Daily Living for Seniors

[Judy Harder]

The virtue of taking responsibility

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet. Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God." - Acts 5:1-4

Some years ago, a former American astronaut took over as head of a major airline. He was determined to make the airline's service the best in the industry. One day, as the new president walked through a particular department, he saw an employee resting his feet on a desk while the telephone on the desk rang incessantly.

"Aren't you going to answer that phone?" the boss demanded. "No, sir. This isn't my department," answered the employee nonchalantly, apparently not recognizing his new boss. "I work in maintenance."

"Not anymore you don't!" snapped the president.

Recently, author John G. Miller wrote a book called The Question Behind the Question, where he discusses the epidemic of shunning personal responsibility that's so prevalent among people today. His argument is that we'd be much more fulfilled in life if we'd simply take responsibility when we're supposed to.

This is not a new concept. In fact, as you see in today's story of Ananias, it's biblical. As Christians, we're to accept responsibility, even when things don't go the way they should. So whatever your responsibilities are in life, be quick to accept them. When you do, you'll find that while you may get blame when things go wrong, you'll receive praise when they go well!

Prayer Challenge

Pray that God would give you the courage to accept responsibility even when things don't go how they should.

Questions for Thought

Why do you think it's tempting to shun responsibility when things don't go the way they should?

How can you practice maintaining responsibility even if it means accepting blame for things going wrong?

[Judy Harder]

Where to find true security

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. - John 10:28

The famous author and pastor F. B. Meyer wrote about two Germans who wanted to climb the Matterhorn. They hired three guides and began their ascent at the steepest and most slippery part. The men roped themselves together in this order: guide, traveler, guide, traveler, guide.

They had gone only a little way up the side when the last man lost his footing. He was held up temporarily by the other four because each had a toehold in the niches they had cut in the ice. But then the next man slipped, and he pulled down the two above him. The only one to stand firm was the first guide, who had driven a spike deep into the ice.

Because he held his ground, all the men beneath him regained their footing. F. B. Meyer concluded his story by drawing a spiritual application. He said, "I am like one of those men who slipped, but thank God, I am bound in a living partnership to Christ. And because He stands, I will never perish."

Because of God's great love for us, those who are in Christ are planted firmly and secure in His loving arms. So thank God today for His faithfulness to you in Christ. And if you haven't done so, trust in Jesus today to forgive your sins and place yourself securely in Him!

Prayer Challenge

Give God thanks that He's faithful to you and trust Him fully for the forgiveness of your sins!

Questions for Thought

What does your security in Jesus Christ say about how much God loves you?

Because you're firmly planted in Christ by faith in Him, what kind of confidence do you have when it comes to facing life and facing the afterlife?

[Judy Harder]

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. --Psalm 20:7

While serving in World War I as a merchant marine, British actor Herbert Marshall was required to wear a foul-smelling life jacket.

He hated wearing the putrid preserver, and at the close of the war, contemptuously tossed the repulsive object overboard in celebration. He then watched in horror as the long-tormenting object sank like a rock!

Like Herbert Marshall, you and I often put our security in things that really won't save us. Things like material possessions, finances, and job status...even things like our own good works.

In Jeremiah 17:5, God warns us, "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD." But two verses later He says, "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him."

So I want to ask you an honest question today: Who (or what) do you put your confidence in? If your trust isn't in Jesus Christ, you're holding onto a life preserver that will sink when you need it the most!

PRAYER CHALLENGE: Praise God that He is trustworthy, and ask Him to help you fully put your trust and confidence in Him.

[Judy Harder]

The wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.  --Proverbs 28:1

In 1996, Reverend Joe Wright, pastor of a large church in Wichita, Kansas, bravely stepped to the microphone of the Kansas House of Representatives to open a session in prayer.

But it wasn't the generic prayer to which the congressmen were accustomed. In part, he said:

"We have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it moral pluralism. We have worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism....

"In the name of choice, we have killed the unborn. In the name of right to life, we have killed the abortionists....

"We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment."

He then asked for wisdom and forgiveness and closed the prayer in Jesus' name.

As you can imagine, Wright's prayer caused quite an uproar. But he stood strong...and said he wouldn't apologize for stating what was true.

