing that she couldn’t do it.

You and I do the same thing.

We fail to realize how close we are to success, and we give up.

We’ve disciplined the same child for the same infraction a hundred times, and it hasn’t worked yet, so we quit.

We’ve given the same explanation a thousand times as to why we don’t hit each other or why we go to church, and our kids don’t seem to get it in our time frame, so we figure they never will.

Maybe we’ve tried multiple times to lose the baby weight, or establish a quiet time, or learn to like cooking, and we’ve failed every time, so we don’t try any more.

I wonder how many of these times we’ve quit right before success—when we “almost had it”? When if we’d just kept on a little longer, we would have achieved our goal?

The problem is, we often don’t know when we’re almost there. We can’t see the finish line, so we don’t know how close we are. We struggle on, getting more and more exhausted and discouraged. Finally, we give up.

If only we could see the finish line and realize that we’re almost there.

Precious mom, we can’t see the end, but there is Someone Who can. We don’t know whether our efforts are ever going to succeed, but there is Someone Who does.

Our Heavenly Father knows when we’re this close to success, and when we need to stop, reassess, and go at things a different way. He knows when the battle we’re fighting is about to be won, and when it’s the wrong battle entirely.

Even better, He’ll tell us. He’s promised in His Word that when we really need answers, He’ll give them to us. They may not be the answers we expect, and they may not come in our timing, but they will come.

So the next time we’ve had it up to here, or we’re exhausted, overwhelmed, and tempted to quit, let’s stop and ask the Father. He’ll tell us what to do. And if the answer is to keep going, He’ll give us the ability to do it, and He’ll cheer us on while we do it.

Let’s not quit early. Let’s not miss out on the blessings God has for us if we’ll only keep going. Let’s let Him tell us when to continue, and when to reverse course.

We may not be able to see the right decision in our own wisdom, but He can in His.

James 1:5—If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives graciously to all without finding fault, and it will be given him.

1 Corinthians 15:58—Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

2 Timothy 4:7—I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

You Missed

Devotions

Priorities

Devotions

I Wouldn’t Do That

Devotions

Little Things

Devotions

8 Seconds