DAILY VIDEO DEVOTIONAL

Luke : Chapter 12
22) Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23) For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. 24) Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! 25) Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life[b]? 26) Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? 27) “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 28) If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! 29) And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. 30) For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31) But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. 32) “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33) Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34) For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Watchfulness
Book of the Month
Sammy Tippit told his fiancée, “I can’t promise we’ll be rich, but life won’t be boring.”
Sammy had no idea what an understatement that would become. Beginning in the bars of Baton Rouge and the nightclubs of Chicago, Tippit has shared the news of life-changing faith in Christ all over the world – including in the middle of a revolution in Romania, the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, and war in Burundi and the Congo.
Sammy’s lifelong adventure has come at a great price. He’s been cursed, threatened, arrested, deported, and blacklisted. He’s also been personally broken, ravaged with illness, and devastated by grief.
Yet he continues to preach to in stadiums, in open fields, and via satellite technology to hundreds of thousands around the globe. For all other books…
Sammy Tippit: Yesterday we were talking with Dr. Walt Larimore about emotional and mental health and how it affects your overall health. We want to continue that discussion today in our devotional time. Walt, you were talking yesterday about the three groups (the grumblers, the gloaters, and then those who were grateful) and how much of a change it made in the health of those who were grateful.
What about people who have been abused, people who grew up in an atmosphere, a home environment, where they were put down on all the time and so they just naturally think negatively? I mean, how do they deal with it?
Walt Larimore: Here’s how I think about that, Sammy. Take aspirin… You know, more and more people are taking that little tiny baby aspirin, that 81mg aspirin, to prevent colon cancer, to prevent cardiovascular… It doesn’t matter how depressed you are, how angry you are, how irritated you are, how much you’ve been abused in the past. That aspirin is designed to work irrespective of where you’re coming from.
I tell people to think of gratitude as being an emotional aspirin you can take every day, irrespective of the wrong, irrespective of the harm, irrespective of the background, irrespective of the injustice, irrespective of the abuse. Gratitude is part of God’s divine design to begin to heal us.
I tell my patients, “Keep a gratitude journal.” If you’re a person who enjoys meditating in the evening, you can do this before bed, or you can do it right when you get up in the morning. For a 30-day period, just every day write five things you’re grateful for. Initially, you may have to look. As you get better with this exercise, you’ll find things during the day that you’ll remember. That night, take three to five minutes and just meditate on those things you’re grateful for, to thank the Father in heaven, to thank your Creator for the blessings he has bestowed.
Now there may be a lot of things that went wrong that day, but you can find five things you’re grateful for. As you begin to meditate on that, it not only changes you emotionally; it changes you physically. The studies show blood pressure improves, heart rate improves, metabolism improves. Emotionally we begin to improve. It affects our relationships, our job performance, and it even affects us spiritually as we begin to see God’s fingerprint every day in what he provides.
Sammy: What about worry? A lot of people are very anxious today. You know, the future, family, fortunes. Everything around us! There’s a lot of worry I find and especially in the economy. How do men deal with worry?
Walt: Well, Scripture throughout tells us, “Be not anxious. Do not be anxious. Do not fret. Do not be afraid.” But it’s hard to apply that. I’ll give you a story from my own life. You know, I’m self-employed as a writer. I volunteer at a clinic taking care of uninsured folks. But income is an issue. I was fretting about it this last January. I got fretting about, “Where is it going to come from, and how are we going to handle the bills?”
Barb, my wife, got kind of irritated. She went downstairs, and she came up. She brought five little piles of paper. She put them down: one, two, three, four, five. She said, “These are the taxes from this year. These are the taxes from last year. That’s the year before and the year before. Do you know what? God has provided every year. Why are you worrying?”
It was a good reminder to me that I can choose to take that worry upon me, or I can release it to my Father. For me, learning how to daily depend upon his provision, be thankful for his provision, and be a good steward for what he provides can make a difference.
Sammy: We need to make some lifestyle changes periodically maybe to be good stewards and then also to just cast it on him if we know we’re doing the right thing, we can trust him.
Walt: That’s where a mentoring relationship has made a difference for me. I mentioned earlier, I’ve had a mentor for 25 years. Every week of the month, we would meet. The first week of the month, Bill would have me bring my checkbook and my credit card bill. He would help me look at how I was stewarding those. The second week of the month we looked at my schedule. How was I stewarding my time?
The third week of the month he would call Kate and Scott and find out what type of dad I was being. The fourth week, Sammy, was the hardest. He’d call Barb and find out what type of a friend and what type of a husband I had been. If there was a fifth Tuesday (we met on Tuesdays), then he would call my partner and meet with my employees. That type of mentoring helped me as a man to begin to get my priorities right. That can help reduce some of that worrying and anxiety.
Sammy: This is good stuff. We’re going to have some more tomorrow with Dr. Walt Larimore. We’re going to be talking about relationships, which gets even more difficult here. We’re going to dig a little bit deeper tomorrow. We look forward to it.
About Sammy Tippit Ministries
STM has been providing inspiration and help around the world for nearly 50 years. Sammy Tippit, founder and president, is a world renowned counselor, teacher and evangelist with experience serving and helping people in over 80 countries. Sammy provides materials that help people tackle a broad array of social, societal, psychological and spiritual issues. He is particularly passionate about making materials accessible to other countries around the world. Sammy is married to Debara “Tex” Tippit, and they have two children and five grandchildren.
Sammy Tippit Ministries is a registered 501c3 non-profit organization.
Contact: info@sammytippit.org
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