In today's secular and Godless culture, we need more people like Reverend Wright to take a bold stand for Jesus...people who aren't afraid of declaring and defending the truth of God as revealed in His Word.

Are you one of those people? When was the last time you took a stand for Christ? Maybe it wasn't in front of a room full of congressmen, but perhaps in a personal conversation with an unbelieving friend.

Today, I want to challenge you to memorize the verse at the beginning of this devotional, and live it out in your daily life.

As a believer, you have the truth on your side! So you can be as bold as a lion as you live the Christian life.

PRAYER CHALLENGE: Ask the Lord to help you be bold and strong in your witness for Him.

[Judy Harder]

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. --Ephesians 2:10

Pablo Picasso painted thousands of pictures in his lifetime. And as his fame as an artist grew, so did the number of forgeries of his work.

One day, a fellow artist brought the famous painter one of his supposed works of art.

"A fake!" Picasso exclaimed.

Not long afterwards, the friend returned with two more paintings for the master to inspect. "Forgeries!" he told the artist again. The dumbfounded artist sputtered, "I saw you paint this last one with my own eyes!"

Picasso shrugged, "Sometimes I paint fakes."

In your life as a Christian, do you ever feel that you're just "painting a fake"? Do you ever feel more like a forgery than a person who's actually been transformed by the awesome power of Jesus?

Truly becoming who God the Creator intends you to be starts with knowing Him, and knowing what He desires for you. And the best way you can do this is to spend time with God every day, reading His Word and talking to Him in prayer.

I want to challenge you not to settle for what you think Christlikeness looks like. Instead strive to be like Christ by spending time with Him every day!

PRAYER CHALLENGE: Ask God to make you more and more like Christ today...and every day.

[Judy Harder]

great reward of servanthood

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. - Philippians 2:3-4

A large group of European pastors came to one of D. L. Moody's Northfield Bible Conferences in Massachusetts in the late 1800s. Following the European custom of the time, each guest put his shoes outside his room to be cleaned by the hall servants overnight. But because this was America, there were no hall servants.

Walking the halls that night, Moody saw the shoes and was determined not to embarrass his European brothers. He mentioned the need to some ministerial students who were there, but was met with only silence or excuses. So Moody returned to the dorm, gathered up the shoes, and, alone in his room, the famous evangelist began to clean and polish the shoes. Only the unexpected arrival of a friend in the midst of the work revealed the secret.

When the foreign visitors opened their doors the next morning, their shoes were shined. They never know by whom. Moody told no one, but his friend told a few people, and during the rest of the conference, different men volunteered to shine the shoes in secret.

D. L. Moody was a man with a servant's heart, which was the basis of his true greatness. And while many might consider his act of service as that of someone who was "super spiritual", all it took was humility to do what he did. In the same way, God calls us to humility each and every day—to live out the love and life of Christ to a watching world around us!

Prayer Challenge

Ask God to give you the humility it takes to show Christ's love to a watching world.

Questions for Thought

Think of a time when you truly served others with a humble heart. How did it make you feel?

What specifically can you do today to look out for others' interests and serve them with a humble heart?

[Judy Harder]

The importance of aligning yourself with God's will

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him,and he will make your paths straight. - Proverbs 3:5-6

An Australian physics professor used to illustrate the time of descent of a free-falling body by allowing a heavy ball suspended from the lecture-theater roof trusses to fall some 30 feet and be caught in a sand bucket. Each year the bucket was aligned meticulously to catch the ball—and each year students jokingly moved the bucket to one side so that the ball crashed thunderously to the floor.

Tiring of this rather stale joke, the professor traced a chalk line around the bucket. The students moved the bucket as usual, traced a chalk mark around the new position, but then rubbed it out and replaced the bucket in its original spot. "Aha!" the professor exclaimed, seeing the faint outline of the erased chalk mark. He moved the bucket over it and released the ball—which thundered to the floor as usual.

Quite often in the Christian life, it's easy to second-guess God's will. We see where He wants us, but are much more comfortable aligning ourselves with our own desires for life. And when the ball of hard times drops, it should be no surprise that it crashes to the floor!

So instead of going your own way and second-guessing God, align yourself with His will found in Scripture, trusting fully that you'll be safe in Him!

Prayer Challenge

Pray and ask God to help you align yourself with His will and give yourself wholeheartedly to obeying it.

