Morningside Devotionals

Can life actually be a vignette and not a novel? It always fascinates me to hear the responses of those who claim they don't believe in God when someone says that they will pray for them.  Especially in the midst of tragic moments, momentous events such as births and deaths, and life changing events; the mention of someone who says they will pray for you, simmers the most anti- of anti God types.  Ever notice that?  Sure you have, but was it a vignette or the beginning of a novel? You were expecting, something else?  Do you think God expects something else? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFl1VgNfU8w

Stay Simple- You Never Cease to Exist! _________________________________ We're (all of us) eternal, let's approach it from the simplest thing that we know; matter is neither created nor destroyed; except, for the first singularity - creation. Now that's a physicist approach, a scientific way of looking at what we are- we are, always going to be. Now let's expand that just one step, we will change; Paul in the New Testament reinforces the teaching of Christ in that, we will change, but we will not cease to exist. Keep It Simple - Eternal Is ______________________   Today a friend of mine for over a year of knowing him and praying for him, changed from this reality to the next.  His passing is significant because the testimony of his life, is significant, because he accomplished a great deal for the kingdom, and, he endured endless pain and suffering, and without complaint; the entire time that I was blessed to know him. What does it mean to su...

Jack Canfield, noted author of "Chicken Soup for the Soul, and a book that is going over me now, "The Success Principles," is a man that I believe, has what the Nez Perce indians described as a "Big Soul."  Near as I can find from studying the Nez Perce culture, they had a word for human, and it meant a person who acted as they ought, lived as they ought, and respected others as they ought.  The Nez Perce I've heard, had not word, as we do, for someone who wasn't "human," it wasn't conceivable to them that someone would be so, instead they had only two descriptions for a person, they were, "human," or, they weren't described at all.  Think about that- what sort of difference might it make in our lives today if we simply didn't even acknowledge when someone was being a total jerk?  How much effort, time, energy and soulful hurt is engendered inside the Body of Christ, by  people who are expressing that someon...

The difference between success and no success in the online world is participation.  It's interesting because even the major "blogs" fight this same dilemma,  Dr. James C. Denison who runs the "Center for Informed Faith," which is based out of Dallas Tx has a listed membership in the hundreds of thousands- so certainly his mail list is quite a bit more extensive than ours, and yet, each day about 8 to 10 comments are monitored into the process- participation is absolutely key but participation is invoked, isn't it(?)- meaning that we have to raise issues that are stark enough that you feel compelled to answer. So moving quickly to the point - in Proverbs 22:4 we hear that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsYpUDJLKj0 How important is it to know where you are in terms of who you are and what you are about?  Humility in terms of who you are is possible without believing in God, but when you add the necessary understanding of who you are with God in the...

NIV - Pro 21:23 - He who guards his mouth and his                              tongue keeps himself from calamity. The facts, how do you get to know the facts? You may see them, on the evening news, you may hear them, from the radio or T.V., if you are just listening, but more often than you realize, you get your news, or at least your sense of the news, from someone else. You hear them tell you what they thought they heard.  It is a perpetual and much faster paced rumor mill than at any other time in history.  Now that's not a terrible problem if we are talking about things that people say that are just moderately important, but when the depth of the item takes an another dimension, the rumor spread can cause absolute devastation, and people can lose not only money, but something much more important than money- they can...

Hard To Believe Reality-Click Here One of my associates works at an extremely time intensive site, and, they simply do not have time to consume a book of ideas- SO- that's why I came up with that page called "taking it deeper"- sometimes you'll see a new post over there- sometimes not, but if you get a chance and want to check it out, usually there will be some new thing going on- as in Proverbs 21:13:  Here goes the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqZvSbTuj9o There is a thing about who is watching and who is being watched, put another way, the beholder and the beholden? Who are the poor, is that a reference to monetarily poor, because quite easily one can see it might be a reference to poverty of all sort? And really what happens when someone is impoverished is the tendency of others to not listen to them? This is a fantastic Proverb for social media because it so clearly tells us that we can be heard, and that when we hear, we stand ...

"Aw c'mon Dr"D" your playin word games with us again." No- no I'm not, this isn't semantics, there is a definite difference between being, and, considering, or thinking about, being.  In one sense, there you are, reading this, in the other, you are mentally and therefore, spiritually (see how those two are connected? Meaning, can you be spiritual without a mind?) concerned about and wondering about somewhere else. Edmund Burke "The people are Protestants... a persuasion not only  favourable to liberty, but built upon it...."   imagine the enormous impact that a person can have when they take their vows seriously?  Imagine if we actually taught our children to plan ahead, see their future as being real and attainable, and; to plan for it accordingly.  "OK great Dr."D" are you saying that we don't?"  In fact what I am saying is that we not only don't plan, but we don't consider the future of what we...

