Category Archives: Admonition

Is there any hope?

Is there any hope?

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On December 17, 1927, USS S-4 (SS-109), an eight year old S-class submarine, was submerged just off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Right nearby, on the surface, the USCGC Paulding, a Coast Guard destroyer, was headed southeast. At 3:37 in the afternoon, the officer of the deck on the Coast Guard ship didn’t see the periscope of the submarine until it was too late. The Paulding unintentionally rammed the sub with a section of her bow, crushing into the hull of S-4 and punching a hole in the ballast tank and one in the pressure hull. 

Freezing water flooded into the boat and she immediately began to sink. The saltwater flooding the battery compartment mixed with battery acid and formed toxic chlorine gas, quickly filling any space not yet occupied by water. Soon the deadly gas was forced by the water into where the survivors were huddling. By morning, when the first rescue diver knocked on the torpedo loading hatch, he was met with six slow taps in response to his question about how many had survived. Six men were still alive.

But try as they may, help was not coming fast enough. The next to last communication heard from the remaining crew in Morse code was “Is there any hope?” But unfortunately, the toxic gas took the lives of all 40 men.

Hope comes in many different forms and we use the word, as we do the word Love, interchangeably for the big and the small all throughout our lives. We hope we get an A on our test. We hope the cute boy in the third row looks our way. We hope we receive a Christmas bonus. We hope for a boy or a girl…or both! 

We may also hope for enough money to pay the rent, buy milk for the baby that we hoped for and hope that our hope is enough to sustain us until, hopefully, something better comes along. 

We even hope for hope!

But Jesus said we didn’t have to live that way any longer. He came as the Hope of the World! Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” 

In a world full of darkness and seemingly constant despair, Jesus is our hope, our peace, our confidence and no matter what comes into our lives, even the unthinkable, He has promised to NEVER leave us or forsake us! NEVER! 

We like to think we live in a picture perfect world especially after we give our hearts and lives to God. Filled with His spirit, we can conquer anything according to the Word of God. But we are still living in a sin-filled world until Jesus returns for His church and we will face things here just as the disciples did many, many years ago. 

And just as the men on the submarine faced…..they wanted to know if there was hope and yet they perished. Why? Because we aren’t promised a life without trouble or pain but we are promised that Jesus will be WITH us, IN us and right beside us no matter what we go through. And news flash, we don’t live forever down here! Our hope is in eternity and no doubt there were men on that submarine tapping into their Hope, finding that perfect peace in their last moments; Jesus didn’t forsake them, He walked them into eternity!

The HOPE we have today is that He is WITH us, He is IN us, and the more we pray and read and depend on His Word, the more confident we become in that glorious Hope.

Hope has a name and it’s JESUS!

We don’t have to be afraid, we don’t have to live in a constant state of worry and anxiety. We can still live joyfully and accomplish what God has put us here to do: tell others what He has done for us; share the Gospel, the Good News, that Jesus gave HIS life for us that we could live FOREVER with Him someday. And until that day comes, we can live victoriously and full of hope here on this earth, abounding in the work of God, encouraging our neighbor and bringing that Hope, sharing that Hope, with those we come in contact with.

Spend this week studying about hope in the Bible. Look up scriptures pertaining to hope and see how Jesus has always been, and still is, that Hope that saved the world!

Then, remember that there are others watching you and desiring to have what you have, don’t keep Him to yourself, Jesus Christ, the Living Hope!

For the kingdom
work for answered prayer

Fasting and Working for Answered Prayers

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Have you ever been so desperate that you had to fast? You had to go to prayer? Your need was so critical that just saying you were praying about it wasn’t enough. A bedtime lay-me-down-to-sleep prayer wasn’t going to get it. You had to get down to business.

The question for the day is,

work for answered prayer

“Do we have to work for answered prayers? Do we have to fast continually, check off our Daily Bread chart and say so many “Our Father who art in heaven…” prayers?”

The answer is, “No.” We are the ones who need the changing, not God.

Fasting and prayer changes US, strengthens US, molds our character, changes our heart, mind and soul, gives US direction, wisdom, and clears up things that were muddy before!

The Bible tells us that the prophet Daniel fasted on a regular basis. It has even recorded three of those fasts for us to look at and observe. In one of them he goes completely without any food at all. “And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes…” Daniel 9:3 KJV.

In the other two fasts that are recorded in the book of Daniel, he participated in partial fasts where he ate some foods, but refrained from others.

