');document.write('Daily Devotional
');document.write('Asking for Help
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It\'s better to give than receive but the best givers are good receivers. Otherwise giving is one-sided and leads to resentment. We act as though others need us more than we need them and miss what they have to give.

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');document.write('Address: 5715 Broken Spirit
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Where does God dwell? Where is God to be found? If you\'re looking for God, where should you look?

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');document.write('The Best Choice You Never Heard Of
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I often tell people that our congregation is \"the best choice you never heard of.\" In olden days and ways, I would have said we are marching to Zion. Our congregation\'and many others\'remind of nothing so much as the Isner/Mahut tennis match at Wimbledon. It was the longest game of tennis ever played\'and in it, everybody wins. You can\'t possibly say that someone who stayed in that long a match LOST. When you last that long, you don\'t lose.

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');document.write('What Doesn\'t Change?
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If faith in Jesus is thought to have become weaker and narrower than it used to be, our vision is limited to the northern and western parts of the globe. In the south and east, Jesus is a rising star.

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');document.write('Love Endures
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In his famous hymn to love, the Apostle Paul says that love \'endures all things.\' Endurance is not one of the sexier spiritual virtues. It sounds like a lot of work, and not always pleasant work at that.

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');document.write('An Appeal to the Heart
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Many of us have been taught to believe that the word of God is utterly immutable and eternally unchangeable. According to Scripture, \'The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of God stands forever.\' Consequently, when God speaks, we are only to submit and obey. Any other response to God\'s word would be sinful and sacrilegious. So we have been taught.

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');document.write('Urgency
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In seminary we were taught to pretty much disregard words like the ones that begin this passage, \"The end of all things is near.\" \"Early Christians,\" we were told, \"expected the Second Coming of Christ and the end of history to happen very soon. But we know that didn\'t happen.\"

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');document.write('Get the Download
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When your computer begins to run a bit slow and you get a pop-up window notifying you of an upgrade and asking if you want to download it now, do you think to yourself, \'I don\'t have time today. I\'ll do it later\'\' You put it off . . . and off . . . and off. Eventually your application grinds to a near halt. You now have no choice but to download the upgrade.

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');document.write('Improvising
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Improvisation is when you don\'t have enough information to do anything but just take the next step. Actors say the secret to improvisation is to go only as far as you have to and not a step or second further. No justifications, explanations, exclamations. No \'ahems\' or throat-clearings. Just one step forward.

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');document.write('Burned in the Fire
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In today\'s passage, Jeremiah expresses God\'s displeasure at the practice of human sacrifice, which at least some in his day were apparently indulging in. He makes it clear that God is categorically against the practice, and further, that any \'god\' that asks for it is in fact no god at all.

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