October 31, 2025
“God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, might abound unto every good work.” (II Corinthians 9:8)
This is the most emphatic verse in the Bible about God’s grace. According to Paul, God is able to make all grace (not just a little bit of grace), abound (not just trickle), toward you (not just your pastor and missionaries, but toward you), that you (he repeats you for emphasis), always (not just sometimes), having all sufficiency (not just some sufficiency), in all things (not just some things), may abound (not just limp along), unto every good work (not just some good works.)
All grace, abounding, always, all of you, all sufficiency, all things, always, abounding in all the good works God wants to do through you! The New Testament church turned the world right side up because they believed and experienced the truth Paul proclaimed in this extraordinary verse about God’s amazing grace.
The challenge for you and me is to believe in, and access, this grace. The grace of God is not only the undeserved favor of God we receive when our sins are forgiven – grace is the power God wants to pour in us as we live for and serve God. The word “charis” is the Greek word for grace. The word “charisma” or “charismata” is the Greek word that describes the grace God dispenses. It is impossible to be a disciple of Jesus Christ without this charismatic grace of God.
The great challenge is to access this grace on a daily basis. Do you believe God is able to make all grace abound toward you today? That you, always, having all sufficiency in all things can abound unto every good work God wants to do through you?
Dick Woodward, 20 October 2009
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Posted by Dick Woodward
October 28, 2025
“Yet this I call to mind… Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed… His compassions never fail… They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3: 21-24)
After writing his prophecy which has moved many scholars to label Jeremiah “The Weeping Prophet,” he adds a short postscript to his fifty-two chapters of weeping. That postscript is called “Lamentations,” which means “Weepings.”
You need to know why Jeremiah is weeping to understand his writings. He is weeping about the Babylonian massacre and captivity of God’s chosen people. For years he warned the people of God that unless they repented this awful tragedy would happen. As he writes his Lamentations he has been permitted to remain in the land of Judah. Sitting in his Grotto he laments all the tragic things that have now happened.
In the midst of his deepest expressions of sorrow he suddenly breaks forth with the verses quoted above. These verses have been translated and paraphrased to tell us more clearly that what God revealed to Jeremiah in his darkest hour was that God had never stopped loving God’s chosen people.
A providential wonder of prophecy is that Jeremiah’s Grotto where he was seated as he wrote these Lamentations was on top of a hill called “Golgatha.” This means that God gave Jeremiah this wonderful prophecy of God’s unconditional love during the tragedy Jeremiah was lamenting on the very spot where centuries later God would pour out unconditional love for the whole world.
Dick Woodward, 28 October 2009
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Posted by Dick Woodward
October 24, 2025
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
As I look back over my life since I was born in 1930, and born again in 1949, this verse sums up my entire walk of faith and ministry. According to the J. B. Philips translation, God fits into a pattern for good everything that happens to those who love God and are called according to God’s plan. I like this because by implication there may not be anything good about many of the things that happen to us.
But if we meet two prerequisites – if we love God and are called according to God’s plan – our loving God will fit into a pattern for good all the events of our lives.
Before we personally apply the great promise of this verse we must meet two prerequisites. The first is that we love God. It isn’t easy to love God. The Apostle John asked us how we can love the God we cannot see. (1 John 4) We can’t hug a Spirit. Jesus told us that if we love Him, we must keep His commandments. According to the writings of the Apostle Paul quoted above, we can show we love God by being called according to God’s plan.
We are so self-centered we are quick to assume that the good into which God fits all the events of our lives means our good. However, when we understand what it means to love God the only good that will interest us will be God’s good.
Dick Woodward, (05 November 2010)
Editor’s Note: Tomorrow (October 25th) is Dick Woodward’s birthday. Here’s to celestial celebrations up in Heaven with Mama & dear friends as we miss him & them here on earth!
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Posted by Dick Woodward
October 21, 2025
…For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” (Matthew 6:13)
(In the Our Father prayer) Jesus teaches us to begin our prayer with a God first mindset and conclude our prayer with that same focus. We begin our prayer looking through the grid: “Your name be reverenced, Your Kingdom come,” and “Your will be done on earth, just as it is willed and done in heaven.”
