For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15a
SCRIPTURE: PSALM 23 “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” COMMENTS: God calls us to war while calling us to rest. He calls us to battle against satan while resting in God’s hands. James 4:7 “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” This is not a contradiction but a place of alliegence and battle plan. We need to be at war against satan instead of with God. Our allegiance needs to be on the winning side instead of the popular side. On the good side instead of the evil side. Christ has promised to never leave or forsake us. He revealed that He and the Father and the coming Comforter are identical with each other in character and strategy and even in thoughts so when the Holy Spirit came and indwelled the believers at Pentecost, that promise was fulfilled. This promise was given in old testament times, Deut. 31:6 as one example with repeated examples of fulfillment in scripture of individuals and of Israel as a nation being helped and saved by God’s abiding presence. Hebrews 13:5 is also one of many such scriptures in the New Testament also. Below are those scriptures:
Deuteronomy 31:6 “6 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Hebrews 13:5 “5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you”
Well, God’s abiding presence and constant abiding help and council and guidance and protection are all available to each and every living person if we only allow His Holy Spirit to come to and abide in us. He will not force His way in or come in uninvited. But without His abiding presence in our souls, we put ourselves at great risk of falling prey to satan’s deceptions and influence, thereby doomed to sin as well as sin’s consequences. When we let His Holy Spirit abide in us, we give ourselves opportunity to rest in His abiding presence and take rest in His encompassing hands while facing and doing battle against satan. We are then able to see satan and his activites for what they are and battle against him under God’s authority and with God’s power and strength. We don’t do battle alone or without a plan. It just is not our plan or a plan we chose. We choose who we will follow instead of choosing a plan we like without regard of who’s plan we follow. Truth is God likes to test our faith by asking us to trust Him before knowing His plans instead of presenting to us His plan for our lives and then asking us to follow Him if we like it. No, God doesn’t give us the option first. He asks us to trust and follow Him first before we know what He will ask of us. But history in scripture and examples of individuals in every generation, including ours, proves to us over and over again that God has our best interests at heart and will only bring great blessing to us if we follow Him. Yet, that path will likely include some short term pain and trials. Well, lets face it, pain and trials motivate us to draw closer to Him generally and prosperity and ease draws us away from Him. Maybe greater blessing comes from hardships instead of material wealth and comfort. Maybe God intends material wealth and comfort to be a source of resource for us to use not to satisfy our own desires but to equip and help and minister to others. Maybe prosperity was never intended to be for us but for others and we only draw closer to Him during prosperous times when we are generous in giving those resources away to work He leads us to support. Maybe hardship is more often God’s way of getting our attention so we will focus on and pay attention to His instruction and plan and away from focusing on things and worldly pleasures. I love C.S. Lewis’s words below:
“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” C. S. Lewis
Our spiritual life begins when we ask Christ into our lives by repenting of our sins and receiving His gift of salvation and forgiveness. But that is only the beginning . The journey and path that choice puts us on requires daily decisions and choices to either follow Christ or to chose daily distractions satan shows us. When we ask the Holy Spirit to come in us and dwell and guide us, we are allowing Him to equip and prepare us for life’s daily battles with satan but also allowing Him to guide us to minister to others He guides our daily paths to cross. When we are prepared, we become a blessing but when we are not or choose unwisely, we miss a precious opportunity. That opportunity may come again or go to another who is prepared. True wealth and prosperity is from being a blessing and giving blessings, not by receiving and using blessings. True poverty is keeping wealth and using it to satisfy our own selfish desires and harden our hearts against the needs of others. AMEN? AMEN!
Published by donsdevotions
Don McDaniel - Who am I?
Hello everyone and welcome to my devotional journal blog. In order to get acquainted and help you get to know me a bit better before considering following my blog, let me give you some background. I am a 74-year-old male and a retired engineer. I worked for a major supplier of underground mining equipment for nearly 40 years before retiring in 2012. Arlene and I have been happily married since April 1978 and have two grown – married children, one granddaughter and 2 step grandsons. I joined the local United Methodist church at age 12 after accepting Christ as my Savior at age 10 during revival services in that same church in 1961, so I have been a “Born Again” Christian all my teen years and adult life. Christ has helped and guided me all that time. He guided me in choosing my wife and life’s career. My life journey has included regrets and failures, but God has picked me up and protected and spared me from life threatening consequences and dangers more times than I can recall or count. But many I do recall and encourage and motivate me to trust and follow Christ with more passion than ever.
