Caring effectively is beyond our natural human abilities.

Caring is more than a set of skills. It comes from the inside and flows out from the New Nature God produces in us. That helps us care like God cares for us and helps people experience God through our care.  This blog is a little different.. It is a devotional. Take a week to open yourself to the work of God in and through you.

The First Essential:  A Nature to Care

AN INVITATION TO DAILY WORSHIP

Father help me to live up to Your presence within me. I confess I have not always loved my neighbor as myself, nor loved You with all my heart, all my soul, all of my mind, and all of my strength. By the fruit of Your Spirit, may I more readily care for others. O Holy Spirit help me attain Your will to for those you bring to me. In Jesus name I ask these things. Amen.”

DAILY SCRIPTURES

A Psalm for every day.

Psalm 51

Daily Readings

Monday      John 15:1-5

Tuesday            Ephesians 4:22-33

Wednesday     Ezekiel 36:26

Thursday       II Corinthians 5:16-21

Friday       II Peter 1:3-11

Saturday       Colossians 3:9-16

Sunday       Romans 6:1-14

PERSONAL REFLECTION

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

- C.S. Lewis “Mere Christianity” Book III Chapter 11 (The Perfect Penitent)

PRAYER FOR THE WEEK

“Show me Your glory, I pray to You, so that I may know You indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow you up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”

 A.W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God

SONG OF THE WEEK

Change My Heart Oh God

Change my heart oh God
Make it ever true
Change my heart oh God
May I be like You

Change my heart oh God
Make it ever true
Change my heart oh God
May I be like You

You are the potter
I am the clay
Mold me and make me
This is what I pray

Change my heart oh God
Make it ever true
Change my heart oh God
May I be like You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qobiU0TbXOg 

RECEIVE THE BLESSING

“Grow, dear friends, but grow, I beseech you, in God’s way, which is the only effectual way. See to it that you are planted in grace, and then let the divine Husbandman cultivate you in His own way and by His own means.”

Hannah Whitall Smith in 

The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life

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Weekly devotions will be coming for each of the 7 Essentials. Some will be included as part of the regular blog and some will be supplemental.