LifeLink Devotions for Friday, May 24, 2024

If you want to ruin a relationship, start talking about how to give more money to the Lord. Finances are one of the biggest reasons for broken relationships. So if we are going to be people of wisdom, we’d better come to a mutual understanding of what God says about money.

Proverbs 23:4-5 “Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.”

Whenever the church of Jesus Christ takes up a discussion on money and finances there is the potential for great disagreement and conflict. If the church were to be compared to a car, then finances would be the potholes in the road waiting to throw the car’s steering out of alignment. Simple conversations between Christians can quickly become overheated when either the giving or the spending of money is the topic. It should not be so, but there are two potholes we have hit that have ruined our alignment with God’s values.

1.      Money has captured our affections. Let’s be realistic – we love money. We love the status it brings us when we have it. We have determined that the value of who we are as a person is directly related to the amount of money we have and are able to spend. We have given money the power to determine our personal worth. We also love the things money can provide for us, because we have also given possessions the power to determine our personal worth. We have adopted the secular standards of success by believing that the more we have and are able to manage the more successful we are. Money has captured our affections because we believe that God alone cannot fulfill our lives and give us a total sense of worth and purpose. That’s a big pothole we hit, and we need an alignment!

2.      Our Biblical understanding of giving and our obedience to it has become a pride issue for us. We try to convince others in the church to give the way we give. We even use the guidelines we believe in to justify the personal use of our funds. Whether we believe in tithing, or proportional giving, or generous giving, or sacrificial giving, or cheerful giving is not the real issue. What matters most is that we believe that all that we have is God’s and is available for His use for His glory at any time. There should never be a discussion in our minds about what is God’s and what is mine. It is all God’s, and we are simply the stewards, or managers, of His resources. Whatever we believe about the Biblical guidelines for purposeful, planned giving to the church, there should be an underlying philosophy that guides the management of our money, and it is this: I will honor the owner with every decision that involves the use of His resources. Proverbs 3:9-10 says, “Honor the LORD with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.”

I think we will stop there for today, because hitting two potholes has caused a major steering problem and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to safely drive until I get an alignment. So, as soon as I’m done here, I’ll make a call to the owner of Priority Alignment and let the head mechanic, the Holy Spirit, make any necessary adjustments. I’ll bet if you called, He’d have time to align you as well.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Thursday, May 23, 2024

I want to share a story that illustrates the wisdom principle we discovered yesterday about being compassionate.

Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the clinic.

 One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. “Why, he’s hardly taller than my eight-year-old,” I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and raw. Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, “Good evening. I’ve come to see if you’ve a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there’s no bus ‘til morning.”

He told me he’d been hunting for a room since noon but with no success, no one seemed to have a room. “I guess it’s my face. I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments…”

For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: “I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning.”

I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us. “No thank you. I have plenty.” And he held up a brown paper bag.

When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes. It didn’t take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.

He didn’t tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was prefaced with a thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going.

At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children’s room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded, and the little man was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, “Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won’t put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair.” He paused a moment and then added, “Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind.”

I told him he was welcome to come again. And on his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they’d be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.

 In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden. Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.

When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. “Did you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!”

Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But oh! If only they could have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear. I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.

Recently I was visiting a friend, who has a greenhouse. As she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, “If this were my plant, I’d put it in the loveliest container I had!”

My friend changed my mind. “I ran short of pots,” she explained, and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting out in this old pail. It’s just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden.”

She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just such a scene in heaven. “Here’s an especially beautiful one,” God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. “He won’t mind starting in this small body.”

All this happened long ago—and now, in God’s garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7b)

LifeLink Devotions for Wednesday, May 22, 2024

For 25 years I was friends with a chaplain at a local hospital. I remember one instance when the chaplain came into the room of a patient I was visiting. This was three years after he had retired. I thought to myself, “Here is a man who understands the heart of God for people in need and is available at any time to reach out a warm and loving hand to help them.” In all my years of knowing him and observing him I never saw him put his own needs ahead of the needs of others, and I never heard from anyone a discouraging word about his ministry. He is a master of great relationship because he puts others ahead of himself. 

