Sandra Byrd - The One Year Experiencing Gods Love Devotional

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The One YearExperiencing Gods Love Devotional

Copyright 2017 by Sandra Byrd. All rights reserved.

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For my husband, Michael Byrd, MDiv. Thank you for halving my grief and doubling my joy for better than thirty years.

For we are co-workers in Gods service.

1 C ORINTHIANS 3:9

Introduction

Happy New Year!

January opens with breathtaking freshness, and opportunities beckon us forward. I cant waitcan you? Thank you, dear reader and fellow believer, for joining me for twelve months of deepening our understanding of what it means to experience the love of God.

When I reflect on the people Im the closest to and the most intimate with, in whom I place the most trust, its those people I spend a lot of time with. These are the people who are present in our lives for each up and down, the people we dont have to catch up with, because they are near-constant presences, the ones were knit together with. I know them, and I sense when they are feeling blue or want to share some victory. They know me and understand my frailties and come alongside with a card, a hug, or an encouraging word.

No matter how close we are with other people though, they cant always be with us. A spouse may work or have other interests, and eventually he or she will pass away. Our closest friends have other interests and friends too. Our children grow up and move on to lives of their own. Small groups and Bible studies switch up over the seasons; we may change churches several times during our lives.

Only one person never changes and is always with us: our Lord. With God, we can be more intimate than with any other because he is omnipresentalways with us. So do not fear, for I am with you, he pledges in Isaiah 41:10. The L ORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you, Deuteronomy 31:6 promises. I have long known that God loves me and loves you. But I long to experience it each and every day.

To experience something is to live it, to encounter it, to understand it, to explore it with our hearts, minds, and souls as well as with the five physical senses and our God-given spiritual ones. It means to join him in doing his work and to be the recipient of it too. In every action we do with and for God, every good day and bad day when we walk hand in hand with God, we experience him.

Through these daily devotions (six days each week plus the opportunity to put new insights into practice in a hands-on way on the seventh), I pray that this year you will experience the love of God in powerful and deeply personal ways. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God (Ephesians 3:19, NLT ).

Ready? Lets go!

Sandra

The Payoff for Practice

My New Years resolution: coax music out of the mahogany piano which sits, pretty but mute, in our living room. In fact, the only time the strings sound is in a reverberating response to my husbands infamously loud sneezes.

Beethoven would not approve.

As a girl, I never liked practicing, and that hasnt changed. Tackling a new piece, note by note, over and over, seems tiring and somewhat repetitiveunfulfilling, as it is often done alone. But that measure-by-measure practice is foundational to all the seamless, rewarding music that follows. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says, Practice isnt the thing you do once youre good. Its the thing you do that makes you good.

So often we want the reward, the pleasure, before putting in the time with drills. Practice, though, builds muscle memory, and muscle memory will kick in almost without thought when needed. For example, when stage fright threatens to wreck a piano performance, the oft-practiced piece will obey the rhythmic, expected motion of the hands till the fear settles down. The hands will automatically do what they have been trained to do even if the brain isnt consciously directing them.

January 1 is a good time to settle what spiritual practices youd like to reestablish too. Trusting God for small things will trigger an automatic faith response when the larger challenge arrives. When a difficult circumstance arrives unannounced, we often dont have the presence of mind to tell us what to do to lean on God in that moment. If weve practiced the disciplines of prayer, dependence, and courage, they will kick in without conscious thought when we most need them to.