Gutsy- or- Convinced? Do you ever wonder about Paul  of the New Testament writings?  Beaten nearly to death on more  than one occasion- left off the face of the earth at sea in storms that would have scared most people away for good, viciously  lied about in his ministry, and  treated like an outcast by his own people- Paul undoubtedly knew what it was to be in trouble,  wouldn't you agree?  Even non Christian atheistic types  have to respect Paul because  they know in their guts if  someone grabbed them out of their house and dragged them half naked through the  streets and then plastered them bent over onto a tree stump in the town sqaure and proceeded to beat the livin' daylights out of them- they'd lose their obstinant ways  in a hurry- and so would I, and so likely would many who lie like a big dog when they claim they wouldn't!  Being  beaten nearly to death, at that point, my friend,...

GALA - What a word...  - Pro 18:1 - Proverbs 18:1 "A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire;  He rages against all wise judgment. The Hebrew term for the translated "intermeddleth" ("rages against all) Rage which sounds more like networking and sharing in our age, doesn't mean that at all.  The term is "gala" which is pronounced just like we say the "gala ball." It means, however, to expose or lay bare, to bring ones self out in contention.  Wow- that's quite different from what you might have imagined, isn't it?  Yet that is wisdom, we think we get it, but usually, we have to learn it. "Gosh I feel warm and fuzzy..." "O.K., already Dana, you don't have to beat us over the head with it,"  yes, but sometimes that is such fun, wouldn't you agree?  I can remember when a friend and I used to wrestle in the front yard, it was fun; seeing who could get on top and wi...

Image from Holy waters blog Imagine feeling so in touch with God that you knew what God was doing?  So that the distance between you and God were so small that you knew what God was up to?  You'd be smiling, and walking around saying "well that makes sense, because I know what God is up to,"  you'd have a sense of being in a family that was moving toward an accomplishment and you'd have fewer doubts about how the direction was going, because you'd know, "yup, that's God, He told me this is what He was going to do." After about a week or two- you'd become familiar with God- you'd know precisely what He was going to do- and God, would become, family.  Think about that- because according to what the New Testament says that is precisely how close you and God are supposed to be.  What that means is, if one of you has moved, it might not be God? The distance one travels from home is what often determines the closeness or ...

Don't you judge the worth of what you get by how it is? The end result?  Forget the buying, although those who do the "live the moment," thing would have you be all giddy while you are shopping, let's be the other way, normal, and realize we like the end product to be real and good and worthwhile.  All over this nation of America folks are waking up to the challenge of being real, and getting involved or losing what we've worked so hard to achieve.  So that we have good - what might be best, and what is better? Last night the Mocha frappe machine at McDonald's ran out just as it was my turn, so they gave me a full frappe for the price of a medium, and apologized because the machine ran out and it was time to clean it!  Liked that end result.  What might happen if the hypocrit machine, call that normal church culture in America, on love in God through Christ toward us and us toward loving others, ran out(!) and we gave them a full instead of ...

So many times you and I have heard people preach sermons speaking of vision as if though it were bad- or, not a part of faith?  Now here my word means the literal act of beholding- of looking, of taking in an image and processing it.  You and I live in a world where such is necessary for us to live and survive- unless we learn a set of skills which are no longer involving the use of sight. Many preachers and teachers make the mistake of separating the Bible and it's truths out of the realm of the senses- insisting, as it were, that the Bible is extrasensory and God demands extrasensory behavior. Such statements aren't in the Bible, which contains a great many statements about the use of our faculties, to the glory of God.  In fact let me go so far as to say that the Bible insists that we marshal all our energy into the realm of hearing and believing God that is defined by the things which ought to be, but aren't. That really, finally and ultimately this ...

She had always said that he was lazy, he hadn't fought with her about it, he knew in some ways she might be right; but he also knew that there is a difference between being occupied in a mental problem, and lazy.  Being occupied in a mental problem, is one thing that appears to others as if though you aren't doing anything, ever been there?  Ever struggled with a mental problem moving it to this side, and then to the other, trying to find a different angle where it will work?  For our foreign readers you may not relate to the dissapearing middle class, but right now in America a lot of people are having to really concentrate mentally on funds that are getting slowly eroded.  To someone who didn't realize the mental strain they were under they'd look like they were, lazy. It isn't just that appearances can fool us, we are fooled by plenty of things, loud sounds can fool us, beliefs in things that go bump in the night, can lead to us believing all...

