DONNIE DAILY GEMS FOR WEDNESDAY JANUARY 3:
WORD OF WISDOM
Everything you do matters, and everything you don't do matters just as much.
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DAILY DEVOTION
Trusting God with the Unseen Future
"I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will
guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no
understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come
near unto thee. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he that trusteth in
the LORD, mercy shall compass him about."
Psalm 32:8-10
I read a fascinating story from the final days of World War II. An American
B-29 bomber was tasked with attacking targets in Kokura, Japan. As was normal
procedure, they were assigned a secondary target in case the weather kept them
from reaching their primary objective. Sure enough they found the clouds over
Kokura too thick to find their targets, and after an hour of circling, they
diverted to their secondary objective with some frustration.
It was not until weeks later that they learned that, unknown to American
intelligence, the Japanese had transferred a huge number of American prisoners
of war to Kokura just days before that raid. The officer who received this news
said, "Thank God for that protecting cloud! If the city hadn't been hidden from
the bomber, it would have been destroyed and thousands of American boys would
have died."
Each new year we enter into territory that is shrouded and unclear to our eyes.
While we may expect certain things to happen, none of us know what the future
holds. When we cannot see the path, it is more important than ever that we
trust in God. So many times we are tempted to take matters into our hands when
God does not work as quickly as we think He should. But He never makes a
mistake, and we can trust in Him no matter what seeming delays we experience.
Often it is only as we look back over the years that we see how God has worked.
You can always trust God even when you cannot see the way ahead or what He is
doing.
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DAILY BIBLE READING
Genesis 7-9The Message (MSG)
7 Next God said to Noah, “Now board the ship, you and all your family—out of
everyone in this generation, you’re the righteous one.
2-4 “Take on board with you seven pairs of every clean animal, a male and a
female; one pair of every unclean animal, a male and a female; and seven pairs
of every kind of bird, a male and a female, to insure their survival on Earth.
In just seven days I will dump rain on Earth for forty days and forty nights.
I’ll make a clean sweep of everything that I’ve made.”
5 Noah did everything God commanded him.
6-10 Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters covered the Earth. Noah and
his wife and sons and their wives boarded the ship to escape the flood. Clean
and unclean animals, birds, and all the crawling creatures came in pairs to
Noah and to the ship, male and female, just as God had commanded Noah. In seven
days the floodwaters came.
11-12 It was the six-hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the
seventeenth day of the month that it happened: all the underground springs
erupted and all the windows of Heaven were thrown open. Rain poured for forty
days and forty nights.
13-16 That’s the day Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, accompanied by
his wife and his sons’ wives, boarded the ship. And with them every kind of
wild and domestic animal, right down to all the kinds of creatures that crawl
and all kinds of birds and anything that flies. They came to Noah and to the
ship in pairs—everything and anything that had the breath of life in it, male
and female of every creature came just as God had commanded Noah. Then God shut
the door behind him.
17-23 The flood continued forty days and the waters rose and lifted the ship
high over the Earth. The waters kept rising, the flood deepened on the Earth,
the ship floated on the surface. The flood got worse until all the highest
mountains were covered—the high-water mark reached twenty feet above the crest
of the mountains. Everything died. Anything that moved—dead. Birds, farm
animals, wild animals, the entire teeming exuberance of life—dead. And all
people—dead. Every living, breathing creature that lived on dry land died; he
wiped out the whole works—people and animals, crawling creatures and flying
birds, every last one of them, gone. Only Noah and his company on the ship
lived.
24 The floodwaters took over for 150 days.
8 1-3 Then God turned his attention to Noah and all the wild animals and farm
animals with him on the ship. God caused the wind to blow and the floodwaters
began to go down. The underground springs were shut off, the windows of Heaven
closed and the rain quit. Inch by inch the water lowered. After 150 days the
worst was over.
