Weekend Words

 Both devotionals from the Women's Devotional Study Bible (NIV)...

Happiness Is ... Matthew 16:21-28

As I've been pondering the subject of happiness this morning - an elusive and seemingly unattainable state for so many - I am led to these words of Jesus:

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it (Matthew 16:24-24).

I believe the secret of happiness lies imbedded in those words, painful though they appear to be.  How else explain radiant people like the young man who sat in our living room and described how his six-year-old boy had died in his arms from leukemia.  Today this man finds fulfillment in giving himself totally to helping college students.  Or the woman I visited recently whose husband had turned out to be a homosexual and demanded a divorce.  Some years later, this woman also lost her eyesight.  Yet she is a cheerful, loving person, fully self-supporting. 

You might say that such people almost have a right to be unhappy.  That they are not, lies in the way they spend themselves for others.

I have observed that when any of us embarks on the pursuit of happiness for ourselves, it eludes us.  Often I've asked myself why.  It must be because happiness comes to us only as a dividend.  When we become absorbed in something demanding and worthwhile above and beyond ourselves, happiness seems to be there as a by-product of the self-giving.

- Catherine Marshall

Our Great Helper - Mark 11:22-25

While searching for a book I wanted to buy recently, I heard a pleasant voice ask, "May I help you?"  Once I described the book, we soon found it.  I left the store with my requested treasure happily tucked under my arm, and I thought, "I wonder how often God asks me this same question, but I'm too busy to hear?"

Maybe he's asking if there are any mountains in our lives that we need help in moving today - mountains of disappointment, heartache or fear.  Sometimes these mountains can loom so large before us that we are no longer able to see Jesus.  Yet it's here, while sitting in the shadow of our dark, cold mountain, that we can turn to Mark 11 and read what Jesus said.  He gives us his pattern for prayer and sums up all we will ever need to know about it.  The pattern is this: pray, ask, believe, forgive.

To pray is a supernatural way of getting to know a supernatural God.  When we pray, God makes us his partners!  He chooses us to become part of his ministry here on earth.

When Jesus inquires, "May I help you?" he wants us to respond in childlike trust.  He wants us to ask.  Sometimes he answers in a miraculous way, but most of the time he simply opens our spiritual eyes and shows us what we can do to bring about the answer.  Then he gives us the ability to do it.

To believe is to give God the right to answer our prayer in the way he sees best.  Remember, Jesus never gave a sermon on unanswered prayer, because from his viewpoint, all prayers are answered. When we learn to believe God, we find our attention is no longer on our mountain.  It becomes focused instead on Jesus, who alone is worthy of our trust.

When we forgive, we open a channel to God.  Jesus asks us to forgive others "so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins" (Mark 11:25).

God longs for us to live in the joy of walking by faith - praying, asking, believing, forgiving.  When we do, we find we're no longer sitting alone in the shadow of the mountain. 

- Hope MacDonald

And this new one from Sounds Like Reign.  Enjoy!