Strength for All Seasons: A Prayer Devotional

Strength for All Seasons: A Prayer Devotional (ebook edition)

© 2019 Michele Howe

Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC

P. O. Box 3473

Peabody, Massachusetts 01961-3473

www.hendrickson.com

ebook ISBN 978-1-68307-278-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations contained herein are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Due to technical issues, this eBook may not contain all of the images or diagrams in the original print edition of the work. In addition, adapting the print edition to the eBook format may require some other layout and feature changes to be made.

First eBook edition — May 2019

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Day 1. Our No-Regrets God

Day 2. God, Our Blessed Controller

Day 3. Walk on by Faith

Day 4. Time Spent with God Is My Daily Provision

Day 5. Prayer and Praise: Conversing with the Divine

Day 6. Live Strong to Serve Strong

Day 7. My New Normal and the Gratitude Factor

Day 8. When Life Blindsides You

Day 9. How My Weaknesses Make You Strong

Day 10. I Need Your Heart, Hands, and Feet (and You Need Mine)

Day 11. The Power of Church Community

Day 12. Three Friends from Three Seasons of Life

Day 13. Getting Along with Challenging People

Day 14. Peacemaking at Its Best

Day 15. In a Fix by God’s Design

Day 16. You Can Forgive Even If You Cannot Forget

Day 17. The Comfort of Ordinary Days

Day 18. Next Steps: Starting Over One Day at a Time

Day 19. Eliminate the Negative, Embrace the Positive

Day 20. Strange Days: Finding Comfort in God Alone

Day 21. Challenging My Perspective by How I Speak

Day 22. Preparing for Action through Prayer

Day 23. The Whys and What-Ifs of Life

Day 24. Become a Great Remember-er

Day 25. Recognizing God’s Goodness in Suffering

Day 26. Live, Love, and Laugh

Day 27. Keeping in Step with the Spirit

Day 28. This Twenty-Four-Hour Day

Day 29. Rejoicing through Life’s Seasons

Day 30. Impossible Is God’s Favorite Word

Day 31. Choosing to See God at the Center of My World

Sources for Quotations

Endorsements

To the faithful women who have shown up on Wednesday mornings season after season, year after year, come rain, shine, sleet, or snow (and to be sure, we Michiganders have more than our share of rain, sleet, and snow!) to diligently study God’s word alongside me:

I thank God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Phil. 1:3–6)

God has used you, my dear friends—your words, your experiences, your trials and triumphs, your heartbreaks and joy-filled hope—to push me closer to the loving arms of Christ and to convince me even more fully that through God alone will we have victory.

— Acknowledgments —

It’s a new season for me in many ways, and like most people I find change a bit unnerving. So I am extra-grateful for the steady team at Hendrickson Publishers who continue to make my writing journey a highly pleasant one. My always increasing regard and respect go to the illustrious (in every sense of the word) Patricia Anders, editorial director at Hendrickson, who tackles my work (over and over again) and brings out the best content (clarifying what I intended to communicate), making my words shine all the brighter. Patricia, you amaze me. To Meg Rusick and Maggie Swofford, a giant-sized measure of gratitude and thanks for all you do behind the scenes to get my work into the right readers’ hands. Kudos, ladies! And to Tina Donohue for her stellar design work, which is the first thing that catches a reader’s attention when they go book shopping. I love it that I can call Hendrickson my publishing home!

To Bob Hostetler, my new agent, who now represents me (and my work) through the legendary Steve Laube Agency. I’m very happy to be included in your roster of highly esteemed authors. Thank you for all that you offer to me as an author.

Finally, my husband Jim deserves more appreciation and gratitude than I can express for supporting me, encouraging me, calming me, and helping me to see the eternal impact my work can make through the grace of God. I love you!

— Introduction —

Would anyone care to argue the fact that we all need uniquely tailored strength for each season of life? Not me! I find that as I get older (sixty is right around the corner), as I reflect on each season of life, I’ve needed specific skill sets to accomplish the tasks set before me. There were unique and varied challenges I was called upon to face at each key life juncture, and God gave me exactly what I required to handle whatever responsibilities or crises that came my way.

