July 6, 2021
“Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough ways smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Isaiah 40: 4-5)
The essence of Isaiah’s great sermon is that when you build a highway you do four things: you level mountains, you fill valleys, you straighten crooked places, and you smooth out rough places.
Isaiah preached that God (our Heavenly Father) was coming into our world and when He did He was going to travel on the highway of the life of His Son. In that life the mountains of pride would be leveled, the empty spaces would be one hundred percent filled with the Holy Spirit, the crooked ways of sin would be perfectly straight and His rough places would be made smooth by the way Jesus responded to them.
Just before Jesus parted with His apostles He told them that in the same way the Father sent Him into the world He was sending them into the world. If His life was to be a highway on which God traveled into this world, our lives are also to be highways for God.
I challenge you to ask God to make your life into a highway for Jesus to travel into this world.
If you pray that way God’s bulldozers will start leveling your mountains of pride, the Holy Spirit will fill your empty spaces, straighten out your crooked ways of sin and then give you the grace to smooth out the rough challenges that come into your life.
While all that is happening you can write “Caution: God at work” across your life.
Do you have the courage to pray this prayer?
Dick Woodward, 06 July 2012
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Posted by Dick Woodward
July 2, 2021
Heavenly Father, You tell us in Your Word that You can keep us in a state of perfect peace if we meet Your conditions for that state of peace. Because I seek Your peace in my life, give me the wisdom to worry about nothing, and the faith to pray about everything. May I receive from You the mental discipline to think about all the good things and the integrity to do the right things.
May I always have that incurable optimism that believes in goodness, and give me such an insight into what You have been doing and what You are now doing in my life and in my world that I will give thanks always and in all things. May I never try to push You or run before You, but always wait on You, experiencing and expressing the gentleness and patience that are the evidence of Your Spirit living in me.
As I sort out my priorities, may I always value Your approval of who and what I am and what I do, and not walk before others to be seen by them or to please them. Never let me forget how near You are to me as I draw near to You, worshiping and enjoying You each day and forever.
And finally, Heavenly Father, realizing that it is not who I am, but who You are that is important; acknowledging that it is not what I can do, but what You can do that really matters; agreeing that it should never be what I want, but always what You want; and remembering that in the final analysis it will not be what I did, but what You did that will have lasting eternal results, give me that absolute trust in You and total dependence on You that will truly rest my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus.
Enable me to meet these conditions for peace in the name of Jesus Christ, for my peace and for Your glory. Amen.
Dick Woodward, 3 July 2009
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 29, 2021
“For if I make you sorrowful, then who is he who makes me glad but the one who is made sorrowful by me?” (2 Corinthians 2:2)
You can’t control the weather or rainy days but you can control the emotional climate that surrounds you. There is a principle of relationships that tells us communication is a two-way street. Whatever you send down that street comes back up that street and into your relationship with another person.
That is the essence of what the Apostle Paul is teaching: “If I say things that get you down who is going to build me up and pull me up?” The reality is that you are probably going to pull me down because misery loves company.
This is a negative way of stating the positive truth that if I say things to you that build you up, I have equipped you to build me up.
In another place Paul wrote: “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Ephesians 4:29)
In every relationship you have – with your spouse, children, parents, those you work with, those you work for, and those who work for you – make the commitment to say and do things that build them up and minister the grace of God to them. You will be surprised by joy to discover what you send down that communication street will come back up that street and into your relationship with that person.
Jesus gave an unstable man named Simon the nickname Peter, which meant stable like a rock. After calling Peter a rock for three years Peter became a rock. Try that in your relationships.
Dick Woodward, 29 June 2010
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June 25, 2021
“For in fact the body is not one member but many.” (1 Corinthians 12:14)
The greatest Scripture in the New Testament about the way a church should function is chapter 12 of First Corinthians. After the Apostle Paul uses the words diversity and oneness several times, he brings these two opposite concepts together in his inspired metaphor that the Church is to function as a body.
Paul writes that it is not either/or but both/and. Diversity should be celebrated rather than resolved. As diverse members of the body of Christ come together to have a ministry there are “let it happen people,” “make it happen people,” “don’t know what’s happening people,” and “don’t know anything is supposed to be happening people.”
