Daily Devotions and More for Thursday, July 16, 2020

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Jul 16, 2020, 5:49:04 AM7/16/20

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Thursday, July 16, 2020

* Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life. -- Sophia Loren

* Each of everyday life is part of the total harmony of the universe. -- Therese of Lisieux

* A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be." -- Frank A. Clark

* My father didn’t tell me how to live. He lived, and let me watch him do it.” -- Clarence Budington Kelland

* Everyone who has ever taken a shower has had an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it that makes a difference. -- Nolan Bushnell

* The Lord is Good” - period. Everything about God is good, including everything that is related to me - His thoughts about me, His plans for me, His actions toward me, His guidance in me, His blessings to me, His protection of me, His purposes fulfilled through me and His ordained circumstances that surround me at this very moment in my life. They may not look good, seem good, sound good or feel good – but because they are ordained of God, they ARE good. Colossians 3:3 says that “your life is hid with Christ in God.” Every detail of your life is contained in Him, including your present circumstances, trials, and needs. -- Shad Williams

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Gideon's Army

Scripture Reading — Judges 7:1-24

“. . . or Israel would boast against [the Lord, saying], ‘My own strength has saved me.’” — Judges 7:2

Gideon was unsure of himself, so he gathered an army of 32,000 men, as many as he could find. But then the real Commander of the army reduced the troops to 300. How could Israel now hope to defeat the vast army of Midian and their allies?

That was exactly the point. The size of Gideon’s army had little to do with defeating the Midianites. To be sure, the shock and awe of the trumpets, torches, shouting, and breaking of jars in the darkness were intimidating, but they were only instruments in God’s hand. And “if God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).

There was no standing army—fully trained and ready for a fight— in Israel. The people Gideon had gathered were ordinary Israelites. No wonder Gideon was afraid to attack. But the Lord would give them victory.

The struggle for faith often seems impossible. Not only do we ourselves struggle to hold on, but the path of destruction by sin and death can be overwhelming. Every day people suffer and die—from disease, war, famine, corruption, abuse. All this can make it difficult to hold on to God.

Fear not! One Soldier, trained in humility and subordinate to the Commander’s will, shattered the bonds of death when he rose from the grave! So now we can ask, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

Prayer: By your Spirit, Lord, help us to trust in you. Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ, our Lord! Amen.

Arie Leder

http://thisistoday.net/

email: to...@thisistoday.net

800.879.6555

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The Family Business
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Laughter is the Best Medicine
By David Hull

A cousin is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost. -- Marion C. Garretty

While I was growing up, my cousin and I always spent the month of August at our grandparents' cottage on the shore of Lake Ontario in upstate New York. Throughout the summer, the whole family — uncles, aunts, spouses and assorted cousins — would converge on the cottage at various times. My father always avowed that my mom's family was like an old string of Christmas lights: "Half the time they don't work, most of them are pretty dim, and they just keep getting all tangled up together." However, I always remember my visits being full of adventures, especially one hot, muggy Saturday morning in 1970.

Sitting on the porch, my cousin and I complained we were bored. We wanted to ride our bikes to the movie theater in town to see the newly released cinematic classic, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Unfortunately, between us we had a total of forty-seven cents. Back in those days, a matinee movie cost seventy-five cents — a deal compared to the $1.75 price of an evening show — but still unaffordable with our feeble finances. (Keep reading)

Reprinted by permission of Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC. In order to protect the rights of the copyright holder, no portion of this publication may be reproduced without prior written consent. All rights reserved.

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In Living Color

The one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby. Revelation 4:3

Scripture Reading: Revelation 4:1–6

When Xavier McCoury put on the glasses Aunt Celena sent for his tenth birthday, he burst into tears. Born colorblind, Xavier had only ever seen the world in shades of gray, white, and black. With his new EnChroma glasses, however, Xavier saw color for the first time. His euphoria at witnessing the beauty around him made his family feel like they’d beheld a miracle.

Witnessing God’s colorfully radiant brilliance also evoked a powerful reaction in the apostle John (Revelation 1:17). After encountering the full glory of the resurrected Christ, John glimpsed “a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby. A rainbow that shone like an emerald encircled the throne. . . . From the throne came flashes of lightning” (Revelation 4:2-5).

In a different time, Ezekiel had a similar vision, seeing “what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli,” with a figure above the throne who “looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire” (Ezekiel 1:26-27). This magnificent figure was surrounded with rainbow-like radiance (v. 28).

One day we will meet Christ face-to-face. These visions give us just a hint of the magnificence that awaits us. As we celebrate the beauty of God’s creation here and now, may we live in anticipation of the glory yet to be revealed.