If we are going to be people of great relationships, that must be true of us as well. Here’s today’s relationship wisdom – With the compassion of Christ put the needs of others ahead of your own.

Prov. 24:11-12  “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?”

God is absolutely and unmistakenly aware of every need of every person. He is also just as aware of whether we are informed about the need. We cannot play the ignorance card with God. We cannot pretend to not have heard about the need. There is nothing that justifies our avoidance of involvement in meeting the need. There is no priority in our lives that can be argued into first place when we know there is a hurting person that we can touch with God’s grace and love.

Think about this carefully: any decision on our part to do anything for self, when we know there is another person in need and we have the ability and opportunity to get involved in meeting that need, is seen and felt by God, and will not go unnoticed or unpunished. “If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered.” (Prov. 21:13)

The older I get and the longer I minister, the more I realize that it is not how much I know or how well I preach or how great I administrate and lead that matters most to people – it is how much I care! A loving and serving heart is the single most important asset to great relationships.

Look around, if you dare, there are hurting people everywhere;

All they want is someone to care, a person to share,

Their burdens to bear, who is always there.

Such people are rare, be one, if you dare.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Tuesday, May 21, 2024

 One of the hardest things we face in our relationships with others is when they give us advice about who can be our friend and who we should stay away from. It seems to hit at the very core of who we believe we are, because it seems as if they are saying, “You’re not perceptive enough to see what this will do to you so I need to tell you.” Most of us don’t like being told we need help in any area of our lives, and especially in the area of choosing our friends. This is an incredible area of tension between parents and teenagers.

But let’s be honest – we are blinded to the dangers of certain people’s influence in our lives because of a self-centered attitude we have in the relationship: we focus only on the value and pleasure they bring to us in a purely fleshly, worldly, sensual, and materialistic way. It may even be that they have an exterior resemblance to a spiritually minded person, and they seem to be trying hard to do the right thing. Don’t be suckered. They are only playing a game based on their own insecurities and desire to find value in what you give them. Their hearts are plotting personal gain and pleasure, not true self-sacrificing love. That’s our word of relationship wisdom for today, found in  Prov. 24:1-2.

“Do not envy wicked men, do not desire their company; for their hearts plot violence, and their lips talk about making trouble.”  

We all have a desire to be a part of something bigger than we are as individuals. The world and its cronies seem to have the most appealing opportunities. That’s because the basic need of our heart is for relational acceptance that offers a meaningful existence.  The world thinks the local bar is the place that provides that for everyone. Oh, it does offer relational acceptance, but what about the meaningful existence part. One huge aspect of a meaningful existence is security, and where is that found in what the world offers? Only Jesus Christ can provide a truly meaningful, fulfilling, and abundant existence. Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly (or to the fullest).

We have been looking in the wrong places and looking to the wrong people for our place and purpose. We have also been the wrong kind of people to those who are still looking as well. When Jesus provides us with the full abundance of life through His unconditional love and acceptance and empowerment, shouldn’t that make us who know Him the core group of a movement in the world that attracts people looking to be a part of something bigger than they are? Yes it should. But we are still stuck in the flesh looking for additional acceptance and approval, and we are being dragged back into the mud of mediocrity rather than standing on the Rock of real relationship.

 The choices we make about who we allow to have an influence in our lives are probably the single most important choices we ever make. Listen to what God’s Word says about it:

1 Corinthians 15:33 – “Bad company corrupts good character.”

Exodus 23:2 – “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong.”

 Psalm 1:1 – “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.”

Proverbs 4:14 – “Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evil men.”

 2 Corinthians 6:14 – “Do not be yolked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?”

Now remember, we are not talking about separation from all sinners so that we never have contact with them. We must reach out to them in Christ’s love and draw the to Jesus for salvation. What we must do is separate ourselves from their influence. Think of it this way: if you are in a relationship of any kind with an unsaved person in which the major flow of influence moves from them to you, put up some boundaries quick. You will be dragged down. When you are strong enough to take a stand and the major flow of influence moves from you to them, then go for it and win them to Jesus. That will make for a great relationship!

