Daily Bible Study for Thursday
October 13, 2016
By: Hanny Lynn Stearns
Fish N
Loaves Ministries, Inc.
“Multiplying
God’s Word Around The Globe”
Chapter Reading
for Today: Please read in
your Bible before proceeding. Note that most translations are considered
paraphrases. The Young’s Literal Translation provides a more accurate
translation since he is the one who authored a concordance. Others are helpful
for seeing a different perspective, but we cannot always depend on their
wording. I hope this is helpful to you. If you are studying in another version,
that is fine. I am studying from the KJV, but for the purpose of this study, I
will keep it with the New King James Version.
One final note: I will put the scripture in italics to differentiate from my
own writing. I am adding red to the letters when
it is Jesus talking – just like the Bible. Thank you.
Bible
Gateway Verse of the Day
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,
says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not
of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Psalm 77
He Makes a Way Out of No Way!
Glory to God! This is going to be an amazing testimony of the
power and wonderful things of our great and awesome God! Are you in a situation
where you feel like there is no way out? Are the floods of troubles creeping up
higher and higher so that you can’t possibly see the way of escape? If so, this
message is for you my friend! Yes, the Lord God, the Father of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob has made a way for you. Yes, in the deepest waters, He makes a path
when we can’t even see His footsteps – hallelujah! Let’s pray…
Heavenly Father:
Thank You for who You are Lord! You are great and greatly to
be praised in the congregation of Your people. We can always find You in the
sanctuary where Your glory dwells – but we don’t have to go to a building to
find You! You are everywhere present and You stand ready to bring Your people
up out of darkness when they are stuck in the miry clay at the bottom of the
sea of troubles. Bring glory to Yourself in the words that go into this
message. Bring the exact people from across this globe who need to hear this.
Father, I ask You for the anointing to manifest on me as my hands become Your
pen – the pen of a ready writer that I may declare Your praises. Give me the utterance
to speak boldly and precisely as I ought. Cause this to go out unhindered and
unchecked by any outside force or my flesh. Change our hearts from that of
worry, doubt, fear and confusion to hearts of trust in You. Thank You for
always watching over Your word to perform it in our lives when we do what it
says. Change our thinking by renewing of our minds by the washing we get today
in the water of Your word. Thank You in advance for helping us today Lord and
making a way where there seems to be no way in the mighty name of Jesus name!
Amen.
Friends, don’t you stand continually amazed at the wonderful
things that our God is and does? I know I do. Today as I read this Psalm it was
as if I saw it for the first time! Also, if I did not know otherwise, I would
have thought that this was something I would have written myself back in 2004
while sitting alone in a messy, dirty bedroom in a house not my own – deeply
troubled and depressed. I was even more stunned when I did the usual thing I do
each day by pulling a memory verse card out of a box I keep them in. Over the
years I have written verses of scripture to memorize. Each day I pull one out
at random – but nothing is random with the Lord. Yesterday I pulled this verse
out of the box…
Psalm 71:20-21
You, who have shown me
great and severe troubles, shall revive me again, and bring me up again from
the depths of the earth. You shall increase my greatness, and comfort me on
every side.
These verses were very appropriate to what the Lord was
showing me yesterday and I shared that in my blog. So today I sat down to start
once again into the wonderful mysteries that were yet to be revealed by Holy
Spirit as I prepared to study. I had these same verses written on another
memory card dated at a different time. I pulled the same verses on a different
card then I did yesterday! Friends, this kind of stuff happens to me every day
here and I am always in awe of how God does that with these two hands made of
flesh! Glory to His name forever!
Today, I looked at the memory card and I read the chapter out
loud. By the time I finished I thought, “This sounds just like me!” It sounds
like something I would have written back in 2004 when I was so devastated and
in deep trouble. I had walked away from my husband into the arms of a stranger,
and that stranger was the devil himself in disguise as a person! The man was
completely over run by the devil and the enemy used him to lure me away from
where I was supposed to be at home with my husband and children - into the arms
of a very deadly stranger. I nearly died from that experience.
When I wrote a book draft about my life, I talked about these
same things going on. It was like I was living in the movie made several years
ago titled, “Ground Hog Day.” Every day that I woke up with this man, it was
like living in hell and the same thing happened over and over again every day.
It looked like there was no way out. I had made a very poor decision. My
husband, children, friends, coworkers, fellow church members and neighbors were
all stunned when I did it. No one, including myself, I assure you, ever
expected me to do something like that.
