Devotionals from Dad

Love to hear from and know who is listening I am confident that if you are a devoted and faithful Christian you have experienced an unanswered prayer. In the fall of 2020 my father in law, Garland Hendren, was going to the doctor for some health issues, at the time seemed they seemed insignificant. A mass was found on his pancreas and surgery was scheduled to remove it. We learned he had pancreati...

Love to hear from and know who is listening I can always tell when I have said or did something that made my wife Joyce unhappy with me. As soon as the words leave my mouth, the expression on her face tells me what she is thinking, without her saying a word! Joyce speaks as much with her facial expressions as she does with her words. I have always jokingly told her, I was going to make a calendar...

Love to hear from and know who is listening If you know me very well at all you know that I have a mental illness. I have no official diagnoses and I don't seek medical attention, I just manage my own symptoms. I am sure if I went to a doctor I would be diagnosed with Obsessive Control Disorder or OCD. I count everything. I alphabetize the spices in my spice rack. The volume control on all my...

Love to hear from and know who is listening Upon occasion I have been to a large office facility and just inside the door is a map of the building with locations for all the office and names of the each person, in each office. Also on the map is a big star with the words “You Are Here.” I know, at least for me, I can study that map intently, and even though the star is indicating to me where I am,...

Love to hear from and know who is listening I got married when I was 18 years old and my bride was only 16. I had this dream that if I loved my wife, like my father loved my mother, my marriage could survive anything. I truly thought love conquered all, boy was I ever wrong! My marriage lasted 8 years. During that time I had 3 daughters. After my divorce I spent 4 years as a single parent. This ti...

Love to hear from and know who is listening I have to admit at times I can have a very sharp tongue. Sometimes the sarcasm just flows out of my mouth so quickly and easily, it is amazing! Stupid people really get my sarcasm flowing. Some of my favorites quips of sarcasm are, “I would agree with you, but then we would both be wrong,” “If I were any better there would need to be two of me,” and one...

Love to hear from and know who is listening I am a type A personality. I love to make plans of all I am going to accomplish for the day. Every week almost without exception, I write a todo list for the weekend. My inner control freak gets a bit of a sense of accomplishment, when everything on my todo list completed. On the other hand it gives me a great deal of anxiety when my list doesn't ge...

Love to hear from and know who is listening Many of us have pet names for our spouse. Common pet names include: babe or baby, hun, sweetheart or sweetie, cutie pie, pookie and honey bun. For years I have called my wife, my beautiful bride or my queen and I am her humble servant. All joking aside I consider myself a blessed man to have a devoted, loving and Godly wife. What exactly does it mean to...

Love to hear from and know who is listening My younger listeners you won't remember the TV show Hee-Haw. It aired from 1969 to 1993. Gloom, despair and agony on me was a reoccurring skit on the show. Four moonshiners, typically Grandpa Jones, Gordie Tapp, Roy Clark, and Archie Campbell, would sing about their troubles with women, and the song went like this: Gloom, despair, and agony on me. D...

Love to hear from and know who is listening Every month my credit card company send me a statement that shows what I have purchased and what I owe. With this statement comes a report of my credibility and my credit score. My credit score is calculated by and includes all the actions and details of the things I did financially during that past 30 days. My financial choices may have either had a pos...

Love to hear from and know who is listening I have blue jeans that I wear that I have owned for many years. They are the most comfortable clothing I have, but they no longer resemble what they did they day I bought them. The knees are worn through. They have been patched, where I have snagged them. They are no longer the bright blue they were when I bought them. Over the years they have been trans...

Love to hear from and know who is listening I have grown up in church and I have heard many people pray, in many different ways. I can tell you that I pray differently when I am asked to do so in a public setting, than I do in private. When I am in a public with my co-workers some of which I know have faith in God and some I am pretty confident don't, and I am asked to bless a meal, I pray di...

