September 2023 – She Believes 3

She Believes 3 Devotion September 27, 2023

My Birthday

My Birthday

⁶Yes, you have been with me from birth; from my mother’s womb you have cared for me.
    No wonder I am always praising you!
⁷My life is an example to many,  because you have been my strength and protection.
⁸That is why I can never stop praising you; I declare your glory all day long.
Isaiah 46:4
⁴I will be your God throughout your lifetime—  until your hair is white with age.
I made you, and I will care for you.  I will carry you along and save you.
Lamentations 3:22-23
²²The faithful love of the Lord never ends![a] His mercies never cease.
²³Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.

Wow! Another trip around the sun. Yes, this is my Birthday month, and boy has it been a fun one so far! Though the gifts are fun to receive, and I enjoy the celebrations, it really does go a bit deeper than that for me these days.

As I have gotten older, I have seen more and more relatives and friends start to pass away. This has made me realize that my real Birthday gift was that I live to see another year and that God has been there for me another 365 days without fail. He has protected me, provided for me, guided me, comforted me, encouraged me, and loved me faithfully day after day. Not once when I called on Him in those 365 days has He said to me, I am busy right now let me get back to you on that. He has been available every single time that I have reached out to Him.

Even on the days that I may have forgotten Him, He never forgot about me, and my friends are the real Birthday gift! When I think of my birthday in this way, I am absolutely humbled that the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords would even consider little old me. I am blessed beyond measure and so are you. Every single year is a gift, and please don’t ever forget that.

Never ever take the Lord’s goodness to you for granted. I know that as some women get older they are reluctant to share their age with anyone. Not me, if anyone ask I am happy to share how long the good Lord has been blessing me, and I hope that you will do the same.

It is not about your age, it’s about His goodness! And He is good all of the time! I hope that your next birthday will be as wonderful as mine and that you stop and give God some praise for allowing you to live to see it because it truly is a blessing to do so. Some won’t live to see their next birthday. If you are blessed to see it, then get your shouting and praise shoes on and give Him the glory that’s due Him for your fabulous trip around the sun.

¹²Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.

She Believes 3 Devotion September 17, 2023

Summer Months On The Farm

If you were not raised on a farm, you may not be able to fully grasp what that life is really all about. As a child growing up on a farm, it never occurred to me that there were children who actually got to relax and do exactly what they wanted to do with their summer vacations.

While our friends in the city were going to the city swimming pool or visiting friends and watching TV all day, my siblings and I were working from sunup to sun down on the farm.

It seemed that there was always something that needed to be done on the farm. There was one thing that my siblings and I were always in total agreement about and that was how much we hated going to the cotton fields. Yes, we hated chopping cotton, and we hated picking cotton and I do mean hated it! But it didn’t matter how much we hated it, we still had to do it.

So, as I look back on those early years of my life, I realize that during those very long hot days, my character was being shaped, I was also developing a work ethic. I was learning the importance of teamwork and how to be a team player. I was learning how to persevere even when the circumstances were uncomfortable. I was learning how to work until the job was done and sometimes that meant pushing past tired. I also learned the value of resting when it was resting time. I learned to value all of God’s creation, whether it be animals or nature. And wow!!! I can’t even begin to tell you about all of the life skills that I was blessed to learn from living on the farm. So, so many wonderful lessons came from those long hot summers on the farm. Don’t get me wrong there was work to do year round, but Summer was definitely the hardest as far as I am concerned.

Looking back I can see that God used this experience to prepare me for my life’s work. Isn’t it amazing that the very things that we hate going through or doing, are the things that God uses to prepare us for His perfect plan for our lives.

The hours that we spent working together no doubt created a special bond between my siblings and I, that we have until this day. This has been another great perk from living on the farm. So when you think life is too hard just know that this is part of God’s perfect plan for your life, and it will be used for your ultimate good and His ultimate glory!

Years down the road you too will look back and see how He was right there in the middle of the plan preparing you for the next level that He plans to take you to. So trust His timing and His ways because His ways are certainly higher than our ways!

¹¹For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Proverbs 16:3
³Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.
Colossians 3:23
²³Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,

She Believes 3 Devotion September 3, 2023

God Will Not Be Denied

Every Tuesday morning, I am in a Virtual Bible Study with over four hundred women who are excited to study God’s Word. Last Tuesday morning I was running later than usual getting ready for my class.

In keeping with my morning routine, I had taken some medication that I had to take one hour before eating. If I fail to eat within an hour of taking my medicine, I will start to feel lightheaded and nauseous. Not a good feeling at all!
I knew that it was getting close to time for me to get on the Zoom, so I decided to try to quickly prepare my breakfast, and just keep my camera off until I finished eating. I had my Zoom where I could hear when things got started.

Within a few minutes, the leader announced who would be opening the study with prayer. When this happened, I was just about to start my blender to make my favorite morning smoothie. Initially, I thought that I would bow my head and pray with the other ladies. Then I thought, since my camera and sound are off, I will hurry and make my smoothie, and by the time class actually starts I will be sitting at my dining room table eating.

Well, things didn’t quite go as I had planned. When I went to pour my smoothie out of the blender, I accidentally overfilled my glass, and the smoothie had to be cleaned off my counter. As if that wasn’t enough when I started to scramble my eggs, one of my eggs slipped out of my hands and raw egg was wasted on the counter and flowed down my kitchen cabinets to the floor. I was beyond frustrated at this point. Suddenly I realized what was going on.

I had denied God the time, honor, and respect that was due Him during the prayer time. Whether it was in person or virtually, I should have paused and bowed my head to pray with the other ladies in the Bible Study. My disrespect and disobedience cost me. It cost me even more time than I initially thought that I would be saving because now I had to stop and clean up a mess. It also cost my peace, because now I was tuning into the Bible Study frustrated and distracted.

This whole scene reminded me of the children of Israel, and how their disobedience turned an eleven-day trip into a forty-year journey.

What I learned from this experience, is that God will not be denied His time, His glory, or His respect. So let me encourage you to never compromise on what you know is due Him because it will cost you. Be blessed and be faithfully committed to honoring our God, no matter the situation that you find yourself in.

Deuteronomy 1:2-3
²(It takes eleven days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road.)³In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had commanded him concerning them.
Isaiah 42:8
⁸“I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.
1 Samuel 2:30
³⁰“Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that members of your family would minister before me forever.’ But now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me! Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained.
Psalm 29:2
²Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his^[a] holiness.