I had raised my girls in church from the time they were born.
They were placed in the Christian day school that was attached to the church
and once the first one hit kindergarten, we were there constantly until she
finished the 8th grade. I became a member of a church for the first
time in my life and I began to get very excited about Jesus. I didn’t learn a
whole lot about Him then, but I learned enough to know that He is very good. I
listened to Christian radio in the house every day and completely stopped
listening to any music if it wasn’t Christian. I was very cautious about what
the girls and I would watch on TV or in the movies and I wanted them to grow up
better than I had. My family didn’t go to church and only used God’s name to
curse. My home had a lot of bad things going on in it, and it was no place to
learn about the Lord.
Raising my girls like I did and getting excited about the
Lord back then was only the beginning. Though I didn’t realize it so much at
the time, the Lord was beginning to get me used to being in a place called
church – the house of God. I enjoyed it immensely. I wanted to be there. I
served there and got involved in the kid’s activities at school. The Lord made
a way for me to stop my insurance career and stay home to raise them. We had so
much fun and they became the joy and delight of my life. In reality I got to
see what a normal childhood would look like through them. My marriage had its
issues, but because we played together and he was willing to go to church, we
managed to stay together for nearly 24 years.
The pain of my childhood years had not left me. Then the
teenage years brought more pain and heartache. After nearly dying from using
drugs off the street all the way up to and including heroin, the Lord
miraculously stepped in and made a position available for me at Blue Cross Blue
Shield of Kansas. It was nothing short of a series of miracles – and I had no
clue what was going on. I could stand here and tell you the “blow by blow”
details and your jaws would drop open in amazement.
Truly you would see that
there is a God in heaven and that He is powerful, because there was no way I
could have gone from shooting up drugs to sitting in a professional office
environment learning computer codes so I could do the job of a subscriber
accounting auditor! It was truly an over the top miracle. But then everything
God does is over the top! Just weeks prior my brain had been so scattered from
all the drug use (I was twenty years old at the time) that I could not even
speak a clear sentence. I shook and trembled, and I was full of fear. I was
such a mess!
I was from Michigan and all this started in Kansa of all
places. I even had a trip in a hot air balloon while I was out there – LOL! I
knew I wasn’t in Michigan anymore. Ha – ha. Over time I became homesick for
Michigan even though I didn’t know what was going to be there for me. I went
home, met a man, married him – and he was the wrong one! But we made a 24 year
go of it. The Lord tried to help us to go get some counseling. We tried but it
didn’t seem to work. Inside my heart ached.
I was longing for love. It seems that’s all I ever wanted. I
didn’t get it at home so I ran all over the United States, even hitchhiking,
not knowing where I was running to, trying to find love. All the sex, drugs and
rock and roll I engaged in brought no relief. My marriage seemed like it would
get better so I hung in there. After a while I could see that marrying the man
I did was a terrible mistake. By then I felt trapped. We waited four years to
have our precious daughters. They were no mistake, although the second one came
a little faster than I had expected - but that was great!
In all those years of raising the kids, the Lord was helping
me. I was learning things I never thought I could do. I was growing and
experiencing new things as we went along. But the time bomb inside of me was
intensifying by the year. By the time I was in my forties, I was completely
addicted to food and sugar. It was out of control. As a result, my health was
failing, and my heart and soul were too. I was sad inside all the time while
trying to work hard and be a success on the outside. I had gone back to work
and had a wonderful career in insurance. The job was excellent, the pay was great
and I really enjoyed the stress and challenge that each new day would bring. I
wanted to go straight to the top.
By then the girls were teenagers, just like that! It appeared
as thought they had grown up in a month rather than over 16-17 years. Now they
were driving and becoming more and more independent. I wanted them to be
independent women who could function on their own and think for themselves. I
did not want them to be dependent on mama for everything – that would be
completely unhealthy. But their independence led further to my dependence on
food and sugar.
Eventually, my husband and I had so much time on our hands
during the weekends because the girls were busy, that I started drinking again.
I found myself just going along with the crowd again. I got drunk a couple
times so badly that I was vomiting for hours with alcohol poisoning. The spirit
of addiction was rising up in me greater than it ever had been before. All the
partying could not quiet the disturbance in my soul. I was a walking, gurgling,
heated up volcano just getting ready to erupt. The time for that eruption was
growing shorter by the day. Little did I know the danger I was in.
