Soul Care for Pastors  [Click to watch the video] |
 By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
What refreshment awaits you! What joy! All we have to do is to pause and appreciate Christ in our midst as we do whatever we’re doing – like right now!
Psalm 73 is a great help along these lines. This prayer of Asaph is a deep well that offers us Living Water for our thirsty souls. His heart for God is infectious. By praying his words we can grow in our devotion to the Lord. And when we submit our whole selves to God heaven opens up to us! Whole-hearted dedication to love God in all things is the key to [...]
Continue reading Drink from a Deep Well of Devotion
 By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
Answered prayer. Success. Victory. We all want to be blessed, to achieve great things, and to overcome our challenges. But when we reach for these desires we can never quite grasp them. The pursuit of happiness never makes anyone happy.
That’s why years ago my spiritual father, Ray Ortlund, encouraged me to “Be all and only for Jesus!” He wanted the best for me. And so he liked to pray Psalm 20 for me. Recently, Psalm 20 inspired me to write a “Benediction of Devotion.”
I’d like to share this short prayer of blessing with you. It’s meant so much to me [...]
Continue reading The One Benediction You Need
 By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
From time to time we all go through trials in which we lose heart and feel overwhelmed with discouragement, worry, or exhaustion. The painful times are “Dark Nights of the Soul” when our prayers seem to go unanswered and God’s comfort cannot be found.
All Christ-followers go through Dark Nights when God seems distant and prayer and other spiritual activities do not yield the experience of God’s blessings as they have in times past. But few people today have been trained in how to deal with these spiritual trials. Inspired by Psalm 77, I wrote [...]
Continue reading In the Dark Night Remember God
 By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
Are you free – really free? Are you at peace being the person God created you to be and enjoying your life with him?
Many people we talk to are wearing a heavy yoke. They’re working all the time. Or they’re worried about money or their health or their kids. Or they’re tired of trying to please an impossible to please spouse. Or they’re depending on alcohol to relax.
Jesus shows us a life of freedom. No one has had more pressure than Jesus. No one has had more responsibility, expectations, temptations, stress, or pain than Jesus. And no one lived life more [...]
Continue reading Be Free! Live in Jesus’ Easy Yoke!
 By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
“All reading not intended for us by God is dangerous,” wrote Jeane-Pierre de Caussade in his classic devotional book of the 18th Century.
The French Jesuit Priest continued,” It is by doing the will of God and obeying His holy inspirations that we obtain grace, and this grace works in our hearts through our reading or other employment. Apart from God reading is empty and vain and, being deprived for us of the life-giving power of the action of God, only succeeds in emptying they heart by the very fullness it gives to the mind” (Section V, p. [...]
Continue reading Only Read if You’re Thirsty
 By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
Could a prayer change your life? This little one could ignite your heart for Christ as it has mine…
The other day on my Sabbath I sat on a rock by a stream for hours praying the Lord’s Prayer with Martin Luther. His barber asked him how he prayed and he wrote him a letter featuring his meditations and prayers inspired by Jesus’ prayer. What a blessing it was to read and pray from his classic little devotional book: A Simple Way to Pray.
I shared this prayer in our recent Soul Shepherding Board of Directors meeting and as part of a sermon [...]
Continue reading A Pocket Lighter to Ignite your Heart
 By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
What do you want Jesus to do for you? It’s the most important question of your life.
John and Andrew were introduced to Jesus by John the Baptist who said to them: “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
They approached Jesus eagerly and he asked them the question: “What do you want me to do for you?”
Think of the ways that people like you and I answer Jesus’ question…
Lord, I want… Financial help… Success in my project… Wisdom to solve my problem… Healing… Help for a loved one… A new opportunity [...]
Continue reading Come and See
 By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
The most important thing that you can do is to submit to Jesus Christ as your Lord and King. And learn to do this everyday!
But there is something in me and in you that rises up and says: “I want to be in control!”
And right there is the main source of our anxiety, anger, compulsions, depression, and a host of problems.
Learning to ask Jesus to govern you as you do what you are doing is the only way into God’s abundant life. This means giving up on trying to make your life turn out the way you want. [...]
Continue reading O Lord Jesus Reign Over Me
 By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
Where was God the Father when Jesus was being crucified? Where is God when you and I are being mistreated?
We know that Jesus cried out on the cross the prayer of David in Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus felt abandoned by the Father in the midst of carrying the awfulness of sin and being betrayed by his friends as he was being tortured to death. But did the Father reject Jesus? Does he reject you and I in our suffering? In our sin?
Read the rest of Psalm 22, which Jesus may have prayed on the cross. [...]
Continue reading Jesus and Abba at the Cross
 The Sons of Korah may have written Psalm 42 by these waterfalls that flow into the Jordan River. I can imagine this because I love praying a Psalm in its nature setting!
Two years ago in Maui I watched my son and daughter surf at Puamana Beach. As I did I listened to the waves and meditated on Psalm 42. The waves and words flowed together into my soul. I waited… I breathed them in… I breathed them out…
I realized that God, like the echoing sounds of the waves and the unfolding insights [...]
Continue reading Waves of Love
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By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
