You are reading Joni and Friends 9th October 2022 Devotional, Sunday Daily Devotional Message. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Read Joni and Friends 9th October 2022 Devotional below;
TOPIC: Weaving Straw into Gold
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The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me. – Psalm 138:8 (ESV)
Now there is a verse of Scripture that has buoyed my spirits in difficult times. In her classic devotional book Streams in the Desert, Mrs. L.B. Cowman wrote:
“There is a divine mystery in suffering, one that has a strange and supernatural power and has never been completely understood by human reason. For no one has ever developed deep spirituality or holiness without experiencing a great deal of suffering. When a person who suffers reaches a point where he can be calm and carefree, inwardly smiling at his own afflictions, and no longer asking God to be delivered from it, then the suffering has accomplished its blessed ministry…. At that point, the pain of the crucifixion has begun to weave itself into a crown.”
Oh, the contentment of being able to smile at your own afflictions! I am so very glad that those anxious, fretful days of, “Man, I am sick and tired of this stupid wheelchair,” are far behind me. Now when I lie in bed at night and look at my empty wheelchair over in the corner of the bedroom, I smile. I recognize what it has accomplished in my life over decades.
How about the things that crucified you in the past, those events, circumstances, or disappointments that bruised you, pulled you down, or even crushed you? Are those experiences now being woven into a crown? As we wait with patience for the Lord to strengthen and sustain us, we really do begin to feel the weight of our cross being exchanged for the weight of a crown.
Nothing can match the glorious assurance that your pain has been transformed. It’s difficult to put the outcome into words. You experience a fresh stillness before the Lord. Contentment comes so much more easily. Complaining becomes a thing of the past, as you no longer fantasize about castles in the clouds or pie in the sky. And the only choice that really matters is choosing Jesus in all things, letting circumstances be what they may. That is contentment so sweet and secure that I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Not even a whole body.
Do you have the calm assurance that God truly is causing all things—good and bad, past and present—to “work together for good,” as it says in Romans 8:28 (ESV)?
May your cross soon become your crown.
Going Deeper
My heart is not proud, Lord,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have calmed and quieted myself,
I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content. – Psalm 131:1-2
For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. – 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (NLT)
In the old fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin took straw and wove it into gold. May our loving God, for whom nothing is impossible, transform your hurts and hardships into outcomes that are sweet beyond words.
Thank you for reading Joni and Friends 9th October 2022 Devotional Message