Oh gosh, don't you just hate the sweaty hot summertime? Heat so intense that you bust out a sweat going from the car to the house? Maybe it was such a hot time "in the old town tonight,"                 when a young lad, shocked at the accusations, against his favorite baseball hero asked with a cry in his voice- "say it ain' so Joe?" It's not dry heat here in the South of the U.S., so to my readers in the Greek Isles, China and Russia, folks you are better off there, than we are, here, in terms of heat. One time on a mission in New Orleans I was fussin' about the heat going into the worship service and Chris who was handling the reception desk said, "Ah Bray (Cajun accent a bit) ain nothin compared to Hell..." He was smilin' when he said it...thank God - or else I might've wondered... So you can tell I'm no fan of heat time- but it's here, and what I mean is, this blog may draw ...

"Gone to the dogs," another saying that we don't know the origin of but the suspicion is that dogs of the Germanic Europe weren't liked by the Roman invading armies, and so, they were kept outside the camps and when someone went outside the camp; you know, to do what they needed to do, the saying was they'd "gone to the dogs." It has come to mean something negative in our culture, when it shouldn't, my dogs behave far better than many of my so called Christian friends. You may have had a similar experience, which is unfortunate, have to admit it's rare, but there are too many times when my dogs seem to get the whole thing about loving, but Christian's?  Well you get the point. Right now Mopsey, who came to us as an abused dog, she weighed in then at skin and bones twenty pounds, most of her fur had been kicked or torn off, she looked like she had the mange- and so Debbie took her to the vet, and $150.00 later we found ou...

The best friends that you have, aren't they helpful?  When someone knows you as a best friend, isn't it because you can be depended upon to be helpful?  When someone needs you, needs your help, there isn't anything wrong with that- it is a blessing if you can fulfill it, but this morning, lets take one step deeper thought- there is a God directed life which sometimes doesn't seem to be in tune with the direct needs of those around you.  For this morning consider the scripture and we'll delve more deeply into it tomorrow. John 11:21  "Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

It's not just what you say, but, what you do, and it's not just what you do, but what it means, and it's not just what it means now, but what it means eternally.  This is what really matters, the long picture of a place we can't know about, yet.  One of my favorite books in the New Testament is the Book of Hebrews, because it is a delicious read, full of fantastic mystery.  The flavor of the times it tells about, and the essence of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, well, Hebrews just gets that into my soul.  I especially love chapter eleven, commonly called the roll call of the faithful, and it is a mountaintop of all writing in scripture, my goodness what an awesome chapter, yet, in reading it many miss my favorite verse, forty:  Hebrews Chapter 11:40 "God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect."  This to me is who you are, so now, can you see why you'd mean so much to me?  Now can you see w...

As the time approached for the enormous error which would bring so much death, two of the scientists on that project said the following about us, "Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants," know who they were?  But as the mushroom clouds spread over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they knew they had not been listened to; just as often when you speak to someone about what is coming, they don't listen to you, but you have to say it anyway, don't you, with all that is within you- that being the Holy Spirit, you have to share with people that what they think they understand, they don't really understand at all, that an end is coming- that the promise of our Lord who defeated death, was that He would return and just as His tomb was empty; so shall it be.  All that is within you testifies of such to you, so that you may testify of such to others. 

One of the hardest facts of our lives concerns what we do with time; how do we determine the importance of certain tasks.  Two elements there that we almost never sit back and think about in simplest terms, time, "Lord teach us to number our days," and task, "Lord what would you have me to do with this life you have given me."  If those two items are where the Lord wants them, do you think you will be a happier person? 

Have you ever wondered why somebody didn't ask that question?  Been in a conference, or a seminar and thought, "here's the question, why doesn't somebody ask it?"  Well guess what, that was your cue- and you missed it then, don't miss it now- your country may need you to ask urgently an extremely important question- is this the best we can do - when it comes to the Supreme Court of the United States; Elena Kagan?   Are we to believe, Mr. President, that out of all the justices in this country- all the benches, all the people with distinguished legal minds, that the best you could come up with is this individual- is that what you're tryin' to get us to buy Mr. President?  Look I realize that we passed over a known hero of historic proportions to elect this President- I didn't vote for him, I voted for John McCain, who I thought should be the President- and I'd dang sure betcha his nominee wouldn't be this one?  Get real folks- get serious,...