Praying, Knowing Your Worth and Loving the Law

Hi, friends.  I hope you are having a wonderful week!  Here are a couple pieces I thought you might enjoy.  But first, the links to the children's devotions.  Ask your Daddy (a piece on prayer) and God Can Use You (knowing your worth.  The intros for the grown-up devos are below.

Rejection hurts. We want to be a chosen one. 

Do you remember gym classes with team captains who chose members?  If you were not athletic, it was a time of humiliation and rejection.  Then, adulthood delivers more opportunities for rejection: looking for a job, losing a job, finding a mate, enduring a divorce, raising teen-agers.  Rejection stains every life, producing ugly fruit: shame, more rejection, fear and a burning desire to control others—so you can avoid more rejection.  MORE...

Have you read Leviticus lately?  Most would have to say, “No.”  Many would say, “I don’t need to; I don’t live under law. I live under grace.”  I say, “You don’t know what you are missing!  There is great joy to be found in those pages.  The light shines from the Law.”

 Leviticus 5:1-5 offers an eye-opening look at the desperate need for grace.  When is the last time you heard that hearing or seeing another sin brings that sin onto you?  Or when did you last consider that touching sin defiles?  Later in the chapter, we read that “not knowing it is sin” does not cancel our responsibility for sin.  The reality of life is this: we cannot spend one hour in public without hearing, seeing or touching something sin-soaked. MORE...