The devil was luring me further and further away from God.
How could he do that when I had been so excited about Jesus those past several
years? Because I had given him place by engaging in the drinking. We even began
using drugs again on occasion and it was the second time I had gone through
this since my daughters were born. The Bible says to give no place to the
devil…
Ephesians 4:27
nor give place to the devil.
The minute I started turning away from the Lord and tuning to
the partiers, even people I was going to church with, I had opened the door
wide for the enemy to come in and steal, kill and destroy my life. And he
almost got away with it – but for the grace of God! Thank You Jesus! Back to
the “ground hog day experience.” Have you ever felt like waking up every day
would bring more of the misery you had already experienced the previous day?
Did you wish that maybe you could just wake up and everything would be normal?
Have you sat in a pool of despair while thinking about what used to be not so
bad in former days? Saints, that is right where I was at. I had lost everything
except for a few personal belongings that would fit inside my little Pontiac
Grand Am. The husband was gone; the kids, the great job, the house,
snowmobiles, boat, and even my paid for 2000 Yukon that I so enjoyed driving.
They were all gone in a very short time.
I would sit alone in a room thinking about how my life had
been before I made the terrible decision to run to the arms of a stranger to
try to find the love I was not getting at my house. Little did I know what I
was stepping into. This Psalm today expresses so much of what I was feeling at
the time. I thought that God was just gone. It was as if He didn’t exist to me
anymore. I had gone from singing His praises in the church to listening to
worldly music. I had stopped going to church and stopped reading my Bible. And
the further away from the Lord I went, the darker it became.
I was walking away from the Son into total darkness. Some say
that we can experience a state of heaven on earth. I know that is true. I have
experienced it many times over. And the same way we can have that, we can
experience a taste of hell on earth too. Though it can never be as intense as
the fires of hell and the lake of fire, I believed I was living in hell on
earth. I wanted to escape. The waters had risen so high that it was as if I had
to hold my head way up to be able to even get the air I needed to remain alive.
One day, as I walked down the street in the bitter cold – no
car, no home, staying with people who were strangers for a brief stay at that,
I just blurted out a comment. I said, “We have to get back to God.” That’s all
I said. In my spirit the Lord was working to turn me around even though I
didn’t know it or understand. I had already tried to commit suicide and even
though I took enough pills to kill a horse, the Lord did not allow me to die.
So after I got out of the hospital I continued to walk drudgingly through my
trial with not much hope in sight. I could not see the way out of the
horrendous mess I had made. All I could see with my natural eyes was a wall of
insurmountable obstacles – like a great sea of troubles. “What good could ever
come out of this?” I wondered.
But God had a plan. He had a way out - hallelujah! Friends,
there was such a battle going on in the spiritual realm for my soul, I can only
partially (at best) try to imagine it. As the Lord brought me those words to say,
“We have to get back to God”, the devil began to intensify his attacks to try
to pull me further into the pit with him. By then though I was determined to go
back to church! I had no idea what to do, but I knew if I could just get back
to church, somehow things would be better. God’s way is…
Psalm 77:13
Your way, O God, is in the sanctuary; who is so great a God as our God?
I had learned a lot of religious junk in the church we had
attended for so long. That said, I loved it. The people were great and it was
at least a start. I did learn that God is good. There had to be help there. The
minute I started going, I found relief. Just the fellowship with the people was
like a pool of refreshing water in my soul that didn’t look like a flood that
would overtake me. They were kind. I was sitting there a mess. I was homeless,
jobless and broke. I looked like a
complete failure. But even in those early months as I set my heart to seek
after the things of God and whatever that would bring, the Lord was doing
mighty miracles.
He sent us angels on numerous occasions. He provided food,
money and clothing. He provided shelter. He provided people to cut my hair and
invite me into their homes. I had been scraped up off the street and shown the
love of God through His precious people. I will never forget them. If I do not
see them again on the earth, I look forward to thanking them when we get to
heaven for being Jesus’ hands and feet in a time of terrible trouble for me.
God’s strength is so big and mighty. He indeed does wonders.
When we look at verses 16 through 18, we see what the response of the waters
was when God rose up. As I looked at these verses I thought of the enemy. It’s
almost like it says, “You better watch out all you devils, because I am
stepping onto the scene now!” And God began to rise up on my behalf because I
was trying to walk away from darkness back into His marvelous light. The gates
of hell trembled and shook! Hallelujah – praise the Lord! Our God is mighty to
save! When we start to turn away from sin and come back to God, the enemy
better tuck his ugly tail between his legs and run for cover! He is no match
for the Almighty God!
