enLIVEn Devotionals

Abiding in Jesus - Overflowing His Spirit

Happy in Any State

For most of my life, my family moved. A lot. I’ve lost count of how many times but I can still recite most of the addresses and a few of the phone numbers. The summer I turned sixteen, my family made a major move. We lived in a rural area of central Pennsylvania. My father wanted to finish Bible college to get his degree to pastor. After months of prayer, God led him to a Bible college in northeast Texas. Yes, you read that correctly. We moved from Pennsylvania to Texas. If there can be more polar opposites than those two places and still be in the United States, I haven’t seen them yet. ... Read the Post

Hiccup Distractions

I was driving in the car with my kids, and my oldest son who is six said that he had the hiccups. He was pretty upset over them and begged me for a remedy. Since I was driving and there’s not much you can do for hiccups, I started telling him to do random things. “Hold your breath, wave your arms and then yell as loud as you can,” I said. He did this and nothing happened. “Look out the window and cough twenty times then stomp your feet for one minute.” Again the hiccups came back. “Try to make yourself sneeze,” I finally added, “hoping that would distract him long enough to quiet his ... Read the Post

Weeds

We were driving along US 301 one sunny spring morning when my son, Cole, commented, “Those are really tall, pretty flowers.” Construction crews had just paved a large sidewalk next to the road and no one had mowed the tall grass alongside it yet. Recent heavy rain and the constant Florida sunshine lent a beautiful, healthy flourish to all the vegetation. I glanced toward the flowers and frowned in surprise. Instead of flowers, I saw wave after wave of tall, spindly weeds growing along the road, reaching over the new sidewalk. I commented back to him, “Those are actually weeds.” He was ... Read the Post

On The Path

We went on a family vacation to Colorado and we carved out a morning to go snowmobiling. During our play time, we were allowed to ride our snowmobiles as fast as we wanted. Before we took off, our guide had us follow him along 2 paths that did a figure 8 of where we could go. He also said to be careful and not to go left or right of the path because you could get lost amongst the trees. He made the comment that there have been others who have gone off the path and have gotten lost and did not know how to get out. I thought he was just trying to scare us. I was so excited during our play ... Read the Post

God's Navigational System

I have a love/hate relationship with navigational systems. Don’t look surprised. You know what I’m talking about. For years I traveled with nothing more than an atlas and my sense of direction. Several years ago, my sister bought me a navigational system for my annual summer journey. Not trusting it, I kept my handy atlas on the passenger’s seat. After several hours of hearing that voice tell me what to do, I finally found the mute button. But I have to admit, it was a tremendous help when I was within an hour of my destination and hit a detour. No matter how many times I twisted and ... Read the Post