Let it happen people desperately need make it happen people. And the other two kinds of people obviously need these first two kinds of people. The truth is they all need each other to function as a team, a body and a Church.
There are Mary and Martha kinds of people and they both need each other. Often, Marthas do not appreciate Marys because they think they are unorganized. But Marys need Marthas and Marthas need to realize that if it were not for the Marys there would not be anything to organize.
Are you fitting in with those kinds of people who have what you do not have and sharing with them what you have that they do not have?
When we experience unity while celebrating diversity we do not have uniformity but a supernatural community that is in reality the body of our risen and living Jesus Christ.
Dick Woodward, 25 June 2013
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 22, 2021
“Now it is required that those who have been given trust must prove faithful.” (1 Corinthians 4:2)
A story is told of a man who was told by God to push against a huge rock as his primary work for a lifetime. The man did that for years. Exhausted, burned out and discouraged he told God the rock had not moved a centimeter. God responded that God had not told the man to move the rock, but to push against it. God made the observation that pushing against the rock had given the man a strong healthy and muscular body.
God knew all along that only God could move that rock.
This leads to an acrostic based on the word push:
P- Pray
U– Until
S– Something
H– Happens
I am now living in my 82nd year. One of the observations I have made in my life is that God is our Mentor. God is always teaching us and God is fiercely committed to the proposition that we are going to grow spiritually and in every other way.
God deliberately assigns us tasks that are not only difficult but impossible knowing that those tasks will grow and mature us into faithful servants God can use to do through us what only God can do in this world.
So this week push and keep praying until God does God’s works through you.
Dick Woodward, 20 June 2012
#faith #hope #inspiration #prayer #peace #love
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 18, 2021
“We don’t know what to do but our eyes are on You.” (2 Chronicles 20:12)
No matter how gifted we may be, sooner or later we will hit a wall of crisis where we do not know what to do. The Scripture from Chronicles is taken from a time when the people of God were overwhelmingly outnumbered and they simply did not know what to do.
James later wrote that when we do not know what to do we should ask God for the wisdom we confess we do not have. (James 1:5) He promises us that God will not hold back but will provide a truckload of wisdom for us.
Years ago I received a telephone call from my youngest daughter when she was a first year student at the University of Virginia. With many tears she informed me she had fallen down a flight of stairs and was sure she had broken her back. At the hospital they discovered mononucleosis and seriously infected tonsils that needed to be removed. She concluded her litany: “Finals begin tomorrow and I just don’t know what to do, Daddy!”
Frankly, I was touched that my intelligent young daughter believed if she could just share her litany of woes and tap into the vast resources of my wisdom I could tell her what to do when she did not know what to do.
According to James that is the way we make our Heavenly Father feel when we come to Him overwhelmed with problems and tell Him we don’t know what to do. A good way to begin some days is: “Lord, I don’t know what to do, but my eyes are on YOU!”
Dick Woodward, blog 2013
Editors Note: Blessings to all the fathers out there as we celebrate Father’s Day this weekend. As that young daughter who continued tapping into her Papa’s wisdom until the day he died, these words comforted my heart. Our Heavenly Father is still always here when we don’t know what to do.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 15, 2021
“For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart…” (1 John 3:20)
In the Bible the heart is often referring to our emotions. The Apostle John uses the heart in that sense in the verse above. What he is essentially writing is that if the way we feel condemns us, God is greater than the way we feel.
Before the Apostle John writes these words, he was challenging us to love in action and not merely in words. He follows the insight that God is greater than the way we feel with the prescription to keep the two great commandments of Jesus: to love God, and love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. (Matthew 22:35-40)
We are to love when we look up, when we look around, and when we look in. John was teaching that we are to love God completely, love others unconditionally, and love ourselves correctly.
Loving ourselves does not mean when we pass a mirror we should stop and have our devotions. Jesus taught that we should say the same thing about ourselves that God says about us: God loves us.