Love to hear from and know who is listening As winter comes to an end and spring begins I find myself looking forward to planting my garden. I will watch the forecast and think I sure hope we have past the last frost of the year. Once the garden is growing and the spring showers and storms begin I watch the weather and say I sure hope that there isn't any hail in that thunderstorm forecast fo...

Love to hear from and know who is listening I frequently say that we live in a microwave society. We all want our wishes and desires to be answered just like we warm up the left overs in the microwave, 30 seconds and ding, our desires are answered. I suppose we could also call today the now generation. When pain comes we want relief now! When wrong occurs we want justice now! When disease and sick...

Love to hear from and know who is listening I have been blessed beyond measure to have had a Christian family. Not only have both my parents placed there faith in God, I had Christian grandparents on both my mother and father's side of the family. Additionally all of my many Aunts and Uncles were Christians that professed faith in God and that lived the Christian lifestyle as well. One of the...

Love to hear from and know who is listening According to Merriam-Webster dictionary success is defined as getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame. According to a Gallup News poll Americans with a lower household income tend to report a lower rate of success than those with a higher household income. It could be said that money is the root of a majority of the problems in our homes and famili...

Love to hear from and know who is listening Jesus was about to make his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. He and the 12 disciples were were at Bethphage on the Mount of Olives. Jesus sent two disciples with these instructions, Go over to the village across from you. You’ll find a donkey tethered there, her colt with her. Untie her and bring them to me. If anyone asks what you’re doing, say, The Mas...

Love to hear from and know who is listening A solid house foundation provides essential structural support by evenly distributing the weight of the home, which includes dead loads, such as the walls and roof and live loads, the occupants and furniture, to the soil beneath. It prevents uneven settling, sinking, or collapse, while acting as a barrier against moisture, pests, and natural disasters li...

Love to hear from and know who is listening When I was young I spent many a Saturday morning in front of the television set watching cartoons. Some of my favorites were the Road Runner and the Coyote, Speedy Gonzales, Marvin the Martian, The Tasmanian Devil, Elmer Fud, Yosemite Sam, Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig. The Looney Tunes cartoons got their start in 1937. The Iconic cartoons had a signature end...

Love to hear from and know who is listening Many last will and testaments during the 19th century began with this quote, “Knowing the uncertainties of life and the certainty of death….” The certainty of death has been a human constant since the fall of Adam and Eve into sin. Yet in the twenty-first century, death often seems a taboo subject. Even the word “death” has become infrequent in our speec...

Love to hear from and know who is listening The “I love Lucy” show aired from 1951 to 1957. Lucy and Ricky Ricardo slept in separate beds on the show to comply with 1950's television censorship codes, which considered it indecent to show a married couple sharing a bed. While they occasionally appeared in twin beds pushed together, network standards forced them apart to adhere to conservative...

Love to hear from and know who is listening I must begin by saying that this devotional is written to myself as much or more than it is to those who may hear it. I have always thought that if I have a question, a quandary, an uncertainty, or a difficult dilemma that I am struggling with, I bet someone else is facing a similar problem. Here is my hearts cry, my difficult question, does the devil fo...

Love to hear from and know who is listening One of my greatest struggles is working with God rather than for God. God cares deeply about our work, our impact in this life, not because he needs us to serve him or work for him, but because he wants to work with Him. He wants to give us a picture of His goodness and love at work in the lives of others, and He wants to deepen our relationship with Him...

Love to hear from and know who is listening When I was a child my Grandpa Miller used a lot of idioms, which is to say he used a lot of figurative language, sometimes vivid and descriptive phrases, to get his point across. A couple of his commonly used phrases were, “Well isn't that just crooked as a dog's hind leg,” and another was; “Now that's just as slick as snot on a Teflon doo...

Love to hear from and know who is listening When I was younger I was working in the kitchen and cut the first finger on my left hand all the way to the bone. I was living in a very rural community and I went to the doctor, who was bit older and near sighted. He stitched me up and I survived but the tendon in that finger was damaged so that I can no longer straighten the tip of my finger. Genesis 3...