I heard the sound of geese honking as they were flying over my house and without even looking I could visualize the “V” formation of those birds as they were making their way south. When you’re in the quiet countryside and you hear that sound… you know that a change in the season is coming.

Have you ever wondered why geese honk when they’re flying? And who decides who honks in the group? Do they take turns based on which order they are in in the pattern? I don’t know the answer but here’s what I think! I think the honking is coming from the cheerleaders in the group. Encouraging the other geese to keep up and keep going! How easy it would be to get discouraged, feel the cold, the wind, the rain, the sun, other birds!

1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NLT) reminds us, “So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.” We’re all in this race together. Sometimes we may be the leader of the pack and sometimes we’re doing all we can to just keep up. Sometimes we are in need of encouragement to keep going… and sometimes we are able to share some encouragement with others to not give up!

Regardless of the position we’re in or the length of time we’ve been in the race we all need some encouragement (some ‘honking’ if we were geese!) so here’s mine for you today: You can do this! You plus Jesus equals everything. You are never in this alone. God is with you… and so am I!! Keep going! Let’s do this!

I received the prettiest bouquet of roses for my birthday. Six roses and each one a different color. Tucked into the arrangement, along with the card from the family who sent them, was a card that read: “Water daily. Fill container full of water every day.” Simple, easy directions to care for this beautiful vase of flowers. They needed water every day… and fill it FULL.

That little reminder card sat on my desk beside the flowers so that I would remember. I looked at and enjoyed the view every day. I know they need water… every day. It’s easy to get busy. Lots of meetings and phone calls. Projects and planning. If I skipped a day, it wouldn’t really matter, would it? One day turned into two and oh how easy it is to forget.

WE need water every day. Not just physically! We need the Living Water that Jesus offered in John 7:37-38 (NLT). “On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to Me!  Anyone who believes in Me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from His heart.’”

Imagine if we drank a bottle or two of water every Sunday morning for an hour and then went the whole week without drinking any more water. Our bodies would be so dehydrated, it wouldn’t take very long before we would be in real trouble. So it is with the Holy Spirit of God in our lives. It’s not enough to show up at church on Sunday morning for an hour or two and then go an entire week without coming to the Well and drinking fully from His Living Water. We need to come to Him daily! Maybe we each should have a little note attached that reminds us: Water daily. Fill container full of Living Water…every day!

Road construction. Sometimes unexpected, always inconvenient. It’s beyond our control and leaves us wondering – how long will this last? When it’s finished – will it be better than before? Some roadwork requires traffic to be held up to allow heavy machinery to do its work and sometimes we are required to go out of our way to get to our destination. While we may get to see a different view on our journey, it almost always takes extra time to get to our destination.

Sound familiar? Is there some construction happening in your heart? Do you find yourself dealing with some of those same thoughts and questions? Thoughts like: this is SO inconvenient! I don’t have time to deal with this now! I didn’t ask for this! How much longer is this going to take? Will I ever recover from this?

The truth is that God loves us right where we are, but He loves us too much to leave us that way. His plans for us are for our good and for His glory. So while it may take longer and we may find ourselves going in a different direction than we’d planned God has a way of using every bump in the road, every turn, delay and detour to bring us to the place He wants us to be. Proverbs 3:5-6 (NLT) reminds us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take.”

It may feel counter-intuitive to relinquish control but this is exactly the right time to stop relying on our own GPS and allow God to lead us through or around. Pray for God to help us not to miss a single thing He wants us to see or experience today. And thank Him for bringing us to the exact destination He has planned for us.

It’s the last book of the Old Testament. In fact, it’s the last chapter…and the final verse before the ‘400 years of silence’ began when, to our knowledge, God spoke no more prophetic words to His people until the time of the Messiah’s birth. 400 years is a long time! That’s longer than our country has even been around and just think of how much history has taken place in our nation’s lifetime!