Each time Daniel fasted, we can find one thing he was very consistent with; he never failed to pray!

Look at the verse above again in Daniel 9:3, “…to seek by prayer and supplications.”  Even when it doesn’t specifically mention prayer, we know Daniel prayed because he was a Hebrew prophet and a man of God. He would not have fasted without prayer! The Jewish people understood that the two went together.

God can speak to us because we have allowed Him to cleanse things from our minds when we fast. We have taken time to be with Him and pushed some things aside; things that we liked, maybe even loved, that were important to us. We laid them down in order to be with Him.

Our motives must be pure when we pray. “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” James 4:3 ESV. We are praying for our needs, not necessarily our wants. Max Lucado said it so well, “You have to wonder if God’s most merciful act is His refusal to answer some of our prayers!”

Our heart must be right! “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me…” Psalm 66:18 KJV.

We must pray in faith, believing and we pray His will in all things.  “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” 1 John 5:14 ESV.  

Then we must pray with perseverance! “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” Luke 18:1 NIV.

And we must be thankful. “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” 1 Chronicles 16:34 ESV.

When we fast, we show the Lord that we want to draw closer to Him and lay aside things that might hinder us in our walk. We aren’t bargaining with God and we are not begging God. We aren’t jumping through hoops or just checking off boxes. We just realize that if our flesh is submitted to Him, His wants and desires for us become OUR wants and desires. We begin to reflect His glory and not our own!

And even if the situation doesn’t change, WE have been changed, WE have been strengthened for whatever lies ahead.

The Daniel Fast Devotional

In The Daniel Fast Devotional, we talk about a different person in the Bible who sought God by fasting every day of the 21 day fast. Some of them were desperate like Hannah, she just HAD to fast too! Others did it out of selfishness as with Ahab and Jezebel. Each story is true, intriguing, and will teach us the good and the bad motives behind fasting. Also, at the end of each chapter, there are wonderful recipes that are Daniel Fast approved. Get your copy today!

It came upon a midnight clear…The story behind the song!

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The Christmas carol, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, is one of the very few that doesn’t actually mention the birth of the Savior. The life of the author will help us see why the message of the angels is more the focus of this beloved carol. 

Edmund Sears, a pastor in Wayland, Massachusetts, wrote the poem in 1849 after suffering a breakdown. Sears was experiencing a time of sadness with the revolution in Europe and the war with Mexico in the U.S., he saw everything around him as full of “sin and strife”.  The hymn below was printed in the Christian Register, a Boston paper published on December 29, 1849. The third stanza, which we rarely see, shows how worried Edmund Sears was about the world situation. 

“But with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long;

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man, at war with man, hears not

The love-song, which they bring:

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing!”

Surely Edmund Sears would be worried about the state of affairs in the world today! This past year of 2022 has brought us so much uncertainty that when November rolled around, (or even before!) many were already decorating their homes for Christmas! People would post on social media pictures of their Christmas trees and lights and say, “Why not!”

We are also facing (about to use my least favorite and overused word of the last couple of years) unprecedented and perilous times. It seems anything goes when it comes to finding a reason to celebrate or bring life to a dark world.

This season of Christmas, full of hope, reminds us all of the Savior that was born so long ago. He didn’t stay in the manger, but gave His very life for YOU and me and one day soon we will reign with Him and the “whole world give back the song which now the angels sing”. 

There was much to be hopeful for then, the angels were bringing a message of good cheer! Be prayerful and ask God to put someone in your path to share this Good News: There is much to be hopeful for NOW…Jesus Christ is about to return for His Bride, the Church. For lo, the days are hastening on!

 It came upon the midnight clear,
    That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
    To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace on the earth, good will to men
    From heaven’s all-gracious King” –
The world in solemn stillness lay
    To hear the angels sing.

2. Still through the cloven skies they come
    With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
    O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains
    They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o’er its Babel-sounds
    The blessed angels sing.

3. But with the woes of sin and strife
    The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
    Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
    The love song which they bring; –
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
    And hear the angels sing!

4. And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
    Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
    With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
    Come swiftly on the wing; –
Oh, rest beside the weary road
    And hear the angels sing!

5. For lo! the days are hastening on
    By prophet bards foretold,
When, with the ever circling years
    Shall come the age of gold;
When Peace shall over all the earth,
    Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song,
    Which now the angels sing.


May you find peace in Jesus even though the world around us is in crazy chaos. Rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.