Tid Bits of God's Love

By Dottie Burdette

God is still quite alive and active in our lives today. He will share with those who seek him, for God wants his children to know him intimately. As you read the thoughts found in this book, you will see that you are surrounded by Gods love as you live your day-to-day life. While some of the articles are funny, others are a bit more challenging. However, all are meant to be thought-provoking, and all are meant to lead you back to God, back to Jesus, and back to the things of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973627357

Dottie Burdette

Dottie Burdette loves the Lord; his son, Jesus; her husband; music; and writing. This is her second book.

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 Dottie Burdette.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-2734-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-2736-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-2735-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018905262

WestBow Press rev. date: 06/18/2018

Contents

tb To Fully Obey

tb Compromise

tb What If?

tb Forgiveness Vending Machine

tb Can Jesus Put Your Name on This Check?

tb Which Came First?

tb I’m So Busy!

tb Can’t Outgrow

tb Did You Catch This?

tb A Man of God

tb Forgiveness Jesus’s Way

tb Lemons

tb Which Road?

tb Power over Demons

tb God’s Awesome Power

tb My New Truck

tb Nicks and Scratches

tb Run!

tb We Have God. Who Do They Have?

tb Desires of Your Heart

tb Dead Faith

tb Broken and Spilled Out

tb Question

tb Fishers of Men

tb So Very Much

tb Working from Home

tb The Christmas Gift

tb Stress Release

tb The Lynx

tb Talents

tb Legacy

tb Don’t Blow It

tb The Invitation

tb Everyone

tb Laws

tb A Gentleman

tb Even the Sparrows Know

tb A Story Just for You

tb Do It!

tb N0 Absolutes

tb Full Gear

tb Psalm 145

tb You Don’t Have to Save Everyone

tb The Lord’s Prayer

tb Obedience

tb No Room for Both

tb From Romans to Timothy

tb In the Name of Jesus

tb The New Year

tb What Is Prayer?

tb Out of the Mouths of Babes

tb Spring

tb The Original War Room

tb They Must Obey

tb The Excitement of Christmas

tb We All Have Missions

tb Bent on Making Me Miserable

tb Away with Christmas?

tb God’s Waiting Room

tb Change

tb Easter

tb A Grandson’s Prayer

tb One of Those Times

tb Excuses

tb A Large Oak Tree

tb Hey, New Attitude!

tb It’s in the Letter

tb Pastors

tb That Glorious Joy

tb The Desert

tb Christmas Day

tb Jesus Will Clothe Them

tb Living Together as Man and Wife

tb Does Satan Have Your Number?

tb Neighbor’s Funeral

tb Chance?

tb Those Who Walk with God

tb The Key

tb Real Separation of Church and State

tb Ever Wonder Why?

tb Worldwide Effects

tb God’s Church

tb Everyone Quotes Scripture

tb New Every Morning

tb Your Name Instead

tb Welcome to My World

tb How Does That Make You Feel?

tb I Asked the Lord

tb Like a Pair of Glasses

tb T00 Busy?

tb Poison!

tb There Were Scales on My Eyes

tb A Stormy Day

tb If They Struggled

tb What’s in a Song?

tb Which One Do You Do?

tb Good Stewards

tb Problem Solving

tb To Create or Not to Create

tb The Religious Way of Life

tb We Are to Pray for Our Leaders

tb Driving Your Life’s Car

tb Samson

tb My Promises from God

tb The Heart of the Matter

tb How Do You Treat Your Groom?

tb If You Have

tb Vases of Clear Glass

tb Making a Difference

tb Rest

tb What? Forgive That Person? Really?

tb We Are God’s Children

tb Fear

tb Crosses for All to See

tb There Is None—No, Not One

tb What Is Love?

tb Repay No One Evil for Evil

tb Your Lord Is

tb Have I Remembered Everyone?

tb Heavenly Fathers

tb New Starts

tb A Flashlight

tb A Christmas Gift

tb An All-Consuming Fire

tb Peace

tb Dusty Bible?

tb Hard to Sacrifice

tb Food for Thought

tb Proverbs 8

tb Is Something Missing?

tb Why Should We Pay Taxes?

tb Which Sign Are You?

