Daily Bread Devotional April 20

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

Good morning, ginger Adventurers. I am doing today's devotional for April the 20th and the title is Family Matters. Today's scripture verse focus is Make every effort to live in peace with everyone, hebrews 12, 14. If you would like to see the actual devotional word for word, it is at odborg. That is Our Daily Bread Devotionals. I am simply doing a summary of the devotionals and then giving you my thoughts on the questions that are at the end.

Speaker 1: 0:53

So in this devotional they talk about some siblings that live in different states and they end up having to fly out to where their uncle had lived because their uncle died. And on their way to the funeral for their uncle they made a point of visiting their grandmother. Now their grandmother was not doing well. She'd had a stroke, couldn't speak, couldn't really use many of her muscles, but she did have the use of one hand. And as these siblings were with their grandma and were standing around their grandma, she made a point of reaching out and taking their hands and placing their hands over her heart and the family kind of took this as grandma's way of telling them that they were important to her, that they as family mattered to her.

Speaker 1: 1:49

And family does matter Like no matter what happens in your family fights, fusses, differences of opinions, good times, bad times. Family always matters and the story relates our earthly family to our church family. So, depending on you know what size church you go to, the different groups of that church, there can be disagreements in church and you can have times where you're not getting along with the people that you go to church with. But that family matters too, like we need to get along with our church family when we're not getting along with our earthly family, with our church family. We need to try and find ways to solve those issues and those problems. We need to invest in the people that are in our family, as the verse says, make every effort to live in peace with everyone, which means making that time to invest, putting in that effort and that energy to our family. It can be hard, though, sometimes to know exactly how to do that. If we've had a disagreement, we may not know how to solve that disagreement, and we're going to want to take that to God in prayer and pray about that. We may want to go to a mentor that we have or an older family member that's not involved in whatever issue is going on and ask for their advice on how to handle that.

Speaker 1: 3:35

The questions in this devotional at the end are the following what would it mean for you to make every effort to live in peace with everyone in God's family? Is there a particular person you might need to approach for reconciliation? In my opinion and this is just my opinion, it's not fact what it means to make every effort to live in peace with everyone is to look at the good parts of God and every single person that is part of your family. There are going to be things that you don't like about them. There are going to be family members that you don't like, but when we complain about people, it hardens our heart against those people, especially our family. But when we pray for those people, it softens our hearts to those people, softens our hearts to those people. When we pray and when we tell God the situation and we ask for God's help, god purposely softens our heart for that person, giving thanks for the things that person has done, thinking about all the good things that that person is able to do, the strengths they have, thinking about whatever good memories we have with them. It helps us want to approach them in a positive. Let's fix this, fix this manner, which is the first step to solving the problem, and I believe that if you approach the first time, it doesn't work. Give it some time, give it some space, try again.

Speaker 1: 5:13

I don't. In my opinion, I don't think family members should ever hold grudges and never talk to each other again and I will admit, my family has people in it that hold grudges and if you've done them wrong, they're done and they don't talk to you. I don't believe that church, family or earthly family should work that way. I believe that we should give every effort to reconciliate. That may mean that we have to stop and step outside of our box and step into theirs and look at the problem from their perspective. We might have to admit that our perspective was wrong. We might have to admit that we hurt them and ask them for forgiveness and even if they're not able to forgive us, if we can ask God forgiveness and ask ourselves forgiveness, that can help us heal from that situation and it can help us be able to go out and reach out to others, hold out a hand to those that may be going through similar situations, give advice to those that have gone to similar situations that you had in the past. I believe that God uses every single one of those situations to teach us things and to give us tools to use in the future to help other people, to shine his light for him. And then the second question, of course is there a particular person? Yeah, there are family members that I have that I definitely need to figure out how to approach and figure out how to have that reconciliation. I believe I need to continue praying about it and make a point of approaching those people and trying to fix those things, because family is always going to be family. Family matters. Family is important.

Speaker 1: 7:17

The insight for today's devotional talks about the Greek word. So in the phrase make every effort. In our key verse it translates to one Greek word every effort. In our key verse it translates to one Greek word dioko. I don't know if I pronounced that right, and it has a range of meanings.

Speaker 1: 7:36

It can mean to pursue good or not so good things, to press on to persecute. It talks about how, in Philippians, that word was used when paul shares his personal testimony and he says to press on to take hold of that for which christ jesus took hold of for me. So it's saying that you. That word was used more as meaning press on, press on towards the goal to win the prize for which god has called me heavenward and striving for peace with everyone, and for the prize for which God has called me heavenward and striving for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And I think it's really important, when we're looking at certain verses, to look at those words and their Greek meaning, so to know that make every effort translates to press on that. It translates to you know, continuing to put in that work so that we know with more clarity what a verse is trying to tell us, what God is trying to tell us. And in this case, god's telling us pursue it, go after it, press on, keep trying it, press on, keep trying, even when your efforts are not reciprocated. I think that is so important for us to remember and to know. Well, that's all for this episode.

Speaker 1: 8:59

Friends, if you've enjoyed what you're hearing, I invite you to go to my Buzzsprout page adventuresofgingerbuzzsproutcom. All of my episodes are listed there. Also, if you'd like to subscribe to my podcast, there's a button there that you can press and it's only $3 a month. If you have any questions, comments, prayer requests, feel free to reach out to me at adventursofginger at gmailcom or facebookcom. Slash adventursofginger on twitter at ginger adventure, and also on youtube at youtubecom. Slash at adventures of ginger. See you on the wild side.