When I got to verse 19 and read that the Lord’s way was in
the sea, I could think of Israel standing at the Red Sea facing a wall of water
with the Egyptians breathing down their backs. Where could they possibly go
from there without the chance of being totally annihilated? That was a wall
that only the Lord could destroy. There was no human solution. There was no
“thinking about it.” They were stuck. So was I. Did they know the way that the
Lord would take through their “sea of trouble?” Certainly not. Nor did I. But
the Lord (hallelujah!) had made a path through the great waters.
Friends, I am alive today only because of our great God. My
life has been a serious of rescue missions from the Lord our God. I asked Jesus
to be my Savior at 9 years old, but never found out anything more about Him
until I was in my twenties. And that information was limited at best. But there
were angels sent to help because I was an heir of salvation. Thank the Lord for
our angels! I would have been taken out long ago had it not been for the Lord
and the ministering spirits He sent to help me.
Step by step through the deep waters, the Lord began to show
me the way out. I had a lot of hard work to do to clean up the mess I had made.
My relationships with the girls were completely ruined. My friendships were
destroyed. My reputation was destroyed along with my credit. Everything needed
to be fixed. So where can you go when you have reached the bottom? Only up or
out. By this time, I wanted to go up. I knew the Lord was not going to let me
out of this life yet, so I had to stick around to find out why.
The final verse really hit me in a powerful way I had not
seen before. God chose two men to lead His people – like a flock. We are a lot
like sheep. We can be sweet and cuddly, but very ignorant! We need to be led or
we will stray way off the beaten path. So the Lord gave the Israelites leaders
to help and guide them. They could pray for them and give them wise, godly
counsel. It is like they were God’s supreme court; judges, lawyers, pastors and
intercessors all wrapped up into two men who loved the Lord and deeply cared
for His people.
So when I was reading this, I thought of the pastors and
teachers that the Lord presented to me on my long, slow climb up from the pit I
was in. He brought me just the right ones at the right time to help me grow and
learn about the things of God. And once I was done with a particular level of
learning, the Lord would promote me to something new and different. Then I
learned even more about Him. I won’t kid you. The growing pains were hard.
But
after I surrendered to Him fully on October 1, 2005, it was as if He put me in
a crash course to bring me up to speed. At that time, I was two months shy of
my 50th birthday. Little did I know how much I needed to learn – and
still do. We will always be learning and growing as long as we are on this
earth – at least we should be.
My “Moses & Aaron’s” were several people who I consider
to be ever precious in my heart. They helped me learn how to draw closer to
God. They taught me how to pray. They prayed for me and with me. They cried
with me, hugged me and laughed with me when I began to find laughter – real
laughter for the first time in my life. I had never known true joy in my first
50 years. But finding the joy of the Lord is and always will be the greatest
joy one could ever know. It replaces sorrow. It puts a supernatural spring in
one’s step that can’t be bought with any amount of money. I found out what it
means; the Lord tells us this in His word…
Nehemiah 8:10
Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet,
and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
The verse in Psalm 71 was my verse back when I started to
walk in the Light of Christ – and He is my Light forever. Even though I saw
great and severe troubles because of the wrong choices I made (none of that was
the Lord’s fault!) the Lord has revived me again and brought me up from the
depths (Hell in this life) of the earth. He has indeed increased my greatness
as I walked closer and closer to Him. He comforts me. He leads me in the way I
should go. I realize now, 11 years later, that I cannot of my own self do
anything…
John 5:19
Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the
Son can do nothing of
Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also
does in like manner.
As I prepare to turn 61 this coming December, I want to show
you what the Lord showed me today when I opened another little scripture book
that I write verses in…
Isaiah 61:1-7
61 “The
Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
3 To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
3 To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
4 And they shall rebuild the old ruins,
They shall raise up the former desolations,
And they shall repair the ruined cities,
The desolations of many generations.
5 Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks,
And the sons of the foreigner
Shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.
6 But you shall be named the priests of the Lord,
They shall call you the servants of our God.
You shall eat the riches of the Gentiles,
And in their glory you shall boast.
7 Instead of your shame you shall have double honor,
And instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion.
Therefore in their land they shall possess double;
Everlasting joy shall be theirs.
