May 30, 2022 – Click here to listen
For many years now I have asked myself why God would have saved me from the total depraved state in which I was living and transformed my life. I know all the Scriptures concerning His love for us, but it just seems to me that He went overboard in saving me.
Recently I received the email shown below in response to a Words for the Day post from someone whom I don’t know and judging from his surname derives from a faraway country which I suspect is probably India. I don’t remember the post that he read or what it said. To me, it was just another post like the thousands I have written five days per week for 24 years this June.
He wrote:
“I read this divinely timed word for the day as I was being attacked by crippling anxiety and suicidal thoughts. I just crossed the border into Mexico. I am on my first mission trip. 70 of us are building a house for a family, doing door-to-door evangelism, eyeglass ministry, and vacation Bible school. Your letter encouraged me to call my mentor and ask for prayer. We prayed and broke the spiritual opposition. Thank you so much, you don’t know the full significance of this word.”
He is right I don’t fully understand the spiritual significance of that post, but I do understand it is one of the reasons God touched me and saved me. Writing it is one of the purposes of God for my life. I receive letters every single day from people in this country and around the world telling of similar experiences. One lady sent one last week and simply wrote “I wept when I read this”. Again, I have no idea which post made her weep or what it might have said.
I am not concerned because I cannot identify these messages, she knows, and God knows the content. I have a friend who in part makes his living sending out daily devotionals. He told me he sets aside several weeks a year and sits down and writes an entire year’s worth of them. He has an automated system that sends them out daily.
I suppose that has its place, but my methodology is different. While it would be easier to just write a year’s worth over a couple of weeks, personally I don’t think it would be what God wants me to write. I write different posts in WFTD each day with no well-thought-out plan, rhyme, or reason. I pray for God to give me a subject and the Holy Spirit delivers. My posts are inspired by God unless on occasion my flesh gets in the way, and I rant about something. I don’t charge anything for them and would never try to profit from them.
I used to keep various letters and emails and had a stack of them from people who told me after reading a particular WFTD changed their minds about committing suicide, getting a divorce, taking illegal drugs and too much alcohol, or they got involved in church again (or maybe for the first time), some write to say they led someone to Christ and so on. I quit keeping them because I felt it was like me trying to take credit for God’s work and keeping little trophies. It felt like I was attempting to steal God’s glory for myself. The Holy Spirit gives me the subjects and the words and, like a scribe, I simply write down His words and distribute them for Him. End of story.
When you read Words for the Day and something touches your heart, know that it is from the Holy Spirit. He is reaching out to help you because He loves you. I do enjoy reading the letters you send because I’m just like you in facing spiritual opposition and demonic attack. I need encouragement too.
Satan would like nothing better than for me to get discouraged and quit writing it forever. The same goes for you. He doesn’t want you to glorify God. I pray for everyone who writes and ask God to draw near them and put a protective hedge around them. I ask you to pray for me in the same manner. We are all in this together as brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers. We are the family of God held together by an inseparable bond of love by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Romans 8:26
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.