Christmas 2011 our daughter gave Arlene and I each a devotional journal. Journals were books with devotion for each day and space to give personal impressions and thoughts related to each devotion. Her desire was to have a lasting legacy she could refer back to and share with her children and grandchildren especially after we are gone. I was touched by that gesture. My parents and Arlene’s were devout Christians, so we would have greatly treasured having that from them, so we felt a sense of urgency to honor her request. I finished my journal first and returned it to our daughter the following Christmas. I’m glad I did it then because Parkinson’s has caused my hand writing to deteriorate since then. The exercise was such a blessing for me. Discipline of keeping journal helped me gain a deeper walk with Christ and greater discipline in honoring my time of prayer and devotion with Him each day. So, I decided to continue the practice but since I could not find a paper journal I liked, I decided to create my own. I had already been receiving electronic devotions by email every day from several sources, my favorite being “Turning Point” from Dr. David Jeremiah. What I decided to do was to include devotional scripture but add my own thoughts and comments only so there would be no issue of copyright infringement. Creating and maintaining journal by computer also addressed my deteriorating handwriting ability. I started an electronic devotion journal January 1, 2013 and have been faithful to that practice every day since. I prayed about method and level of distribution. My initial intent was to only share it with my two children by email, but quickly discovered others in my family, my church, and friends from work (both retired and still working) who knew me and wanted to be included in distribution when they learned what I was doing. I now distribute by email my daily journal at the beginning of each month to over 150 friends and relatives. God has richly blessed and encouraged me.
I am concerned with the state of our church and nation, and world for that matter, believing we are living in the end times the prophets of old and Christ have talked about in scripture, so time is short. I desire to be true to my Savior and a witness to help others come to a saving knowledge of Him and equipped to share His Good News too. If my journal can encourage and help others, I believe God wants me to share it. I struggled, for a time at first, because I know many others keep similar journals but only for their own edification and do not want to share them because they are private.
However, Christ has stirred my heart to share it as a witness tool.
Our son and daughter have a long-time friend who grew up with them who we also befriended nearly 25 years ago. He had a lot of family problems, so would gravitate to our family as a refuge and eventually thought of us as his adopted parents and he as our adopted son. We lost contact with him for some time when he grew up and left home. He traveled around the U.S. and eventually ended up in Ukraine where he resided for next 10 years. He had to return to the US to renew his visa and took opportunity to recommend I begin a blog of my devotions and helped me set it up. He is also an active blogger and has been an email subscriber to my journal for several months, so he has been suggesting I expand my distribution by starting a blog to get broader exposure. After reflection and prayer, I concluded God was in this, so he is helping me set up my blog site. This brief autobiography is my first entry.
He returned to Ukraine, then resided there until circumstanced made him decide to move back to US with his young son. This biography was my first post February 29, 2016 .
I have published 600 posts from 2016-2023 automatically sent to all my Facebook friends, published on WordPress to be accessible to anyone curious or seeking a deeper walk with God. I decided to take a sebatical to prepare for a new chapter. In 2014 I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease which affects patient ability to walk, drive, do physical work, and eventually talk. By mid 2023 it became evident our home for last 42 years (previously owned by my parents for previous 44 years and by my mother's grandparents for 39 years before that) would eventually not meet my needs so we decided to sell it and move into 1st floor of a duplex we also owned that was the town school from 1855-1913. Likewise, the property was requiring more maintenance that I was no longer able to keep up with. 2023 involved selling our home and moving into apartment next door and then in early 2025 an opportunity to move closer to our daughter and granddaughter in Kentucky which was completed in May 2025. For a number of months I have been seeking direction seeking God's direction and timing to return to blogging as my journey with Parkinson's continues to unfold with God's guiding hand in mine.
I hope and pray my devotions will continue to be a blessing for you. God certainly has become closer and more real to me since started this blog in 2016. I have spent time with Him studying scripture and praying and listening and writing this journal. I will continue seeking God’s help and will welcome your input to make this site as meaningful as I can and true to God, who is motivating me to create and maintain it. I will also welcome input in order to make format more meaningful going forward.
Don & Arlene McDaniel
In His Service,
Email: mcdanieldonald769@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Don1951
If you wish, you can access my blog at “https://donsdevotions.wordpress.com“. There you will find 600+ blog posts I have made plus a link to my devotional journal material archives from 2013 to present (https://donsdevotions.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/link-to-dons-devotional-journal-entries-2013/ )
You may also access my Facebook page and request to be my friend and automatically receive my daily journal publications daily. My Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/Dondevotionals/ Many thanks to a pastor and dear brother in Christ in Nepal who set up the above Facebook page to help and encourage and give opportunity for more to explore and use my devotional blog materials. View all posts by donsdevotions
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