They shall raise up the former desolations,
And they shall repair the ruined cities,
The desolations of many generations.
5 Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks,
And the sons of the foreigner
Shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.
6 But you shall be named the priests of the Lord,
They shall call you the servants of our God.
You shall eat the riches of the Gentiles,
And in their glory you shall boast.
7 Instead of your shame you shall have double honor,
And instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion.
Therefore in their land they shall possess double;
Everlasting joy shall be theirs.
And here is another one I opened to today…
Ephesians 2:8-10
4 But God, who is
rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were
dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been
saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages
to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you
have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest
anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
And here is yet another that was a verse I opened to in
another Bible today. These the Lord has been showing me for a long time. They
were for me to grab on to and claim as my own…
Luke 1:76-79
76 “And you, child, will be called the prophet of
the Highest;
For you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways,
77 To give knowledge of salvation to His people
By the remission of their sins,
78 Through the tender mercy of our God,
With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us;
79 To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,
To guide our feet into the way of peace.”
For you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways,
77 To give knowledge of salvation to His people
By the remission of their sins,
78 Through the tender mercy of our God,
With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us;
79 To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,
To guide our feet into the way of peace.”
My dear friends, if anyone wants to know why the Lord kept me
alive through all that I went through – here is the answer. And He wants to do
the very same thing for you too – do you know that? I am here to help you. Take
another look at the last verse in today’s Psalm…
Psalm 77:19
Your way was in the sea, Your path in the great waters, and
Your footsteps were not known.
Saints, the Lord wants to guide our paths right into the path
of peace. His ways are peaceful ways. He can remove the garment of despair and
replace it with His garment of praise. He can part the deep, dark waters in any
situation you may be facing – nothing is too big for our God. When we set our
hearts and minds to pursue Him with everything we have, He will step onto the
scene and every devil in hell will tremble at His presence in our lives –
praise His name forever!
This is why I didn’t die the countless times I could
have. This is why He keeps us alive. He wants to use us, along with our past
messes – to help pull someone else up from the pit. “Why am I still here?” is
the question I asked the Lord when I woke from an 18-hour coma after a serious
drug overdose attempting to take my life because I thought I had messed things
up too badly and could see no way out.
For anyone on this planet who does not know Jesus as their
Savior, or for the person who once walked with Him but has backslidden into the
ways of this world, God will make a way for you where there surely seems to be
no way. And once He does, you will be shoutin His praises all the way to the
wedding banquet in heaven! I promise you – if you will follow Jesus and do what
He says, you can have all the joy your sweet little hearts can hold with plenty
leftover to share with others! Hallelujah!
Let’s
pray…
Heavenly Father:
Thank You for making a way
when there really seems to be no way! Lord, You are so faithful! Your
lovingkindness really is beyond our human comprehension. The question many of
us have is this: “How can we ever thank You for all You have done for us through
Your Son Jesus Christ?” Yet, You have already given us the answer to this
question. We can surrender our lives to Your leading through the darkness of
this world so others can find the way of peace too – just the way we did when
You helped us. Father, I am asking You to show me who I can share this
testimony of Your amazing grace with. Who needs to hear it Father? Who is on
the brink of suicide or some kind of disaster that can be pulled out by reading
this and giving their life to You. If You will point me to someone, I will give
it to them. Thank You for all You have done for me. And thank You Lord for the
many others You will help through this ministry. The work is truly Yours – we
are just the vessels You use. Bring glory to Yourself in me and in others in
Jesus precious, saving name! Amen.
There are three main points to
consider from today’s study…
When we are overwhelmed - we can cry
out to God – He will hear us
God is so powerful that He can make
a way where there truly seems to be no way out
The Lord wants to use you to pull
others out of the pit
Questions:
What about this study could you relate to the most?
What verses meant the most to you? Why?
How did this study change your thinking?
What will you do differently after today because of this
lesson?
Who can you share this study with?
How
has the Lord revived you and brought you up? Will you tell someone else about
it?
And God Said… You fill in the blanks.
Psalm 71:7, 20-21
I have become as a wonder to many,
But You are my strong refuge.
But You are my strong refuge.
You, who have shown me great and severe troubles,
Shall revive me again,
And bring me up again from the depths of the earth.
You shall increase my greatness,
And comfort me on every side.
Shall revive me again,
And bring me up again from the depths of the earth.
You shall increase my greatness,
And comfort me on every side.
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