Psalm 103:2-3. “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.”
RECOMMENDED SCRIPTURE READING: Isaiah 38:17 “Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish.In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sinsbehind your back.” Micah 7:19 “You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.”
COMMENTS: Psalm 103:2-3 is a wonderful verse of hope and promise from God to you and me, to anyone who comes to Him seeking His mercy and forgiveness seeking a relationship with Him. God revealed this to David, who wrote and lived by this verse. God not only forgives but also heals and transforms us with His crown of goodness and strength and wisdom abide with and in us when we walk with Him. We do so by simply inviting Him into our lives and place our hands and wills in His. We give Him our broken sinful lives and He gives us His perfect Love and fellowship. His forgives comes to us with two phases. The first is His forgiveness to us. The second is our forgiveness to our neighbors. To those who have wronged us. The neighbor near us and the neighbor of distance.
In today’s world, we can communicate and interact with anyone anywhere in the world at any time. With this comes opportunity of impacting others for good or evil anywhere in the world. So that means we have responsibility to forgive and minister far beyond what our forefathers could or did.
Our forgiveness is permanent and our sins are removed from us farther than we know or can comprehend. The depth of our sin and significance of God’s mercy is beyond what we know, so we must realize the worst of offense others have done to us doesn’t not come close to suffering our sins have caused Christ to endure. Such realization should be sufficient motivation to render forgiveness to those who wrong us. Even those who continue to wrong us. Justice is God’s to give, not for us to render.
Forgiving our neighbor includes forgive our spouse, forgiving our parents, our children, our friends, our co-workers. It even includes forgiving our enemies. When we release them to God and trust Him to administer justice or mercy as He wills, we release ourselves to love and share our witness to them. We also release ourselves to love and follow Christ as He desires us to. As we desperately need to have as well. When we fail to forgive, we do ourselves far more harm than we could ever do or hope to do to those who offend us.
Much like firing a weapon at a target that only hits the one holding the weapon.
We can only experience life as God intended, eternal life, when we accept God’s forgiveness. That forgiveness is not conditional but must be accepted in order to be in force. Forgiveness must be received to be in force. Forgiveness is free for us but costly beyond our comprehension to Christ. We don’t earn or pay for or negotiate God’s mercy. We only accept it on His terms. By surrendering our wills to His and letting Him into our hearts. We open ourselves to receive His love and open ourselves to love Him in response.
God is not limited by time or space. He sees the future as clearly as the present and past. He controls both completely without limits. He fully knows the consequences of sinful choices and of wise choices, so when we yield to His council, we also open ourselves to receive His blessings and avoid consequences otherwise on the path are proceeding down. He will do anything to spare us except for us to follow Him. That must be our choice. Not one our parents or pastor or even our children can make for us. Each must make that choice for himself and must continue to make wise choices each day.
So how well will we forgive others and how well will we do good and not harm to others? Each doctor takes an oath “to do no harm” to work with a purpose to administer healing. To leave patents better than they found them. Should that not also be our goal as Christians? Even to those who harm us? Didn’t Christ demonstrate perfectly such a goal?
THE PRAYER:” Heavenly Father, whenever I find it most difficult to forgive others the wrongs they have done to me, lift my eyes to the cross, and I will learn to forgive once again. Amen.”
If you wish, you can access my blog at “https://donsdevotions.wordpress.com“. There you will find 385 blog posts I have made plus a link to my devotional journal material archives from 2013 to present.
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.
My hope and prayer are, my blog and devotional materials will become a source of encouragement and tools in ministry for you.
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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