The Book of Malachi is especially known for its instruction about tithing and the Lord’s rich blessings on those who are obedient in giving. It also references God’s mercy and the Day of Judgement. This last verse in the Old Testament reminds us that there is so much more to come in God’s story. Even though there were roughly four centuries when God did not speak to His people as He had up until then, He left them this final verse that tells them, and us, to look ahead, with hope.

Nestled into that final note in Malachi 4:6 (NIV) are these words, “He will turn the hearts of the parents to the children and the hearts of the children to their parents.” If ever you needed a word from the Lord to pray over an estranged relationship, whether it is someone else’s, or your own, the Father’s heart for our relationships is restoration. May these final words God spoke before the long silence be the first words we speak, in prayer, over the long silence we’ve endured with the ones He gave us to love.

It was a special treat to get a box of Cracker Jacks when I was a kid. To this day, that box of caramel-coated popcorn and peanuts maintains the same design on the outside… with the same reminder… “prize inside”. We couldn’t wait to get into that box and discover what was inside! No matter how many times we turned the box over or how hard we shook its’ contents… we could not tell what prize was inside until we opened the box and started eating our way through it!

I read this verse recently and thought of how uniquely God created you and me. He packed different personality traits and skill sets in each of us. God chose a special spiritual gift inside us, too! Check this out! 1 Peter 4:10 (NLT) says, “God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another.”

You may think that He skipped you. You can’t imagine what kind of spiritual gift you have inside. Here’s the thing: discovering your spiritual gift is part of uncovering your purpose on the earth! God has a plan for each of us to fulfill and He knew exactly what you and I would need to accomplish His purpose. If you don’t already know what it is, pray for God to reveal it to you! And then ask Him to direct you in using your gift to serve others. We can trust that He will!

When my husband, Ken, and I first married we were traveling with a singing ministry and we stayed in a different place almost every night. We called a big old coach bus our home, but as we traveled, we started dreaming of what our dream home would look like. I made notes and collected pictures and one day I came across a magazine that had home designs drawn out…and there it was! Exactly what we wanted! I tore out that page, folded it up, and carried it around in my planner for years! It was so worn from all the times I would take it out and study it again and dream of the day that we would build it and move in.

When we were finally able to buy land, we met with the architect. I pulled out that beautiful design that I had spent years building in my mind and gently handed it to the designer. He spent some time reviewing it and came back with a conversation I had never expected to have. All of the special nuances, cut-outs and special angles that gave our dream home such unique beauty made the cost of our home way out of our budget. He came to us with an alternate design. A simplified layout that could accommodate some of the things we most loved about our original plan. Those were hard choices to make. I had lived in that beloved dream home, in my mind, for so many years! In the end, we loved that home. We raised our babies there and had as many years in it as we had dreaming about it.

Here’s the thing: our real forever home is not here! And however we are dreaming it will be some day — we will not ever have to choose to downsize or trim space or cut corners. It will be beyond our biggest dreams or wildest imaginations! I know it because Jesus is the One preparing it for us! In John 14: 1-3 (CEV), “Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Don’t be worried! Have faith in God and have faith in Me. There are many rooms in My Father’s house. I wouldn’t tell you this, unless it was true. I am going there to prepare a place for each of you. After I have done this, I will come back and take you with Me. Then we will be together.'” I can’t imagine what it will be like. I know this – it won’t even matter – because Jesus IS home!

Something shifts the moment we invite a new person into our home. Suddenly, it’s as if we look around and see our space through different eyes. We look around us to see the view that others will see. The clutter and the dirt we’ve ignored. The broken handle or torn curtain that we work around every day suddenly has a voice that screams, ‘fix me!’ Toys and games are still out and about, and our shoes are piled up in a gnarly mess by the door!

Perhaps we don’t invite people over because we don’t have the time or energy to create that perfect living space we always dreamed of living in. We want to keep up the illusion that we have tried to create. But, what if we invited them into our mess? What if we are willing to admit that we are juggling a lot and can’t always keep up with the Joneses?