On the flip side, though life is always in forward motion (and there is no going back), we also have a definite need for constants—season by season. With our faith in God as the foundation for all of life, we start with that primary building place. From there, we make the daily effort to spend time studying the Bible, meditate on key verses that address whatever trial is facing us, and we pray, pray, pray. In other words, we arm ourselves for the day ahead using the tools Paul describes:

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. (Eph. 6:13–18)

As we study this passage from Ephesians, it is clear that God has designed the most effective armor for waging the battles that assail us in this life. In this book, you will read about real people’s stories (some happy, some sad) and how they grabbed onto Scripture, hanging onto its life-giving, powerful truth to give them the strength to carry on. I’ve also included a Think about It question section and Seasonal Wisdom to encourage a time of quiet introspection and thought. Finally, I encourage you to linger a while in the Praying through the Seasons Scripture readings and prayers, so you can discover firsthand how God makes his word alive and applicable to our daily life challenges through this spiritual discipline of praying.

God created us as intricately designed, whole people with multidimensional needs. My hope and prayer for you, dear fellow sojourner, is that you find renewed strength for whatever season of life you find yourself in. So, let’s dust ourselves off, put on the armor of God, and get moving!

— Day 1 —

Our No-Regrets God

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.

Psalm 91:2

Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair. But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, in essence, That opportunity is lost forever and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing. In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, let us go on into the invincible future with Him.

Oswald Chambers

Sharon sat with her legs tucked under a warm blanket as she sipped her coffee while gazing outside. Pristine winter white was everywhere after a blanket of snow had fallen through the dark nighttime hours, leaving Sharon wishing she could manage a redo or a start-over of so many mistakes from her past. Entering her early sixties, Sharon was a widow by legal definition but she was a divorced woman first. How she wished she could go back in time and push a restart button when she was young and single. Why didn’t she listen to her family and friends who warned her not to marry this particular man, especially since she had zero understanding of what a healthy marital relationship looked like? Nope, she rushed ahead in her usual hasty style, pushing aside their attempts to love her by telling her the truth.

Some eighteen years later, Sharon’s failed marriage did not surprise her or those who cared for her. From the very outset, Sharon and her now-deceased ex-husband had been at odds about everything that mattered most in life. Sharon, who never had much interest in God or spiritual things, eventually visited a neighborhood church she had previously driven by for years out of desperation during her failing marriage. On that first Sunday morning, Sharon felt a stirring in her soul that led her to make a commitment to Christ, first as her Savior and then as Lord of her life. The more deeply Sharon fell in love with God, the more volatile her marriage became until her husband filed for the divorce she had anticipated for years. The first few years of living on her own were fraught with emotional lows and days dogged by depression and regret. Ever so slowly, she began letting go of every negative and self-condemning thought by immersing herself daily (sometimes many times a day) in Scripture. The more she focused on biblical truth, the less hold her former mistakes and poor choices held sway over her moods. But that was way back when. Today, Sharon no longer allows herself to linger long in her painful past.

After spending a few too many minutes in this reflection, Sharon turned her gaze away from the blinding white snow caps. She realized that although she could not alter her past, she was in charge of how it affected her life today. Wistfully, she considered that every man and woman she knew over the age of fifty felt the same way about their past. But we can’t go back and, honestly, I couldn’t go through it all again either.

Sharon looked down at her worn Bible and smiled. She realized that it was while she was mired in all the relational pain of a broken marriage that her faith first blossomed and then flourished. She thoughtfully paged through different sections of her Bible where she had underlined specific verses and dated each one. This was where she found her strength. These were the promises that gave her hope. They protected her heart back then, and they could do it again now. These verses were where she learned the art of truth-talk that set her free from regret.

Think about It

1. Psalm 91:2 above tells us that God is our refuge and our fortress, and that we can trust in him. When you hear the words refuge and fortress, what mental images come to mind? God is telling us that we can trust him to care for us in the midst of all of life’s battles. The size of the storm doesn’t matter; God will shelter and buffer us through it all.

2. For most individuals, regret for past mistakes can paralyze them from moving forward. Sharon had faced her failings and made peace with them. But every now and again, she had to give herself a good talking to and remind herself that yesterday is the history she could learn from to make better choices tomorrow. Do you have a certain sensitive memory of a past failing where you need to give yourself a truth-talk?

Seasonal Wisdom

No matter what season of life you may find yourself in, God’s eternal promises are for you today—and tomorrow. Don’t let the regret from yesterday’s mistakes paralyze you from entering into all the joy and fullness God desires for you today. Learn the art of truth-talk by reminding yourself of it when you start thinking and speaking unbiblically. Refute these harmful thoughts and words by speaking God’s truth out loud.

Praying through the Seasons

Spiritual Strength

God is our refuge and strength. (Ps. 46:1)

Lord, help me to lean hard into your promised grace and strength when I need it most. Father, I am often so aware of how my past mistakes have caused pain for myself and others. Even with forgiveness, I still feel some regrets. You want me to place all my hope and trust in you and be confident that you will be my refuge and strength for every future battle I