By Remi Oyedele

REFLECT & PRAY

Father, words fail us when we try to imagine what we will experience when we meet You face-to-face. Thank You for the small hints of Your beauty You have placed in our world.

What response does the color and beauty of creation evoke in you? How can you express your gratitude to God for His wonderful gift?

SCRIPTURE INSIGHT

Revelation 4:1-6 is a picturesque read with its vivid description of Christ and the throne room of heaven. Ruby, jasper, a brilliant rainbow, white robes, gold crowns, and a crystal sea all paint a colorful picture. In addition, the author adds the auditory element of rumblings and peals of thunder that come from the throne, along with flashes of lightning. While this imagery enthralls the imagination, we shouldn’t miss the incongruous nature of the picture being presented. On the one side there’s the regal beauty of Christ on the throne, a rainbow, and a glass-like sea. On the other, there’s the power and destruction represented by lightning and thunder. Taken together, the picture of God is one of power and beauty combined. -- J.R. Hudberg

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Today’s Video about Xavier: https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/features/world-becomes-much-brighter-for-charlotte-10-year-old/432779151

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Today’s Verse: Psalm 16:8 ... 8 I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

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Proverb of the Day: Proverbs 8:10-11 .. 10 Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, 11 for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.

Our Daily Journey with God

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Wings over the Mountains of Life

A MountainWings Moment

It's Better To Be Alone

Direct link: www.CoachB.tv/0494

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Self-Improvement ... The Most Important Power

The fuel that one needs to go far isn’t so much brainpower as it is persistence-power.

Verse of the day

Happy are your eyes because they see. Happy are your ears because they hear. I assure you that many prophets and righteous people wanted to see what you see and hear what you hear, but they didn’t. -- Matthew 13:16-17 (CEB)

Voice of the day

Sometimes, Grace throws you and your ‘world’ into the washing machine, full spin, so that the fearful and controlling tendency is compelled to offer itself to the Totality—to the will and dance of the Cosmos. -- Mooji

Prayer of the day

Divinely unsettle us so that we cease clinging to control, oh Christ who causes eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand. Amen.

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Wonderfully alive

Enjoy who you are, and it will bring out the best you can be. Enjoy what you’re doing, and you’ll create something of true, lasting value.

Enjoy where you are, and your eyes will be opened to the best of possibilities. Enjoy the moment you’re in, and you’ll discover a priceless treasure.

It is not selfish to enjoy yourself. What’s truly selfish is to insist on being miserable despite all the positive possibilities available to you.

Enjoy yourself, and you become that much more able to create real value for others. Enjoy yourself, and you’ll find yourself doing the things you are most ideally suited to do.

You are immensely blessed with the precious gift of life. It would be the height of arrogance if you failed to enjoy it to the fullest.

There are endless possibilities for enjoyment, whatever your circumstances may be. Enjoy, and be wonderfully alive.

Copyright Ralph S. Marston, Jr. Used by permission. From The Daily Motivator® at www.dailymotivator.com

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FATHER ED

By Joseph J. Mazella

Father Ed, the priest of the church I attended as a child passed away this Summer. He will be missed by many including me. I can still see him so clearly in my heart and mind. Tall, thin, quiet, friendly, and smart with thinning hair and thick glasses, he always looked more like an engineer than a priest. He was a great lover of classical music. One of my most vibrant memories of him was a long trip we took together over curvy, mountainous roads. Father Ed was steering the car with one hand and directing with the other while Beethoven's 9th symphony serenaded us from his cassette deck. Looking back now I can still feel his spirit swaying in his body while the music played.

Father Ed's greatest love, however, was the tireless work he did for God. He preached, wrote columns and books, visited prisons, taught in schools, and ministered everywhere for the love of God from the streets of Indianapolis to the hills of West Virginia. It was these mountains and their people that touched his heart the most deeply, though, and I am happy that he was able to end his work on Earth here. He did the very best work he could every single day. Even though his body aged, wore down, and finally surrendered to death, his spirit never did.

Father Ed may have left us now, but his work goes on. The work we do for the love of God never ends, but thankfully God's love for us never ends either. God's love not only produces the best work but also the best people. Father Ed was one of them.

Thinking of Father Ed reminds me that we are more than just these bodies that carry us around. We are spirits dancing in the flesh. We are more than just the work we do. We are the love of God working inside of us. We are more than just these lives we live. We are the love we give and the joy we share every moment of them. God bless you Father Ed. We miss you.

Joe's a happily married father of three who lives in the mountains of Upper Glade, West Virginia.

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LOST SOULS

The pain in my soul, is agony,

When lost souls around, the Truth can’t see.

Deaf ears and blind eyes, and stubbornness,

The Laws of God, they love to transgress.