tb Trust in the Lord

tb The Power of a Godly Wife

tb Proverbs 25:28

tb Then I Will Hear from Heaven

tb Evil vs. Good

tb James

tb Happy Holiday!

tb Breathe

tb Sometimes God Says No

tb The Ice Cube Dog

tb Dogged Obedience

tb Tithing and Thanksgiving

tb Helping God

tb They Cannot Understand

tb Free Indeed

tb Roses

tb The Man from Nowhere

tb This Little Light of Mine

tb Regular Maintenance

tb Black Spot

tb Words Can Deeply Harm Us

tb The Lord Giveth and Taketh Away

tb Not in the Name of Jesus Christ? Really?

tb Arrg! That Tongue!

tb True Forgiveness

tb Creations of Art

tb Know God’s Will for Your Life

tb Firstfruits

tb When You …

tb The Road of Life

tb Love Ourselves?

tb My Sheep

tb Satan Is a Liar

tb New Projects

tb But Lord?

tb So Who’s Your Daddy?

tb Dark Nights

tb Can Not Be Earned

tb Surprised?

tb So Much Religion!

tb Easily Led Astray

tb My Own Chores

tb No Need

tb Nonsense

tb A Letter of Resignation

tb Our Filter

tb I Had No Idea!

tb Look What I Found!

tb Better with Age

tb The Silhouette

tb Subtle but Powerful

tb Nutrients

tb John 2

tb Memorial Day

tb Truth for Today

tb Young Azaleas

tb No Hidden Love

tb Full-Care Doggy Kennel

tb Mr. Gopher Turtle

tb Afraid of What God Wants You to Do?

tb Are You Unbroken?

tb In All Things

tb Sin Causes Separation and Fear

tb We Reap What We Sow

tb Nature

tb Cisterns

tb Drinking Water

tb What a Picture

tb Our Permission?

tb Glow of Lights

tb Second-Best Christmas Gift Ever

tb Your Employer

tb Someone’s Watching You

tb A Father’s Love

tb Living by God’s Rules

tb Worship Like a Tree

tb What If God Visited You?

tb Is It Still God’s Promise?

tb Do You Have Instincts?

tb Be a Dog

tb Did I Really Mean Those Words?

tb The Candle

tb Doomsday Dave

tb Our Great Provider

tb My Sister’s Granddaughter

tb Abraham and Isaac

Scriptures are from the following translations.

The Holy Bible, New King James Version ®, copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, a division of HarperCollins Christian Publishing.

The copyright page states: The text of the New King James Version ®. The NKJV ® may be quoted or reprinted without prior written permission with the following qualifications: (1) up to and including 1,000 words may be quoted in printed form as long as the verse quoted amount to less than 50 percent of a complete book of the Bible and make up less than 50 percent of the total work of which they are quoted; (2) all NKJV quotations must conform accurately to the NKJV. Any use of the NKJV must include a proper acknowledgement as follows.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version ®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Holy Bible, New International Version ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.

The Holy Bible, New International Version Large-Print Edition. Copyright © 2009 Zondervan. All rights reserved. Published by Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2009923732.

The copyright page states: Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

I

wrote this book with love for God and His children. It consists of thoughts I believe God has asked me to share.

Some of these thoughts are challenging, and some are funny, but all are meant to be thought provoking and to encourage you to look for God’s blessings in your life.

I give God all the glory for this book and for anything that may come of it. If only one person is touched by only one article in this book, none of the work will have been in vain.

Please enjoy,

Dottie

tb To Fully Obey

As I sit in front of my laptop at 12:30 a.m., I am looking at a manuscript my heavenly Father has given to me, words He has asked me to publish. Yet I hesitate to push the send key. So here sits the manuscript—not submitted, not published. God has done His part, but I have not done mine. I have not been obedient.

Why? I ask myself. It is not because I can’t, because He will enable me to do whatever He wants me to do. Remember?

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13 KJV)

It is not due to financial reasons, for God has provided there as well.

So why do I stare at words I know my heavenly Father has asked me to share with others?

Maybe, just maybe, I am afraid to fully trust God will protect me from those who may find fault with what I have written. But unless you fully trust God, you cannot fully obey Him.

And I want to fully obey my heavenly Father.