Do we ever treat God like that? Doing all that we can do without asking Him to be part it? Considering our hearts to be too messy, too broken to open the door for Him to come in and sit with us in our mess? Here is the beautiful thing about our Heavenly Father. While He is perfect, He knows that we are not. Nothing delights God more than when we throw open the door and windows of our heart and soul and invite Him to come in just as we are! Revelation 3:20 (NLT) tells us, “Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear My voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.” You know what I’ve discovered? The more time the Lord and I spend together the less important cleaning up the mess becomes to me. In fact, we can’t clean ourselves up enough to be worthy of the presence of God. JESUS makes us clean by His blood, His sacrifice on the cross. He’s waiting for us to invite Him into today’s mess. Let’s open the door!

When was the last time you declared something? When we get married, we make an announcement that we are committing to our beloved. As our children grow up and participate in competitions and sports we cheer them on and proudly declare, ‘THAT’S MY boy!’ or ‘SHE’S mine!’. Our statement is bold and full of deep conviction and belief. We declare it!

Imagine how God must have felt the day He watched His Son go down beneath the water’s surface to be baptized by John the Baptist. Matthew 3:16-17 (NLT) tells us, “After His baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is My dearly loved Son, who brings Me great joy.'” Now THAT is a declaration!

In the Old Testament, in Jeremiah 32:17 (NLT) the prophet Jeremiah prayed and began his prayer with a declaration. “O Sovereign Lord! You made the heavens and the earth by Your strong hand and powerful arm. Nothing is too hard for You!” What would our prayers be like today if we started our conversation with that kind of conviction and holy boldness?! Sometimes we need to pray out loud to remind our own heart and mind and soul just who God is and what He’s done. Today, as you pray, declare this: O Mighty God! You created ALL of this, and I know… I declare!… NOTHING is too hard for You, Lord! Not a single thing!

Not long ago, a friend asked me to listen to a three-day Bible plan on the same three days that she was listening. The topic of the plan was written specifically for those who are writers. Since I love to write, I was looking forward to what the author of the devotional had to say.

On Day One, as I began listening to the devotional, it only took me about fifteen seconds to realize that the audio was AI-generated. I was so disappointed that I had trouble listening with intention. I did listen to all three days of the plan to honor the promise I’d made to my friend. I loved the Scripture content that was used in the series, but the audio left me uninspired. Why? Listening to the computer-generated voice made me long for the heart and soul of a real person connected to a real God.

In a world that is becoming more and more artificial, the authentic is becoming more and more attractive. We are drawn to someone who has lived and loved and cried and struggled and dreamed and celebrated! We find comfort and inspiration from someone who has gone through similar situations as we have. While computers and artificial intelligence can work for us and help us achieve some things, the idea that they can offer companionship and connection falls short.

Remember James 4:8 (CEV) that tells us, “Come near to God, and He will come near to you.” There is nothing that comes close to being in the presence of our God. For some things, God has allowed us tools to assist us in the living, but nothing will ever be able to delight our heart and soul like communion with our God and our connection with the ones He made in His image.

Some mornings when my alarm goes off, I am hardly coherent enough to find the button to turn off the sound; and yet, my mind has the trail of a song in my head that I can’t stop thinking about. For as long as I can remember I have believed that somehow that song had been stuck in my head from the day before and, when my mind has had some rest overnight, it finds its way back to the front of my brain to reconsider and relish.

Maybe that is exactly what happens; but, let me share a recent journal entry I wrote with a different perspective. “I’m pondering this thought I had this morning. Zephaniah 3:17 (NIV) says, ‘The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in His love He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.‘ What if the song I wake up with in my head is the residue of His song singing over me?!! What a sweet thought to consider! Some mornings it’s a worship song and sometimes it’s the familiar line of a song that we’ve been playing for a while on the radio. Either way, it’s almost like it’s hanging in the air when I first awaken. And it always brings me joy. Plus, it starts me off on the right path for the day as I am singing it back to God.”

Have you ever found yourself singing a song in the early morning hours right after you awaken? Maybe it’s the lyric you really needed to hear… and, maybe it’s the sweet residue of God’s melody He was gently singing over you while you were asleep.