When I see the hardness, in lost souls,

It’s so clear, that Satan has control.

Their utter unbelief makes my soul cry,

For Jesus, they reject and deny.

My heart is sad, as I look around

For the Saviour, lost ones have not found.

Christ has given us all, a command,

“Go ye therefore,” into all the land.

If we know Jesus, we must obey,

We must tell of Jesus, ev’ry day.

Lost souls are there, where ever we go,

When we tell of Christ, true love we show.

If we love Jesus, of Him we’ll tell,

For we want no one to go to Hell.

Each of us will answer to the Lord,

We’ll be held accountable, by The Word.

When you stand before, Jesus one day,

Will you stand tall, because you obey’d?

Will you receive rewards meant for you?

Or will you be ashamed, that you were not true?

Lost souls should to us be a concern,

“Go ye therefore” Christ wants us to learn.

ALL believers must always obey,

We all must reach out to lost souls today.

By: His servant, Connie Kramer Dec.11,2001

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As the Lord God instructs us in 2 Chronicles 7:14 ...

...if My people who are called by My name

will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face,

and turn from their wicked ways,

then I will hear from heaven,

and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Let us take time today to reflect on our own lives, to confess and repent of our sins and the sins of our nation, to seek God’s face, asking for His forgiveness and for the healing of our land ...

Dear Father God,

I am Yours, one of Your people, called by Your name.

I humbly bow before You this day.

I pray to You and I seek Your face.

Lord, open my eyes and make me aware of anything in my life that is sinful, that is a hindrance to Your blessings or a disgrace to Your name.

I turn from my wicked ways.

I repent of my sins.

Please forgive me and heal our land.

in Jesus' name, I pray, Amen.

Cultivation

Read: Genesis 2:1-15

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (v. 15)

If the conditions are ideal, summer is a wild time in a garden. Plants grow abundantly, demanding to be harvested.

Tomatoes, okra, squash, beans, and peppers grow taller by the minute, resembling a jungle more and more each day. Weeds also grow in abundance, threatening to take over the garden’s boundaries like in wild places. At its best, gardening feels like a desperate scramble to stay on top of an explosion of growth. If conditions are not ideal in a garden, the work becomes exponentially harder. The fight to grow food in spite of arid conditions, floods, or tenacious pests is an uphill battle, at best.

Our God is a gardener. As such, we can trust God’s commitment to fostering the wild growth of our world and ourselves, to the pruning and weeding that must happen to keep creation healthy, and to the creative response to seeming disaster. What a gift it is that our God takes that role in our world!

Because Adam and Eve (and we) are made in God’s image, this work of gardening is ours as well. God “planted” Adam and Eve in the garden: their job was the tending of all creation. While we do not all have to be farmers to follow God’s plan, we are nevertheless invited into the work of reconciling the world through restoring relationships between ourselves and the land, others, God, and self.

As you pray, ask God to reveal your invitation toward reconciliation today.

—Amy Curran; Words of Hope

Here’s to Your Health

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Active surveillance for prostate cancer

By Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D.

In the 1980s President Ronald Reagan used an old Russian proverb, "Trust, but verify," when negotiating nuclear disarmament with Mikhail Gorbachev. The resulting Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty established an extensive verification process, which resulted in eliminating 2,692 missiles by 1991 and was followed by 10 years of active surveillance through on-site inspections.

Active surveillance of prostate cancer can produce equally beneficial results. But a shockingly low number of guys who are prescribed a "wait-and-see approach" actually get onsite inspections when they should.

A new study from the University of North Carolina found that only 15% of the 346 men who were tracked after their diagnosis with early-stage prostate cancer made follow-up appointments that adhered to recommended monitoring guidelines. Those guidelines include getting a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test every six months, a digital rectal exam annually and repeat biopsies every 18 months following diagnosis.

If you've been diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer, those follow-up appointments allow your doctor to discover if (and when) the cancer starts to progress. Then you'll know that active surveillance should end, and active -- and very effective -- treatment should begin.

It may make you anxious to get those checkups, but there'll be a lot more anxiety if your cancer is left unchecked. Our suggestion: Make those first two PSA-test appointments immediately upon diagnosis, and get the digital rectal exam at the second one. Then put all future surveillance into your smartphone calendar with a reminder to make appointments or to keep them.

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Mike Roizen, M.D. is Chief Wellness Officer and Chair of Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic and Mehmet Oz, M.D. is host of "The Dr. Oz Show," and. To live your healthiest, visit www.sharecare.com.

