Devotions

This is the "devotional blog" area. If you would like to contribute, please send your contributions to me via email, using the information listed in the Contact page. Thanks, and I hope you enjoy yourself here!

To see a listing of full articles, rather than the summaries, visit the "All Devotions" page.
  • Building Walls (and Doors) While I'm working to build my new business, I have been working with my sister on some of her projects as well. She has been working the last several years to build a woodworking business, and she just started doing remodel work as well. She recently had a man contact her wanting her to rebuild a door frame for him, and also to build a new wall in his house. While we were working on the estimate for the new wall, I jokingly observed that if he just made the wall with no door, we could build it for a lot less.Doors are a little bit expensive. It takes time to cut out the sheet rock, and a ...
    Posted Apr 11, 2018, 4:55 PM by Nathanael Wheeler
  • Jehovah-Jireh - The Lord Will Provide It's hard to imagine, but I've been without work now for over four months. When I was let go, we didn't have enough money in the bank for even a full month of bills. Unemployment pays less than a quarter of my previous salary, and when I was employed, we spent nearly all of our money on bills. This at least partially proves that what they say is true, people rarely live below their means. But more than that, this has well-proven that God is in control of our lives.Despite having had so little in the bank at the time of my being released from employment, and despite having so little income from unemployment, we ...
    Posted Apr 11, 2018, 4:11 PM by Nathanael Wheeler
  • Teachable Moments - I'm Still Learning Last August, I married a woman who had 3 children (8-year-old twin boys, and a 6-year-old girl) from a previous marriage. She was divorced for unrepentant and continual infidelity by her spouse. She is, as typical of most women whom I've observed, lax on discipline - extremely hesitant to spank, and barely will even put them in time out. She's become frustrated that the kids don't listen to her. Last week, we had a little family meeting, in which I informed the kids that in the future, if I heard their mother have to repeat herself because they were not doing what they were told, they would be spanked posthaste. This was after she ...
    Posted Apr 11, 2018, 4:10 PM by Nathanael Wheeler
  • Straight Talk What’s your water cooler chat like? Do you get wrapped up in the stuff that’s going on in everyone else’s lives? Do you laugh at vulgar jokes or even tell a few yourself? I know that I’ve been guilty of all of these things more than a few times in my Christian life, and it’s an area that I have to constantly and actively watch. Today’s devotion begins in 2 Timothy 2 where we find Paul talking to Timothy about living a Christlike life. “No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.” - 2 Timothy 2:4 ...
    Posted Apr 11, 2018, 4:10 PM by Nathanael Wheeler
  • Five-Lesson Friday I've dabbled in the stock market for a few years. I haven't really made anything - I'm mostly break-even. Recently I started following a fairly well-known penny stock trader to see what I could learn. One of the things which he does that I found very interesting was his "Five Lesson Friday." At the end of every week, he puts together a list of five things learned for the week. They might be things he did wrong, things he did right, or things he could have done better, but they're all lessons about stock trading.I started thinking, trading is important to this guy - it's how he makes money. So, he sets aside the ...
    Posted Apr 11, 2018, 4:09 PM by Nathanael Wheeler
  • Running... (and Quitting) Running has fascinated me since I first started around 4 years ago. Running was like the holy grail of exercise to me. I had always been one of the fat kids - never the slowest in P.E., but the close runner up. When I got out of school and wasn't forced to do physical activity, the most active I might be would be to take a leisurely hike or something... with frequent breaks and no hills. Running never even entered my mind as a potential activity.At one point, around the age of 26, I started to realize just how bad of shape I was in. I was around 100 pounds overweight, and I got out of breath just ...
    Posted Apr 11, 2018, 4:08 PM by Nathanael Wheeler
  • Be Perfect, As Your Father in Heaven... I've been giving this a good amount of thought lately. It's been on my mind for the past week. Most of us are familiar with this verse in the Bible:Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect. - Matthew 5:48 (KJV)But what does that really mean? Can we, as humans tainted by Adam's sin, actually be perfect? The second part of this, we generally accept - God is perfect. However, this first part provides us with some problems to overcome.In the verses around this, Jesus is talking about being different than the world. He makes parallels between doing the good things that the world does in reciprocation. He tells ...
    Posted Apr 11, 2018, 4:07 PM by Nathanael Wheeler
  • First Devotion I'm still getting the site set up, and there's a lot to do, but one of the items on the list is to actually create a "first devotion." This morning as I was trying to think of a good Scripture to put on the front of the site, Psalm 1:1-2 came to mind:"How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night."We live in a world where we are inundated with media, advertisements, and advice ...
    Posted Apr 11, 2018, 4:08 PM by Nathanael Wheeler
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