The prescription for depression the Apostle of Love gives devout disciples is that when our hearts condemn us, we should realize that our faith is not based on something as fickle as our feelings. Our faith should be based on the reality that we believe and apply the commandment to love.
The last thing we should do when our heart condemns us is isolate ourselves into a pity party. We should get with people and love them.
Dick Woodward, 13 June 2011
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 11, 2021
“Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful… And what do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4: 2, 7)
The biblical word “steward” is not fully understood or appreciated. It is actually one of the most important words in the New Testament. A synonym for this word is “manager.” Many people believe this word primarily relates to a person’s money, but that application falls far short of the essential meaning of this word.
When Paul asks the probing question: “And what do you have that you did not receive?” he is telling us that our stewardship applies to everything we receive from God. This means our time, energy, gifts and talents, our health, and all the things that make up the essence of our very life including all of our money and possessions.
At the age of 65 one of my friends had what he refers to as a “halftime” experience when he came to fully appreciate the word “steward.” His regular custom was to draw a line down the middle of a legal pad page. On the left side he wrote “My business” while on the right side he wrote “God’s business.” When he fully appreciated the word “steward” he erased that line because, as a very successful wealthy businessman, he realized it was all God’s business.
Remember, the important thing about a steward is that we are found to be faithful. Do you realize there is nothing in your life you did not receive from God? Do you know that you are to faithfully manage everything you have received from God? Are you willing to have a halftime experience and erase the line between what is yours and what is God’s?
Dick Woodward, 10 June 2010
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 28, 2021
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love… I am nothing.” (I Corinthians 13:1-3)
After a devastating battle during World War I, Canadian army surgeon John McCrae composed one of the greatest war poems ever written. In it he gave voice to thousands of soldiers who lay dead, summing up their lives on earth with this line: “Loved and were loved, but now we lie in Flanders Fields.”
When we come to the end of our lives, one of our most important priorities will be those we love, and those who love us. But we should not wait to focus our priorities.
The Apostle Paul declared the agape love of God to be the number one priority of spiritual people: “…and the greatest of these is love.”
A PARAPHRASE APPLICATION:
If we speak with great eloquence and even in tongues, but without love, we’re just a lot of noise. If we have all knowledge to understand all the Greek mysteries, the gift to speak as prophets, and enough faith to move mountains, unless we love as we do all these things we are nothing. If we give all our money to feed the poor and our bodies to be burned at the stake as martyrs, if we give and die without love it profits us nothing.
Nothing we are, nothing we ever become, nothing we have, and nothing we ever will have in the way of natural and spiritual gifts should ever move ahead of love as our first priority.
Nothing we do, or ever will do as an expression of our faith, our gifts, our knowledge, or our generous, charitable, unconditionally-surrendered heart is worthy of comparison, or can replace love as we live out our personal priorities in this world.
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Love
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 25, 2021
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1)
The Word of God exhorts us to pray when we are in crisis situations. Psalm 46:1 has an alternate reading in the New Standard version, “God is our refuge and strength, abundantly available for help in tight places.”
The Apostle Paul also challenges us to pray: “tell God every detail of your needs in earnest and thankful prayer…” (Philippians 4:6) God delivered Paul from many tight places. We should therefore always pray in a crisis: “When it’s hardest to pray, pray the hardest!” However, from personal experience Paul knew that God doesn’t always take our problems away. Paul had a physical condition he described as a “thorn in the flesh.” Three times he asked God to take it away.
Paul saw many people miraculously healed as he ministered the healing power of the Holy Spirit to them. Yet, when he asked God to solve his own health problem, three times God said, “No. No. No.” But God also responded, “My grace is sufficient for you and that is all you need. My strength looks good on weak people.” (2 Corinthians 12)
Paul’s weakness drove him to discover the strength of God. When he did, he not only accepted his condition but eventually thanked God in it so God’s power might be showcased in him.
As Paul accepted the will of God regarding his thorn, he learned that:
“the will of God will never lead us where the grace of God cannot keep us.“
Paul exhorts us from his personal experience that prayer may deliver us from our problems, or prayer may give us the grace to cope with them. But, in any case, pray.
Always pray about everything!
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Peace
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Posted by Dick Woodward
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