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Monday, May 20, 2024

What expectations do you have for what your children will be when they grow up? That’s an important question. But here’s an even more important one. How are you seeking to control their lives so they meet your expectations?

I see so many parents micro-managing their children’s lives to accomplish their own personal goals in life, and I believe that’s why we see so many frustrated and rebellious children. But there is a solution, and it’s found in Proverbs 22:6, which says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” 

This verse gives us our third wisdom principle for parenting. The responsibility of a parent is to train the child to become the fullness of whom God created them to be, not to become what we wish they would be.

It is vital that we understand the phrase “in the way he should go” in today’s verse. It does not mean that we as parents get to determine what they will be when they grow up. The Hebrew expression means to train them “according to their natural bent.” It is the wonderful privilege of a parent to observe the natural strengths and abilities of their child and then train them, within the context of God’s righteousness, to become all that God created them to be. So many parents make the mistake of imposing their desires on their children, and the children go through life rebelling because inside they know the real person God created has not been allowed to bloom.  It would be very unwise to expect our children to pursue our goals for them when God made them for a different purpose. It is very wise of our children to pursue the fullness of what God made them to be.

We will experience ultimate joy when we see our children fulfilling God’s purpose for their lives. Here’s how King Solomon sees it.

Prov. 23:24-25  “The father of a righteous man has great joy; he who has a wise son delights in him. May your father and mother be glad; may she who gave you birth rejoice!”

Train your children in God’s righteousness, but let God show them His purpose for their lives. That’s wise parenting.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Friday, May 17, 2024

In our last devotional we shared the first wisdom principle of good parenting: teach your children respect for authority. Now today we look at principle number two, which is found in Proverbs 13:24.

“He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.” 

Let me be clearly understood – physical abuse is never justified. However, to swing the pendulum to the other extreme of removing all forms of physical discipline is also deadly. The development of character requires discipline.  So that leads us to our second wisdom principle – There must be discipline for the child to truly know their parents love them.

First of all let’s clarify the distinction between punishment and discipline. Punishment is simply the enforcement of a consequence without concern for the emotional or spiritual needs of the perpetrator. Punishment has no concern with character development. On the other hand, discipline is all about character development, and the physical pain of the consequence is only a means to accomplish maturity. Punishment is not a loving response. Discipline is.

Because we are created in the image of God, we have a basic need to love and be loved. When we feel love, we desire to return love to the one loving us, and the method of returning love that is common to us all is to obey. When there are no rules to obey, there is no way to properly measure love or return love. God created Adam in a perfect love relationship with Himself and gave him a rule to obey to test his love. In parenting, there must be rules and consequences for the child to feel loved and secure. When we withhold discipline, as our Scripture verse for today said, we withhold love. When discipline is inconsistent, the child thinks love is inconsistent. When we discipline, we give the child hope: hope of a fulfilled life and hope that they are both worthy and capable of that life. Proverbs 19:18 says, “Discipline your son, for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to his death.”

Today, work on turning your emotional responses that produce punishment into loving responses that develop character in your children. Teach them what you want them to learn from the discipline. They will begin to understand how much you love them.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Thursday, May 16, 2024

LifeLink Devotions for Thursday, May 16, 2024

Things are upside down. Culture is directing the family, instead of family forming the culture. It is essential that we return to basing our family life on the wisdom of God’s Word. So for the next few days we are going to look at three principles of wise parenting we find in several powerful wisdom statements that Solomon makes about family. Here’s the first one:

Prov. 23:13-14  “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.”

There are a lot of conflicting views bantered about today about the discipline of children. Some say, “Enforce the rules and make the consequences hurt,” while others say, “Don’t have rules so as not to break their spirit and stifle their creativity.” How are we to know what is the proper approach to parenting so that our children will grow up some day to be righteous and wise so we can delight in them?

Over my many years I have learned a few basic principles that might help in your quest to be a better parent and raise Godly kids. Here is parenting fundamental number one.

