Today is the commencement of a four part devotional series, which coincides with the Central Division’s Officer’s Fellowship. Annette has written some devotions around the theme of nourishment, which are based on John 15:1-17 from The Passion Translation, specifically verse 9 where it speaks of us needing to let the Father’s love nourish our hearts.
Over this past weekend Perry and I spent a couple of hours puddling around in our small garden. We planted some vegetables, mowed the small amount of lawn, and cut back a few things. As we finished up and went inside to recover, I noticed a couple of things.
First, I was really thirsty because, yes, we had spent this time outside in the relative warm of early spring without water bottles and I was parched.
Second, that my hands – once cleaned up – were quite dry and crusty from the work that I had done, and I needed some hand cream to nourish the skin.
It can be the same for each of us.
We are out there in the world getting on with what needs to be done, doing the hard work of planting seeds of faith into people, stepping into lives to assist and all things that come with our being ministers of the gospel.
Sometimes it is not until we stop and go “inside” that we realise the impact that the work has had on us and in particular on our souls. We can discover that we are thirsty for an infilling of what we have given out and we can feel parched and dry on the inside.
There are so many demands on each of us that at the end of any given day, week, month we can be left feeling like we have been completely drained of the good, nourishing stuff that should fill us. So, we start looking for some form of nourishment to replenish what the world has taken from us.
Our theme this fellowship comes from the Scripture John 15:1-17 and specifically verse 9 in The Passion Translation where it speaks of us needing to let the Father’s love nourish our hearts.
“I love each of you with the same love that the Father loves me.
You must continually let my love nourish your hearts.“
In preparation for this week’s fellowship the team at Divisional Headquarters have strongly felt the need to nourish ourselves in some way, even more so over the past few weeks, and we are believing that this is a need for other officers in the Division at this time.
So, this week as we step “inside” I encourage you to consider the scripture in verse 9 and start looking for those dry and parched places in your life that need to be ‘Nourished’. Use these few days to Nourish your soul, to Nourish your relationship with God and Nourish your friendships with others.
For those that are not at fellowship I hope and pray that you too will find the opportunity to nourish yourself and soak in the Father’s love for you.
Blessings ’til next time 🙂
The life and times of Perry... 