Questions for Thought

What are some areas of your life today where you feel you aren't aligned with God's will?

How can you align yourself with God's will in those areas and trust His way over your own?

[Judy Harder]

Where you can find real healing

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. - Psalm 103:11-12

A drunken husband snuck up the stairs quietly one evening as his wife was sleeping. He looked in the bathroom mirror and bandaged the bumps and bruises he'd received in a fight earlier that night. He doctored himself up, then proceeded to climb into bed, smiling at the thought that he'd pulled one over on his wife.

When morning came, he opened his eyes and there stood his wife. "You were drunk last night weren't you!"

"No, honey. I wasn't."

"Well, if you weren't, then who put all the Band-Aids on the bathroom mirror?"

Many people today are much like that husband. They look into the mirror of their lives, see their scars, and do the best they can to bandage themselves up, replacing "bad behavior" with "good behavior." But the reality is when they do that, they're simply putting bandages on a mirror and doing nothing to really heal the sin in their lives.

But in Christ, you have a whole hospital of spiritual healing at your disposal that takes the sin in your lives and doesn't just hide it, but separates it from you as far as the east is from the west. So instead of just trying to be a "good person" trust fully in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and experience healing in His name!

Prayer Challenge

Ask God to help you get beyond just being a "good person" to fully trusting in the forgiveness Christ offers from sin.

Questions for Thought

What are some sins in your life you've tried to cover up just by being a "good person"?

How does it make you feel to know that your forgiveness isn't based on your performance, but on Christ's finished work on the cross?

[Judy Harder]

How to emotionally open yourself to God

Jesus wept.
John 11:35

Tears are a fundamental aspect of the human condition. Christian author Calvin Miller writes in his book, The Valiant Papers, on crying,

Crying is common in this world. It does little good to ask the reason for it. [Earth] is what one might call a weeping planet. Laughter can be heard here and there, but by and large, weeping predominates. With maturity the sound and reason for crying changes, but never does it stop. All infants do it everywhere—even in public. By adulthood most crying is done alone and in the dark. Weeping, for babies, is a sign of health and evidence that they are alive. Isn't this a chilling omen?

Not laughter but tears is the life sign. It leaves weeping and being synonyms.

Yes, weeping and being are synonymous. Yet today, crying is seen as a sign of weakness, an emotion which should be suppressed for the sake of "being strong" in front of others. It leaves us to wonder, then, as to when in our lives this becomes the case. As Miller says, crying is a sign of life among children. But somewhere along the way, this changes.

Maybe today you need to shed a few tears with God. You've let emotions build up inside of you for so long that you need to get alone with God and weep. Open your emotional self to God and be fully known as you live your life authentically before Him.

Prayer Challenge

Pray that God would give you a heart of flesh, and that you'd live authentically before Him when it comes to your emotions.

Questions for Thought

When is the last time you cried?

What emotions have you built up inside of you that need to come out?

[Judy Harder]

How to recognize truth in the midst of lies

He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
James 1:18

One of the most elaborate hoaxes in broadcast history was an April Fool's joke played on the British Broadcasting Corporation's current affairs program Panorama, with its rather dignified host Richard Dimbleby relating a story about the annual spaghetti harvest filmed in a Swiss-Italian spaghetti orchard.

For the segment, the producers and cameramen actually flew to Switzerland and hung spaghetti on trees in an orchard. They then filmed local women climbing ladders with baskets and pulling the spaghetti off of the trees and filling their baskets full! And with guitar music added into the background, the final product was complete.

At the end of the three-minute film Richard Dimbleby said, "Now we say goodnight to this first day of April." In spite of that hint, the next morning it was surprising the number of people who didn't recognize that the spaghetti harvest was a hoax. The BBC had pulled a big one off on countless viewers across Britain!

It's amazing how when something is presented to us by a credible source, we'll often believe it without any questions. This is true when it comes to the lies of the enemy and the world, which often lure Christians into false beliefs. So don't be hoodwinked by what the world says is true. Instead, focus on what God says is true and trust fully in Him!

Prayer Challenge

Pray that God would give you wisdom to discern His truth from the world's lies.

Questions for Thought

What are some lies the world tries to tell us that are contrary to Scripture?

How can you be more consistent in immersing yourself in God's truth so you'll be able to tell what's true and what's not?