Langdon's Devotional

  "Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace." James 3:13-18 (ESV) What does true wisdom look like? Wisdom is something common in prayers, especially when we want to do well in some kind of role.  We get it confused too often with knowledge, but I don't think that the two are exclusive. I think wisdom is more broad – you can be smart without being wise, but I don't think you can be wise without challenging you...

 "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!" Psalm 34:8 (ESV) I take refuge in Christians more than I take refuge in Christ. It's hard not to, I think all of us want to run to loving arms when we're messed up, because it's easy, and it gives us that gratification we're desperate for at times. We can end up creating more hurt when we do that. It's left me with me with scars, but I think that sets the Lord up to get a lot more accomplished in me than He would if I were living carelessly. I'm living in a very pivotal season of my own life – a time where I make a lot of decisions and form a lot of habits that I'll carry with me during the most difficult times of my adult life. Dishonesty and betrayal lead to questions with no answers, and a breached heart searches frantically to be refilled – but it's not like I'm dying. Sure my heart might be slower to heal than I might expect, but life is filled wit...

Our prayers are a call, and we miss out on God's work when we're not patient enough to look for the response. Praying always feels like it has to have structure to me. And I think there's a right way to pray, but I'm not sure that there's really a wrong way to pray. Collective prayers are different, obviously. If you pray over someone or with someone, it's important that those people can reflect on that with you. But I think most of our prayers are individual, and still, it can feel challenging. I think it's possible that it doesn't feel that way because we're "bad" at praying, but because for us, the prayer stops once we open our eyes. A lot of us are just guilty of not looking for the answer. Or rather, not being patient enough to wait very long while we look for the answer. I don't think we're necessarily underestimating what God is capable of, but I think we have a hard time sitting in our faith of the Lord for a long period of...

cour·age / ˈkərij / noun strength in the midst of pain, grief, and/or fear . Defining Courage Most of us understand that courage is necessary to live a life for Christ. Some understand that it's necessary to live a life that's fulfilling to any degree. At the same time, courage is one of the most unnatural virtues to practice and develop. From combining more secular definitions, we can consider courage to be strength in the midst of pain , grief , and/or fear . In other words, having courage is considered the same as having strength, where our circumstances define whether or not we have the opportunity to be courageous. The strength aspect is something I wanna touch more on later, because the way we view true strength really matters. But the reason courage is so unnatural to us, is because the only time we get to put it into practice is when we're brought to face pain without relief, grief without comfort, and fear without security. By that definition, courage r...

grief /ɡrēf/ noun the anguish experienced as a result of a significant loss. Defining Grief Grief, by a more psychological standpoint, is the anguish experienced as a result of a significant loss . We attribute grief mostly to the death of a loved one. That's generally gonna be the source of the heaviest form of grief, but loss doesn't always mean death.  Let's break that definition down into the three defining parts. Anguish refers to severe mental pain or suffering. Pain is a pretty complicated concept on it's own, and you can refer to my series on pain to understand more about what it can tell us about our mental/emotional wounds. In short though, a good question to ask then, is when we feel all of the emotions that come with grief – which emotions are honest emotions? The word significant implies that it's had an impact on us – life looks different after we've lost the object of our grief. This is something that I'll go into more later. In short, ...

 "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." Ephesians 4:32 (ESV) Forgiveness is difficult by nature. But it isn't optional. Forgiveness isn’t something I’ve had the misfortune of struggling with for most of my life. There’s only a handful of people that have done anything to me that I really struggled to forgive, long term. The wounds that I’ve taken from those people are real though, no doubt. Some are more difficult to remember, but they're still proof of my humanity. They leave a scar to remind me how much I’ve changed over the years, like stretch marks that hold memories of the growing pains that God allowed me to feel. Some are more fresh, and I still wrestle with forgiveness to this day. They can be pretty haunting, like the enemy knows that they strike deep into my weakest points – because he does. There are a lot of different definitions of what forgiveness is, especially if you go from just a psychological pe...

 "For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day." 2 Corinthians 4:15-16 (ESV) I just wanted to use this post to be glad. I don't always feel it, but I'm so blessed to belong to Him. I know that a lot of what I write can be all about struggle, and it's true – there's a lot of sin in the world. God's grace is so much greater.  You'll notice that I actually started this blog back up in February. I had experienced feelings of rejection that, for whatever reason, were immediately followed by complete hope. I didn't understand it at the time, and I don't understand it still, but I felt so at peace – not necessarily peace with what I could see God doing, but peace in the confidence I had of who God was, is, and will continue to be. It's the closest I've eve...