1.       ALL discipline is for the good of the child and not the good of the parent.  I can’t begin to tell you how many times, in my early years as a father, I was guilty of inflicting a consequence upon my children because it either emotionally or physically satisfied me at the time. This was so wrong, and I learned quickly by the responses of my wife and my children that discipline is not to be an expression of my hurt or my frustration, but it is to be carefully designed to produce a positive response of growth in the child. Look at what Proverbs 23:14 says – “Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.” The emphasis here is on what will most benefit the child. You will have a great relationship with your child, even when there are enforced consequences for sin, when the child knows you are intent on doing what is best for them and not for yourself. This will teach them to respect authority, something that is lost in our current culture.

Tomorrow we will look at principle number two. For today, let’s focus on how to teach our children respect for authority. It starts with you as the parent. Thanks for working hard to apply the first principle to your own life..

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Here’s another wisdom principle for building better relationships. In Proverbs 23:9 Solomon says, “Do not speak to a fool, for he will scorn the wisdom of your words.” If we are going to have great relationships, we must learn to recognize foolishness and avoid it, not only in others but in ourselves as well. The following verses help us identify a fool.

Prov. 12:23 – “A prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of a fool blurts out folly.”

Prov. 15:2 – “The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly.”

Prov. 18:2 – “A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinion.”

Eccl. 10:3 – “Even as he walks down the road, the fool lacks sense and shows everyone how stupid he is.”

2 Tim. 3:9 – “But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.”

So what are the marks of a fool that we should be looking for? Here are some prime indicators, some of which may hit close to home.

1.      Atheism / Agnosticism  Psalm 53:1 – “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’

2.      Slander / Gossip  Prov. 10:18 – “…whoever spreads slander is a fool.”

3.      No personal responsibility for sin  Prov. 14:9 – “Fools mock at making amends for sin…”

4.      Rejection of Instruction  Prov. 15:5 – “A fool spurns his father’s discipline, but whoever heeds correction shows prudence.”

5.      Quarreling and Strife  Prov.18:6 – “A fool’s lips bring him strife, and his mouth invites a beating.”  Prov. 20:3 – “…but every fool is quick to quarrel.”

6.      Self-confidence  Prov. 28:26 – “He who trusts in himself is a fool.”

7.      Dishonesty   Jer. 17:11 – “Like a partridge that hatches eggs it did not lay is the man who gains riches by unjust means. When his life is half gone, they will desert him, and in the end he will prove to be a fool.”

8.      Hypocrisy   Luke 11:39-40 – “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people!”

I’m sure by now the Holy Spirit has already been showing each of us the areas above that apply to our own lives. Let Him do His work in our hearts. It would be easy to allow Satan to influence our fleshly, carnal mind and cause us to think about other people who are guilty of being fools, but we need to resist him, flee from him, and surrender to the cleansing and maturing power of the Holy Spirit.

You see, we will only be great in relationships if we are not the fool. 

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Tuesday, May 14, 2024

In the 22^nd – 24^th chapters of Proverbs King Solomon gives his students a look at thirty basic pieces of wisdom to build a life upon. Within them are six specific instructions on relationship issues. Let’s dig in and discover how to build better relationships.

The first one is found in Proverbs 22:24-25.

“Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man, do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn his ways and get yourself ensnared.”

This sounds pretty straightforward for us, right? Avoid people who are quick-tempered. We are already thinking about the people that fit this description. That’s the easy part. But we must consider the possibility that we might be the person that someone else is thinking about avoiding. I know, that’s a remote possibility, and they really don’t know us very well if they are, but let’s consider it anyway.

Let’s use a measuring scale of one to ten. Number one describes a person who is “in control” as we read in Proverbs 29:1. “A wise man keeps himself under control”.  Emotions do not dictate actions.

On the other end of the scale is the ten. They are the hot-tempered person of Proverbs 29:11. “A fool gives full vent to his anger”. They vent anger easily and even explosively.

