Devotional Song: ... GO TO THIS LINK ... Please take the time to take in song and lyrics from Ryan Stevenson singing In The Eye of the Storm … powerfully singing of how our God is in control, … ALWAYS with us, … no matter what storm we’re facing.
Migrant Mother Photo
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Highlight Verse[s]: Psalm 107:6 [ESV] ... Then they [God’s people] cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress.
… When we, as God’s children, call out to our God in distress, He hears.
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Highlight Passage [context]: Psalm 107:4-9 [ESV] ... USE THIS LINK ...
… When God’s redeemed cry out, God hears and saves.
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Reference Passage : … Psalm 116:1-2 [ESV] … 1 I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. 2 Because He inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on Him as long as I live.
… God will hear our pleas and distress any time we call out to Him.
Reference Passage : … Lamentations 2:11-12 [ESV] … USE THIS LINK …
… When Jeremiah sees God’s people starving and in dyer distress, he cries out in lament to God, … just as we should in our times of trial.
Reference Passage : … John 16:33 [ESV] … 33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
… Yes, we will always have times of trial and distress in this world; but Jesus promises that HE has overcome the world.
Reference Passage : … 1 Peter 5:6-7 [ESV] … 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
… Peter exhorts persecuted Christians to humble themselves and cry out to God for help in their (our) time of despair.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Linda Washington, uses a journalist’s photo to illustrate the despair we sometimes feel when we need to take our cares to God, … Who always hears us. … The ODB author wrote: During the Great Depression in the United States, photographer Dorothea Lange snapped a photo of Florence Owens Thompson and her children. This well-known photograph, Migrant Mother, [see photo] is the picture of a mother’s despair in the aftermath of the failed pea harvest. Lange took it in Nipomo, California, while working for the Farm Security Administration, hoping to make them aware of the needs of the desperate seasonal farm laborers.
Today’s ODB entry, written and published months ago, could not be more pertinent to the times we’re living thru right now with the scourge of a Coronavirus pandemic growing. And the point of the ODB entry, which used Old Testament Scriptures to illustrate horrible times for God’s people when their Prophets, like Jeremiah, cried out in lament, illustrate exactly what we should be doing these days.
Jeremiah, in the Old Testament, cried out, as did many of the Psalmists [see above], when God’s people were down an out, … crying out to a God they knew would hear them. Because, as Jesus tells His NT disciples (see John 16:33), … and us today, … HE has overcome the ills of the world; and as Peter exhorted fellow Christians [see 1Peter 5] who were being persecuted, we can - and MUST - cry out to a God Who ALWAYS hears and ALWAYS cares.
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My THANKFULNESS: ... Oh Abba Father, ... thank You, Lord, … for hearing our cries for help in these times of trouble.
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My Prayer Today: Oh Abba Father, ... King Jesus, ... I pray, Lord, that all reading here will join me to cry out with our lament in this time of pandemic. Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled “Our Daily Bread,” distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.</ span>
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