Daily Devotional – 10/6/15 “Using the wrong aid!”

You’re wondering why you can’t heal from what ails you … maybe it’s because you’re using the wrong aid! I mean, think about it; would you reuse a dirty band-aid? Wouldn’t you be mad if you had surgery and the doctor reused thread to stitch you up or reused gauze to dress your wounds? Wouldn’t you be mad if you found out the dentist was reusing water to clean out your mouth? Then why are you still trying to reuse the same old stuff to heal? You’re crying about a broken heart yet you’re crying to the one who broke it. How can you heal when they keep taking a piece of you every time they leave and you keep letting them? You keep saying you want to be healed from your addiction but you’re still hanging around those who feed said addiction. How can you break your addiction to weed, if you’re best friends with the weed man? How can you get over your addiction to alcohol when you got the key to the liquor store? You say you want to be healed spiritually yet you keep letting folk talk you out of church. “Girl, you know they just want your money,” “Why you going to that church, they only got a few members?” “Why you drive all the way there for church?” “Man, don’t you know football is on?” Baby, you’d better pull off that used stuff so you can heal.

It’s time now that you stopped looking for aid in stuff and folk and start looking for the aid that never goes wrong, never gets old and never hurts. At some point in your life, you need to change from crying out in hurt, why me, to now crying out in prayer like Jeremiah 17:14, “Heal me, LORD, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.” For the bible says in Psalm 147:3, “He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.” At some point and time beloved, you need to realize the pain you’re experiencing is self-inflicted and it can stop if you want it too. Yes, accept their apology, forgive and forget but don’t keep going back to the same hurt if they aren’t willing to change because then the apology becomes like that band-aid; old, worn out and useless for healing. Continuing to accept hurt and apologies from someone who repeatedly hurts you is like trying to fix glass that has been shattered. You’ll probably end up with more cuts and more band aids and in the end, it and you will still be broken. Throw it out (along with the glass). You can’t heal because you’re using the wrong aid!

Daily Devotional – 10/5/15 “The enemy doesn’t play fair!”

It’s Monday and the enemy wants you to think you aren’t the miracle that you are. He’s in your ear, all up in your grill; telling you to look at all the bad things going on but I can guarantee that if you count the good, they’ll outweigh every time. Yes, I get the fact that you got more bills than money, more sickness than health insurance, more problems than solutions, more tiredness than sleep, more folk asking than you got it to give, more things to do than time, more complaining Christians than shouting Saints and it seems, more faults than faith but baby that’s just the enemy trying to get you. Stay in your lane. See, if he gets you to swerve in his lane, he has a chance of hitting your car (you) and once that happens, you have to get out and come face to face with him. And you know what happens when you come face to face with a charming enemy when your faith is at its lowest point? You give in to the first thing he has to offer you. You forget all about resisting because his offer sounds better. You forget all about God, for the moment, because here the enemy is offering to fix what’s broken in your life at a time you need it most and you can’t wait.

Now, you’ve allowed him to take your car (this is me figuratively speaking because I really mean your spirit) to a cheap repair shop to patch up the holes, paint over the scratches, fix the dents and now you’re happy again. That is until you start seeing the paint chipping and you realize he isn’t who he said he was. Oh, now you start really looking at yourself, I mean your car and you see that all the places the enemy supposedly fixed are starting to wear out again and you, I mean your car just got out the shop. You try to call him on the number he gave you and you find out, it’s been disconnected. You go back to the repair shop and it’s closed. You’re back where you began but this time you’re in worse shape. The enemy used you up and now he’s gone and you’re back where you started from but with more holes, scratches and dents in your spirit crying out to God to repair you! Baby, God hadn’t left you and you need to remember that. The enemy only does what we allow. Stop listening, stop responding, stop playing with him/her, stop going and stop entertaining the foolishness. Get your faith up! Stay in your lane and if the enemy happens to bump into you, get out swinging because he doesn’t play fair!

Daily Devotional – 10/2/15 “Don’t miss your help!”

It’s Friday and someone is still trying to figure this thang out. Yea, you thought about staging your own intervention on Wednesday but then the enemy stepped in with his blessings and you started smiling again. Oh but when you rolled over this morning, quickly realizing that you’re right back where you were; you needing to save yourself. Isn’t it something how you feel bad after the mistake but not during it? Isn’t it something how you say you’ll never do it again until it calls? Isn’t it amazing how you say you aren’t angry until you realize you’re yelling and your fists are balled up? Isn’t it something to realize you need help but it’s only after you’re by yourself? But why does it take that? Why does it take us, Saints of God, to hit the bottom before we ask for help? Why do we have to wait until we are about to pass out from starvation to accept the meal someone is offering? Why is it that as men and women of God, we are afraid to ask for the help we so desperately need?