Today’s Recipe …

Diabetic Delight ... SALAD NICOISE

Ingredients:

8 ounces small new potatoes, halved
2-1/2 cups cut fresh green beans
1/2 cup light olive oil vinaigrette salad dressing
8 cups torn romaine, Boston, or Bibb lettuce
4 slices red onion, separated into rings
12-ounce can albacore tuna in water, drained
4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and quartered
16 cherry or grape tomatoes
1/4 cup sliced black olives

Place the potatoes in a 2-quart pot and cover with water.

Boil for about 12 minutes, until tender. Remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon, rinse with cool water, and set aside.

Add the green beans to the pot and boil for about 3 minutes, until crisp-tender. Rinse the beans with cool water and drain well. (You can cook the potatoes and beans the day before and refrigerate until ready to assemble the salads.)

When ready to assemble the salads, slice the potatoes 1/4-inch thick and place in a bowl with green beans.

Add 1/4 cup of the salad dressing and toss to mix. Set aside.

Arrange a quarter of the lettuce over the bottom of each of four serving plates and top with a quarter of the onion rings.

Arrange the center of each salad and drizzle each salad with a tablespoon of the remaining dressing.

Arrange a quarter of the potato mixture and 4 tomatoes around the outer edges of each plate and top with a sprinkling of olives. Serve immediately.

Yield: 4 servings
Serving size: 1/4 of recipe

Nutritional Information Per Serving:
Calories: 347; Protein: 37 g; Sodium: 680 mg;
Cholesterol: 214 mg; Carbohydrates: 29 g; Fat 12 g
Exchanges: 3 Very Lean Meat, 3 Vegetable, 1 Starch, 2 Fat

Source: The Complete Diabetes Prevention Plan

What’s on the Web?

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iMom Espresso Minute … My Kids Saw Porn. Here Are the 3 Things We Did Next.

A few months ago, my kids saw pornography. We were celebrating a holiday and had a home full of family and friends. A close friend gave our kids a box of old baseball cards without first checking the box thoroughly. There was a DVD cover at the bottom, filled with sexually explicit pictures. One of the kids snatched up the cover and brought it to us. My husband and I immediately hid (and later burned) it and started saying silent prayers for our kids. It accidentally entered our home, but the damage was done by the time we realized what happened.

I knew our kids would be exposed to pornography someday. We just didn’t think it would be this soon. I mean, my kids are 8, 7, and 5. Researching how to talk to your child about porn was nowhere on my radar. I figured I had time to get some parenting knowledge under my belt. I was wrong. So we had to take these 3 steps.

Pillow Talk: Ask your kids, “What would you do if someone showed you a picture of a person who wasn’t wearing clothes?”

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Word of the Day: Euphoria

yoo-FOR-ee-ə

Part of speech: noun

Origin: Greek, late 17th century

1 A feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness.

Examples of Euphoria in a sentence

"When they were announced as the winner, the entire cast and crew shouted with euphoria."

"I felt the strongest sense of euphoria in my life on the day my son was born."

About Euphoria

Today you might use euphoria to describe a feeling of glee and utmost happiness as you're riding high on a pink cloud. In Greek, "euphoros" means healthy, so if you want to increase your levels of euphoria, you might consider implementing a few healthy habits.

Did you Know?

The original 17th-century sense of euphoria meant someone getting well, specifically through the use of medicine. The creators of the 2019 HBO show "Euphoria" must have known the early meaning. On this drama, teenagers deal with the effects of drugs on their lives and friendships.

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All-Pro Dad Play of the Day … 6 Things Incarcerated Fathers Wish You Knew

Approximately 2 million children in America today have an incarcerated parent, the majority of whom are their fathers. Incarceration can have multigenerational repercussions and leave deep wounds, from which many families struggle to heal. Most of us have at least some knowledge of the impacts of incarceration, but have you ever stopped to imagine what happens to relationships between men in prison and their kids?

For the past eight years, I have co-led a class for men transitioning out of jail or prison. I have seen amazing transformations in the attendees. Many are good men who made bad choices. I’ve witnessed gang members break down in tears, revealing a vulnerability and desire to become someone greater than the streets demand. Others could not or would not break the street mentality and were lost forever within a few weeks of getting out. Recently, I presented formerly incarcerated fathers with several questions about that experience. These are their answers.

Huddle up with your kids and ask, “What is your favorite part of the time we spend together?”

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The Power of Positivity

https://biggeekdad.com/2017/05/a-lesson-on-judgement/

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EARLY RETIREMENT DUE TO THE CORONAVIRUS

The coronavirus outbreak has put many people around the world on the fast track to retirement. If you have been forced into an early retirement due to the pandemic, use these five tips to help you move forward.

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English

What Makes Verbs Irregular?

In English, a verb is considered irregular if it does not follow the standard rules for forming the past tense. Irregular verbs in the past tense are not predictable, which means their spellings must be memorized.