By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
When someone criticizes you are you defensive? Or do you get angry? Many people I talk to have a hard time responding to criticism because they take it inside and feel bad or they protect themselves by shutting down emotionally, which leaves them isolated and depressed.
I can relate. For much of my life I felt inadequate whenever someone criticized me. So I put pressure on myself to succeed and to try to get people to think well of me. That created a lot of anxiety!
I have learned another way. It’s expressed in a favorite little prayer of mine [...]
Continue reading Use Your Christ Shield
By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
Life is precious and brief. How can we “redeem the time” before our days on earth slip away? (Ephesians 5:16).
The ancient devotional masters were helped to live each day for Christ by meditating on their dead body being put into a tomb. Probably you haven’t done that before! Most of us today try not to think about our death!
But actually this is a Biblical practice. Long before the monks and spiritual writers of the past the Psalmist was praying about the brevity of life in order to live each day for God. This has been very helpful for me to [...]
Continue reading Like a Flower in the Father’s Field
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 © 2009, 2010
What do you do when you’ve been mistreated and God doesn’t seem to answer your prayers? How do you pray when God seems distant and unconcerned about your pain? We all go through these trials. They don’t mean that God is angry with us or that we’re not good Christians. It may be a dark night of the soul.
In dark night trials we tend to feel alone, but we’re not! The Psalmist understands and in Psalm 44 he shows us how to pray in the dark. Many of our Bible heroes went through these times, most notably Jesus in the [...]
Continue reading The Other Side of Deep Darkness
By Bill Gaultiere © 2007, 2010
I awoke early one morning. It was quiet after a night’s rain. I recited Psalm 23 again and again and talked to Jesus, the Good Shepherd – my Soul Shepherd. What joy to appreciate Psalm 23 anew!
For three thousand years David’s prayer has been offered by people of various faiths and cultures. Jesus himself prayed Psalm 23 – more than that he fulfilled it. And he helped me to paraphrase it into words that restored my soul.
I’m sure that you also need for the Lord to restore your soul each day – there’s no better way than by [...]
Continue reading The Lord Jesus is my Soul Shepherd
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
Psalm 135:4 says: “The LORD has chosen Jacob to be his own, Israel to be his treasured possession.”
Let’s apply this to you and I today. Let’s pause to ponder, paraphrase, and pray this verse.
Today I found myself captivated by a little prayer that emerged from this verse. I prayed it over and over throughout the day. I invite you to pause with me now to ponder, paraphrase, and pray. Open your heart be stirred to appreciate God’s goodness to you!
The Father treasures me as his child;
Christ chooses me as his disciple;
The Holy Spirit lives [...]
Continue reading The Lord Treasures You!
By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
I know what it’s like to feel lonely.
The worst thing is to be in a group of people and feel alone… Other people are enjoying conversation, smiling, laughing, but it appears that no one wants to talk to you and you start to feel more and more self-conscious. It seems like people are looking at you standing there all alone. You feel awkward, anxious, embarrassed, bad about yourself.
Maybe you have felt this way too.
The Psalmist did. He described himself as a lonely bird sitting atop the roof of house and waiting for the Lord (Psalm 102:7).
Time and again the [...]
Continue reading When You’re Lonely
Have you ever prayed in a cave? That’s what I was doing in this picture. I went to pray in a special cave a pastor for a day retreat at All Nations Prayer Mountain in San Bernardino, CA.
I’ve noticed that some of David’s best prayers were in a cave, like Psalms 57 and 142 (and probably others like Psalms 27 and 61).
So I figured that to be “a man of prayer” (Psalm 109:4) like David it might help if I spent some time being “a caveman” like him!
Indeed, meditating in silence on Psalm 57 while in a cave for a couple of hours [...]
Continue reading A Caveman Prayer
By Bill Gaultiere © 2010