Baby, if you have to worry about the folk around you talking about you, in your time of need; you need some more folk to hang around. If you can’t call on some folk to pray you out of some stuff, you need to reevaluate your circle. If you are concerned with how you’ll look if you happen to need encouragement instead of being the encourager, you may want to check the folk you call friends. Let me explain it this way … When you go to rehab, you are sent to a place with other folk who are trying to overcome an addiction just like you. This is because it helps to have folk around who are going through what you are or they’ve been through what you’re going through in order for you all to help one another. What the sense of going to get help from someone who don’t know about your circumstance? This is the same for somebody reading this. Stop trying to get help from folk who don’t understand your dilemma, they can’t help you. You need to be around some folk who understand and it doesn’t matter who you are or what your title is because to them you’re just friend. Don’t miss your help!

“The LORD hears his people when they call to him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. Psalm 34:17”

Daily Devotional – 10/1/15 “Withdrawals are part of the process!”

I can assume, if you went to spiritual rehab on yesterday that you probably woke up this morning experiencing withdrawals. Yea, you’re probably second guessing your choice; wondering if you’ve made the right decision. There’s probably a few folk around you saying, “If I was you, I wouldn’t go, ain’t nothing wrong with you.” You are probably starting to feel the effects of not having your drug of choice in your system by now and you’re really on edge. You haven’t heard from him or her because you have them on block and you’re tempted, don’t do it! You haven’t smoked that blunt, you haven’t hit that pipe, you haven’t tasted that alcohol running down your throat, you haven’t cursed anybody out, you haven’t put your hands on her/him, you haven’t slept with them, you haven’t talked about nobody or you haven’t tainted nobody’s spirit; keep it that way! Oh, you do know our addictions can be anything, right? And now you’re going through withdrawals but stay in rehab, don’t leave! Yes, the enemy may be standing outside your room with the promise to give you what you need, he’s tapping on your window beckoning you to come out, he’s in range of your ear, walking around your bed, camped out by your car or sending messages through so-called friends but stay in rehab. Haven’t you figured out yet the enemy is charging you for everything he gives yet you have an opportunity to get clean and it’s free?

Beloved; the withdrawals you’re having, they’ll go away but you need to go through it because it’s cleaning out all of that mess which was once attached to your spirit. I know it doesn’t feel good and you probably look a mess, spiritually but where you see it as withdrawal; I see it as God washing out the weakness and wiping your wounds. How else can God show you your worthiness? How else can you see that you are wonderfully made? How else will you recognize the magnitude of your witness and worship? Baby, unless you stay in rehab and experience your withdrawal, you’ll never fully grasp the severity of your purpose. What are your symptoms? Well, withdrawal may cause some shaking in your spirit, it may cause you to not be able to remain still, some shouting out, uncontrollable movements with your hands and feet, it may even cause tears to flow but it’s all part of the process. Stay in rehab! How long will you be there? It’s on a case by case basis but you’ll know when you’re clean because nothing will look or taste the same as it did before!

Daily Devotional – 9/30/15 “You have to do it!”

Sometimes you need to stage an intervention with yourself and get the help you need. Sometimes you have to make up your mind that you no longer want to live the way you’re living (if it’s not for the good). Sometimes you may have to send yourself to rehab; physically and spiritually. One of these days, you need to get up out of the rut you’re in, look yourself in the mirror and say; I’m tired of being the way I am, I’m tired of looking this way, I’m sick of being labeled by my mess and I’m tired of being addicted to people and stuff that mean me no good. Stop blaming folk; they didn’t make you do what you did or do what you do. Stop blaming momma and daddy, they raised you the best way they could, even if it wasn’t the best of what you thought; you made it to adult status, didn’t you? Stop putting the blame on the new pastor because he or she came in to change the thought process that you’ve had for 55 years that’s no longer working, it’s time for a change. Stop playing the “society is against me card,” because it wasn’t society that made the choices, you did. Stop blaming the folks you owe, it’s your debt. Stop blaming the children you made and they ones you made them with, it’s your fault. Take blame for what you’ve done and then decide, TODAY, I’m getting out of this mess!

It doesn’t matter what it is, today starts the first day of your rehab program but you have to do it. Give up the negativity, the anger, the hatred for others (and you don’t even know why you’re hating), the worrying, always wanting to blame someone else, the excuse as to why you can’t … today is the day it stops! Stop looking at what you don’t have and count what you do have and I can guarantee do outweigh don’t. It’s time you get yourself together and you need to start on your spiritual self. And get this; it only works if you work! You have to make the first step and when you do, God will be there for the bible says in Deuteronomy 31:8 “Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you.” God has already provided the necessary requirements needed for you to get clean in spiritual rehab; you just need to spiritually go. All it starts with is … “Lord, I surrender all to you.” For when you give it all to Him and mean it, it is then He can begin to makeover every area in your life.