4-6 On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ship landed on the Ararat
mountain range. The water kept going down until the tenth month. On the first
day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains came into view. After forty
days Noah opened the window that he had built into the ship.
7-9 He sent out a raven; it flew back and forth waiting for the floodwaters to
dry up. Then he sent a dove to check on the flood conditions, but it couldn’t
even find a place to perch—water still covered the Earth. Noah reached out and
caught it, brought it back into the ship.
10-11 He waited seven more days and sent out the dove again. It came back in
the evening with a freshly picked olive leaf in its beak. Noah knew that the
flood was about finished.
12 He waited another seven days and sent the dove out a third time. This time
it didn’t come back.
13-14 In the six-hundred-first year of Noah’s life, on the first day of the
first month, the flood had dried up. Noah opened the hatch of the ship and saw
dry ground. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the Earth was
completely dry.
15-17 God spoke to Noah: “Leave the ship, you and your wife and your sons and
your sons’ wives. And take all the animals with you, the whole menagerie of
birds and mammals and crawling creatures, all that brimming prodigality of
life, so they can reproduce and flourish on the Earth.”
18-19 Noah disembarked with his sons and wife and his sons’ wives. Then all the
animals, crawling creatures, birds—every creature on the face of the Earth—left
the ship family by family.
20-21 Noah built an altar to God. He selected clean animals and birds from
every species and offered them as burnt offerings on the altar. God smelled the
sweet fragrance and thought to himself, “I’ll never again curse the ground
because of people. I know they have this bent toward evil from an early age,
but I’ll never again kill off everything living as I’ve just done.
22
For as long as Earth lasts,
planting and harvest, cold and heat,
Summer and winter, day and night
will never stop.”
9 1-4 God blessed Noah and his sons: He said, “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill the
Earth! Every living creature—birds, animals, fish—will fall under your spell
and be afraid of you. You’re responsible for them. All living creatures are
yours for food; just as I gave you the plants, now I give you everything else.
Except for meat with its lifeblood still in it—don’t eat that.
5 “But your own lifeblood I will avenge; I will avenge it against both animals
and other humans.
6-7
Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans let his blood be shed,
Because God made humans in his image
reflecting God’s very nature.
You’re here to bear fruit, reproduce,
lavish life on the Earth, live bountifully!”
8-11 Then God spoke to Noah and his sons: “I’m setting up my covenant with you
including your children who will come after you, along with everything alive
around you—birds, farm animals, wild animals—that came out of the ship with
you. I’m setting up my covenant with you that never again will everything
living be destroyed by floodwaters; no, never again will a flood destroy the
Earth.”
12-16 God continued, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me
and you and everything living around you and everyone living after you. I’m
putting my rainbow in the clouds, a sign of the covenant between me and the
Earth. From now on, when I form a cloud over the Earth and the rainbow appears
in the cloud, I’ll remember my covenant between me and you and everything
living, that never again will floodwaters destroy all life. When the rainbow
appears in the cloud, I’ll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God
and everything living, every last living creature on Earth.”
17 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I’ve set up between me
and everything living on the Earth.”
18-19 The sons of Noah who came out of the ship were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Ham was the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah; from these
three the whole Earth was populated.
20-23 Noah, a farmer, was the first to plant a vineyard. He drank from its
wine, got drunk and passed out, naked in his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan,
saw that his father was naked and told his two brothers who were outside the
tent. Shem and Japheth took a cloak, held it between them from their shoulders,
walked backward and covered their father’s nakedness, keeping their faces
turned away so they did not see their father’s exposed body.
24-27 When Noah woke up with his hangover, he learned what his youngest son had
done. He said,
Cursed be Canaan! A slave of slaves,
a slave to his brothers!
Blessed be God, the God of Shem,
but Canaan shall be his slave.
God prosper Japheth,
living spaciously in the tents of Shem.
But Canaan shall be his slave.
28-29 Noah lived another 350 years following the flood. He lived a total of 950
years. And he died.