We are to conclude our prayer the same way. Jesus wants us to conclude our prayer by making this commitment to our Heavenly Father: “Yours is the Kingdom.” By this confession, He means for us to pledge to God that the results of our Heavenly Father’s continuously answering our prayers will always belong to Him.
As we face challenges of life every day, we should be poor in spirit enough to confess that we need the power of God: “Yours is the power.” When I enter into a challenging day, I have confessed this hundreds of times in my journey of faith and ministry by saying, “I can’t, but He can.”
Finally, we are to conclude our prayers by confessing: “Yours is the glory.” When we apply this third providential benediction, we are simply confessing, “Because I didn’t but God did, all the glory goes to Him.”
Jesus prescribes that we conclude our prayers every time we pray by making this solemn commitment to God: The glory for everything that happens in my life because You have answered my prayer(s), will always go to You.”
The essence of this benediction is: “Because the power always comes from You, the result will always belong to You, and the glory will always go to You.”
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Prayer
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Posted by Dick Woodward
October 17, 2025
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8, 9)
“A person’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand their own way?” (Proverbs 20:24)
When God spoke through the prophet Isaiah God told us there is as much difference between the way God thinks and does things and the way we think and do things as the heavens are high above the earth. Building on that revelation the wisest man who ever lived proposed a logical question: if God is directing the steps of a person how can that person always expect to understand the way they are going?
As a God-passionate person, doing your best to follow the guidance of the Lord, have you ever found yourself completely baffled and blown away by inexplicable happenings like the sudden death of a loved one or other tragedies? When we put the two Scriptures quoted above side by side we should expect there to be times when we simply do not understand what God is up to.
Moses explained that what he called the “secret things” belong to the Lord but the things God wants us to do God has made very clear. (Deuteronomy 29:29) That means there are secret things God is keeping secret, so nobody can explain them.
These verses considered together are telling us that while we walk with God, we should not expect to understand everything. If we understood everything, we would eliminate the need for faith.
We walk by faith.
Dick Woodward, 19 October 2010
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Posted by Dick Woodward
October 14, 2025
“…for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13)
In this epistle of joy to the Philippians, Paul exhorts us, “Delight in Jesus. Learn to derive your joy from knowing Him.” He uses the word joy again and again. And what he’s really saying to us in the conditions in which he’s living is simply this, “Learn to derive your joy from your relationship to Jesus Christ. Learn to delight in Him.”
What is the source of your happiness? In what do you delight? If you delight in your health, well, you’re on thin ice. What would you do if you lost your health? If you delight in money, what would you do if you lost everything? If you delight in your loved ones, and many, many people do, what are you going to do when you lose them?
It’s because God loves us that God tells us things like this, “Delight in Me. Learn to derive your joy from knowing Me.” That’s the source of joy. And so that should be our delight.
That’s the reason Paul could have peace, even in a dungeon, even when he was in prison, no matter what the circumstances were. The reason he could say, “I’m ready for anything. I have learned how to live when everything’s good and I have learned how to live when everything’s bad.”
Here is a key point: Paul’s delight was in Jesus, and Jesus was the Source of his happiness. Not what he had or didn’t have.
Dick Woodward, (Ben Lippen,1979)
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Posted by Dick Woodward
October 10, 2025
“… Being confident of this very thing that He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Christ… for it is God at work in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure.” (Philippians 1:6; 2:13)
As he wrote these words to his favorite church, the Apostle Paul was in prison chained between two Roman soldiers without any privacy. He was unable to shepherd and teach the Philippian believers he loved so very much. Is he stressed out because he fears that they will fall away from their faith? No, he has confidence that they will continue in their faith until the day Christ returns.
The source of Paul’s confidence is found in two realities: he knows that the risen, living Christ has begun the miracle of regeneration in them and he is completely convinced that Christ will continue the miracle work of salvation He begins. His confidence is not in the fact that he has led these people to Christ. His confidence is in Christ!
Paul adds that his confidence is in God Who is at work in them giving them the will and the power to do according to that which pleases Him.