Now, where would we rate ourselves on that scale? After you rate your anger level, consider this: anyone who is rated lower on the scale may consider you the person to avoid. The challenge is for each one of us to evaluate our own lives and relationships by looking at ourselves first, and then at others.

Let’s also clarify that anger in itself is not a sin; it is an emotion. But how it is expressed can be sinful. Maybe the sinful expression of anger is not a problem for us. Make sure that others are the ones telling us that it is not a problem and that it is not a self-imposed justification of our attitudes and actions.

Or maybe the problem for us is the stirring up of anger in others. Proverbs 30:33 says, “For as churning the milk produces butter, and as twisting the nose produces blood, so stirring up anger produces strife.”  People may be avoiding you because you tend to cause them strife. Let’s look at ourselves carefully in this area as well.

Solomon then tells us why we should avoid people who are hot-tempered – because it is contagious. Angry people drag us down. Bitter people discourage us. When we are around people with chips on their shoulders, we become comfortable wearing our chips. Some people just have a terrible attitude towards life. Everything is wrong with it, and they gain some sort of satisfaction in always expressing their dissatisfaction with everyone and everything. They tend to believe that life owes them something. People like this are a real bummer to our faith. They are joy stealers. We must realize the potential for the contagious disease of sinful anger to be transmitted to us through people who do not live by faith in God alone.

Now be careful before you withdraw totally from them. Someone has to help them come to faith in Jesus Christ, and that may be you or me. The wisdom here is to not get intimate with them in any way until they do.  You can allow the influence of self-control to flow into them, rather than allow the influence of sinful anger to flow from them into you. Proverbs 29:8 says – “Mockers stir up a city, but wise men turn away anger.”  Let’s apply this principle of wisdom to all of our relationships!

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Monday, May 13, 2024

A young boy sat at the dinner table for several nights in a row listening to his dad pray for the needs of a family that lived across the street. As they would eat their meal he would think about that family and wonder if anyone would step up and help the family in a physical way. On the 5^th night, while dad was again praying, the boy quietly got up from the table, walked over to the buffet where dad laid his keys and wallet every night when he got home from work, picked up the wallet, and headed for the front door. When dad asked him where he was going the boy replied, “I’m going to answer your prayer.”

One of the characteristics of a self-sacrificing individual is the deliberate involvement in meeting the needs of the weak and poor. Deliberate is the key word. I think it goes beyond the spontaneous and usually emotional response we make to a need when we hear about it on tv or the radio or in church. Now don’t get me wrong, every gift of generosity that comes in at such times is greatly appreciated, but let’s consider carefully this area for the growth potential that it has for our lives. You see, an emotional response to anything carries with it the potential for regret. We may have given a wonderfully generous gift today in response to a need we heard about, but are we sure when the bills come at the end of the month we will not regret having made an emotional decision to do that?

I think there is a better and more mature way – to be deliberate in the planning to meet the needs when they arise. Here’s an idea: sit down with your budget book and your spouse (if you have one), and in a time of prayer consider adding an account to your budget. You could call it P.E.R., for Planned Economic Relief, or better yet, Planned Emotional Response. Whatever you decide to call the account, it will be there when a need arises, and you will know how much to give PER need. There will be no regrets later because you planned to do it and you were able to do it. You were deliberate.

I know, some of you are thinking, “Where’s the sacrifice in that?” Well, for most of us to be able to create such an account will take sacrifice because some other deliberate account or plan will have to be adjusted. Plus, I can guarantee you that as needs arise you will still have emotional responses and want to give more than you planned, so you will still sacrifice, and then adjust your PER account. Pretty soon, everything you have becomes a resource for God, and you will have discovered the wonder of self-sacrifice.

Let’s work together to start a grass roots movement to change from a self-centered church to a self-sacrificing one. It begins with honoring God above our self, and then deliberately honoring others above ourselves by considering their needs before our own.  There is not one of us who is at the bottom of the economic ladder, so no matter what our current condition, we are able to help another in need. Let’s pick up the wallet and answer our own prayers.

Pastor John