Devotional Post

The Parable of the Puppy Part 1

Posted on by Hannah Banana

Once there was a very loving girl who sold all she had to buy a puppy. Day one was exciting but by the evening Hannah was exhausted. Bella was a lovely puppy and afraid her first few days and nights in a new place that she was not familiar with.

Hannah patiently and positively kept encouraging Bella and kept cleaning up messes armed with more than 600 poopy bags Hannah was prepared to help Bella learn how to poop outside and not in her new home.

For you see when we are God’s Children spiritually He potty trains us, He picks up after our messes and mistakes many of which we wonder if we’ll ever make it from milk to meat, from pooping inside God’s House or by ‘casting all our poops upon Him because He cares for us.’

The Bible deals much with poop in fact when Israel sinned God often compared Israel’s unfaithfulness to poop, like a bad smell burning in His Nostrils. They never were housebroken out of stiffnecked pride. So God gave them over to a harsh and hateful kingdom. In the same way, these growing pains with Bella are only for a season.

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Bella my new puppy dog

God’s Move, Not Mine

Posted on by Hannah Banana

My Daughter,

When you’re in trouble, you may have no idea what to do. In such times, I need you to do nothing but be still and let me fight whatever battle you are facing. I know it’s difficult for you to remain at rest when you want to act or when you feel anxious. However, if you react based on what you feel, you will lose. When you can’t calm down, call to Me and I will soothe your fearful heart. You may not see the storm on the outside coming to an end, but the storm inside your soul will end in My presence. I can give you the peace that passes all understanding as I work on your behalf. Simply wait in a quiet place under My wing. Hear Me whisper even now: “Be still and know that I am the God who has taken control of what you cannot.”

Love,
Your King

His Princess Everyday Sheri Rose Shepard

Be still, and know that He is God! Psalm 46:10

Setting Aside Time With God

Posted on by Hannah Banana

Here are some simple suggestions for preparing yourself to meet God as you engage with the Scriptures:

Pick a time: Set aside a specific amount of time in your weekly calendar to engage the Bible. Just like in any relationship, you have to spend time with God to know him. This is probably the biggest downfall for more people than anything else in the whole process of Scripture engagement: we just don’t make the time. As the saying goes, “We don’t plan to fail, we fail to plan.” Check your motivation here. Make time because of the joy that comes when you actually get to come close to God (Psalm 84:2, 10). Setting up time to meet with God is not a “should and ought,” it is a “I get too!”
Pick a good time: Make your time with the Bible a “prime time” of your day—not when you are the most exhausted or distracted. God calls us to give him our “first fruits,” our best, not our leftovers.
Pick a place: Go wherever you naturally go when you want to focus on something important. For some this will be a quiet place, for others a busy place. Some like to have music playing. Going into a specific room for your reading and praying is a practice that Jesus encouraged (Matthew 6:5-6). You know yourself, do what works.
Get rid of distractions: Get rid of as many things as you can that usually distract you. Be honest here; what is likely to take your mind away from engaging the Bible? Our world seems to be designed to distract us from focusing on almost anything, but with diligent effort, you will grow in your attention to the Bible.
Quiet your heart: Take the first minute or two of your time with the Bible and just think about what you’re going to do. You are coming to God’s Word to meet him.
Pray: Briefly ask God to teach you, to meet you, and to bless your time in his Word. Ask for the Holy Spirit to illuminate (1 Corinthians 2:6-16) the passage for you. Commit to God that, with his strength, you will obey what you read.
Start: Check out the many different Scripture engagement practices described on this website. (Bible Gateway)  Pick one and get going. It is better to start small and continue the practice than to start with huge goals, get disappointed, and stop. Something is better than nothing!
Keep moving: If you get distracted or tired, don’t worry or criticize yourself. Guilt won’t keep you motivated very long. Simply bring your mind back to the passage and start reading again.

Source: Scripture Engagement

God’s Word

Posted on by Hannah Banana

It’s really neat how things are revealed as one draws nearer to God’s heart…The Bible is many types of books in one…It has mentors that show the way to live out life, their struggles, sins, cries from their heart…

Other mentors as well, the keepers of what is wrong, the example to not follow…Their hearts are recorded as well, sometimes there is good on the surface but an evil motive behind the actions…Or a mix of it all…

Solomon was a man of God, and was wise yes, God spoke with Solomon twice to counsel with him, but Solomon had a lust issue, huge one…Also idols from other nations that his many wives were from divided his heart spiritually and thus the decline in his later years…If there was internet porn he’d have been hooked like many are today both men and women…

Another example King Asa several generations after his father Solomon, He did follow God out of desperation and cried out to God…Found his account interesting actually…I don’t usually browse through the king hall of shame (few of fame) in 1st and 2ed kings and chronicles…

The stories are in there for a reason, if you put yourself in the shoes of the story, the content, context and the time period by looking up these things yourself in other texts it makes the reading that much more valid, and rich…

7 At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him, “Because you relied on the king of Aram (Syria) and did not rely on the Lord Your God, the army of the king of Aram (Syria) has escaped out of your hand.8 Were not the Ethiopians and Lubim a huge army with a great number of chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, He placed them in your hand. 9 For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth so that He may support those whose heart is completely His. You have acted foolishly in this; therefore, from now on you will have wars.” 10 Then Asa was angry with the seer and put him in prison [in the stocks], for he was enraged with him because of this. And at the same time Asa oppressed some of the people.

11 Now the acts of Asa, from the first to the last, are written in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel. 12 In the [b]thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa developed a disease in his feet. His disease was severe, yet even in his illness he did not seek the Lord, but [relied only on] the physicians. 13 So Asa slept with his fathers [in death], dying in the forty-first year of his reign. 14 They buried him in his own tomb which he had cut out for himself in the City of David, and they laid him on a bier which he had filled with various kinds of spices blended by the perfumer’s’ art; and they made a very great fire in his honor.

2 Chronicles 16:7-14

He followed God, but later on fell away a pretty human life actually…what struck me however was the phrase “Yet because you relied on the Lord He placed them in your hand. For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro through the earth so that He may support those whose heart is completely His.”

God truly is the first and last, all scripture points to God’s character His heart, his personality, His Love…

It also points to those who Love God with their entire being men and women from cover to cover, and some who partially did, and some who didn’t at all…

Humans are fickle, God is not, He remains the same forever…And the more one get’s to know God because they want to, because they choose to, the more ‘nuggets of gold’ God will reveal to those who continually nonstop search out God, and rest in Him…

Just wanted to share with you bloggers the nugget I saw today…love you guys…

The Enemy’s Temptation

Posted on by Hannah Banana

Hunters hunt by using bait–the pleasure principle. Worms are gourmet for fish. Another temptation is sex; a hunter blows a horn imitating a duck call.

The male duck, looking for a good time, gets caught. That’s not just true for animals and hunters, it’s true of the enemy, the hunter of your soul.

He uses the pleasure principle to trap you, to get you away from God, into temptation, out of God’s will.

It doesn’t matter what it is, whether you have a hard time with other believers, that’s the pleasure/pain principle. He will offer something to get you away from fellowship.

To overcome that, stop living by pleasure and stop avoiding the uncomfortable. Seek God and His righteousness. Refuse the pleasures of sin and embrace the hardness of the cross.

When the enemy’s bait has nothing to connect to, he can’t touch you. The enemy’s worm, the enemy’s horn will not lure you. Reject the pleasure principle for the God principle and the righteousness principle.

Do what is right. Forget about pain or pleasure and you will end up a victorious believer and not a dead duck.

When you face temptation today, try something new — look to the end of that temptation, where it will take you, the pain it will bring — and resist It!