Where is your confidence that you will continue in what Christ has begun in your life? Where is your confidence that those you love will continue in what Christ has begun in their lives? Is your hope in them? Is it in your ability to shepherd and mentor them?
Or is your hope in Christ Who began that miracle and in God Who can give them the will and the power to do what pleases Him?
Dick Woodward, 09 October 2009
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Posted by Dick Woodward
October 7, 2025
“…whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance… If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith, never doubting.” (James 1:2-6)
Encountering trials in our lives will often bring us to the place where we don’t know what to do. We realize we need more wisdom than we have. When we lack wisdom, we must look to God for it. In the Old Testament when the people of God fought against overwhelming numbers, their frantic prayer of faith was: “Nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You!” (2 Chronicles 20:12)
The process of working through our trials will teach us the test of faith, which leads to the trust of faith and brings us to the triumph of faith. I have been in a wheelchair since 1984 and a bedfast quadriplegic since the mid-1990s. I have thought much about the suffering of disciples.
In the Bible we are warned God does not think as we think, nor does God do as we do. (Isaiah 55) If the desire of my heart is to know God’s will and to live my life in alignment with the ways of God, doesn’t it logically follow that I may not expect to always understand the way I am going?
If God gave answers to our why questions, the very essence of faith would be eliminated. God is pleased when we come in our crucibles of suffering and cry, “If you heal me, that’s all right. But, if You don’t heal me, that’s all right too, because YOU are all right!”
Dick Woodward, Marketplace Disciples
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Posted by Dick Woodward
October 3, 2025
“…the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him.” (Acts 5:32)
The purpose of a compass is not just to give us knowledge about where we are when we are lost but to also guide us in the way we need to go. If you think about it – a compass is worthless if we do not comply with what it shows us.
In the Gospels Jesus introduces the apostles to the Holy Spirit. He tells them the Holy Spirit will guide them into all truth. He calls the Holy Spirit the “Paraclete.” This word means: “One who comes along side us and attaches to us for the purpose of assisting us.”
Jesus tells them that if they love Him and keep His commandments He will ask the Father to give them the Holy Spirit. (John 14: 15, 16) So many believers miss this. The operative word when it comes to implementing salvation is “believe.” But the operative word when it comes to knowing God through the Holy Spirit is “obey.”
In profound simplicity the hymn writer expressed it this way: “But we never can prove the delights of His love until all on the altar we lay. For the favor He shows and the joy He bestows are for them who will trust and obey. Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.“
Jesus said it even more simply and profoundly when He offered this invitation: “Follow Me and I will make you.” (Matthew 4:19) That’s why this point on the compass is the most critical of all. Are you willing to comply with what your compass shows you?
Dick Woodward, 06 October 2012
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Posted by Dick Woodward
September 30, 2025
“Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.” (Psalm 4:1)
One of my favorite Scripture verses is the first verse of Psalm 4. David is in a wringer, and he is talking to God about it. Almost parenthetically he drops this thought, “You have enlarged me when I was in distress.” As I reflect upon my wringer years of disability and I think of the growth I have experienced while in the wringer, that little phrase says it for me. Truly God has grown me in my time of distress.
Psalm 46 is also a great psalm that applies to servants of the Lord when they are living on the edge and the whole world seems to be coming unraveled like a cheap sweater.
The opening verse could be interpreted this way, “God is my refuge and strength. God is abundantly available for help in tight places.” It can be applied devotionally to believers who live in difficult contexts. The punch line comes when the Psalmist instructs the believer in the midst of chaos to “Be still and know that I am… and that I will be.”
I hope you have a chance to check out Psalm 143. David cries to God, “Answer me speedily because my spirit fails. Cause me to hear Your loving kindness in the morning. Cause me to know the way in which I should walk.” I like the last part when David prays, “Revive me.” The old King James reads “quicken me.” That word, quicken, means something like “give me a touch from You that will spring to life the work of the Spirit in my heart and life.”
…Recently I heard someone say, “When saying goodbye, we should never say, “Take it easy.” We should say, “Hang tough and fight the good fight.”
Hang in there!
Dick Woodward, (1997 fax)
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Posted by Dick Woodward
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