So…….send.

tb Compromise

The Bible warns us of compromise in our churches. We are warned several times to be wary of false teachers and false preachers. We are told how to spot them and not to believe what they teach, for they will not be teaching the truth. Instead of telling us what we need to hear, they will tell us only what we want to hear—things that tickle our ears is how the Bible puts it.

We are to stay away from such people. We are not even to greet them much less allow them to stay in our homes. For in doing so, we share in their evil deeds.

Many deceivers in the world do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. They are deceivers, Antichrists.

Look to yourselves, that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward.

Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son.

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him; for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds. (2 John 7–11 NKJV)

These false teachers and preachers will bring destruction on our churches because they bring compromise, and God takes compromise very seriously.

Compromise may not be easy to spot in our day-to-day lives. It may creep in quietly while we are trying to adhere to the rules or obey the laws. I am not advocating breaking rules and laws, but we are to stay truer to God and to His rules and laws, than we are to those of humans. God’s Word trumps anything else that there is, was, or could ever be. God is the original rule giver and lawmaker, and His say should be the final say in every circumstance all the time!

While writing this book, I almost compromised. Believe it or not, there are copyright laws regulating scripture—or rather the various translations of scripture. Yes, it’s true. Because I am using translations of scriptures and not the original manuscripts, copyright laws limit the amount of verses that can be included in written works.

My first writings contained a lot of scripture, so to adhere to the copyright laws, I began to remove material from the original manuscript. Guess what that material was. Scriptures. Yes, God’s Word.

Compromise!

I placed humanity’s laws over God’s laws.

God told us to spread His Word, and the last time I checked, I could not find where God had put a limit on how much of His Word we could spread. So I rewrote the entire manuscript putting God’s Word back in.

My compromise has delayed the publication of what you are now reading for almost an entire year. Arrg!

But worse than that, it quieted God’s voice.

Compromise costs.

tb What If?

What if one morning you woke up with only the things you had thanked God for the night before? Nothing more. Nothing less. What would you have? A little? A lot?

Nothing?

tb Forgiveness Vending Machine

Is this your idea of forgiving? You go to the closest Forgiveness Vending Machine, say amen three times into the microphone, press the number that matches your offense, and then poof! Out comes the type of forgiveness you need. Nice and neat; clean and painless.

A wise man once told me that true forgiveness requires sacrifice and pain. And he was right. Jesus’s example of true forgiveness was not painless nor nice and clean. It was gory, bloody, extremely painful, and deadly.

tb Can Jesus Put Your Name on This Check?

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tb Which Came First?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I know. The chicken.

Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. (Genesis 2:19 NKJV)

tb I’m So Busy!

My Lord is patient with me. I am so busy running around doing His work that I cannot hear His voice. I’m often like a hamster on a wheel that doesn’t go anywhere—just around and around.

Exhausted, I will fall to my knees and cry out, Why, Lord, have You not heard my cries? Why have You not helped me?

This is when my Lord compassionately smiles at me and says, Oh my child, I have heard you many times and have answered you. You were just too busy to listen.

tb Can’t Outgrow

You can no more outgrow your need for God than you can outgrow your need for oxygen.

Both are critical for sustaining life.

tb Did You Catch This?

And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brothers, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then He said to them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men. They immediately left their nets and followed Him. (Matthew 4:18–20 NKJV)

Did you catch that? They left their nets immediately. Other translations say at once or straightway. They just laid their nets down by the sea and followed Jesus. They did not go home to say goodbye to their families. Or to pack their bags. Or to put their affairs in order. Or to close their businesses.

They just left everything behind and followed Jesus.

Would you do that?

tb A Man of God

It drives Satan’s demons crazy when they hear a man of God singing praises to His Creator, His Lord, His Savior.

I can see them now jumping up and down, banging on the rails of their cages, beating on their chests, or even beating their heads on the walls.

All because one of God’s children is singing praises to Him.

tb Forgiveness Jesus’s Way

We as Christians are to be Christlike and follow Jesus’s example. But because of God’s mercy, we do not have to be publicly flogged and beaten and forced to carry our heavy crosses to a place where we are crucified for our sins.

We are, however, to follow Jesus’s example in all areas of our lives even if we find it difficult and painful. And the area of forgiveness is no exception. As Jesus was breathing some of His last breaths on the cross, He asked His Heavenly Father to forgive those who were killing Him while they watched Him die.

Our forgiveness of others is not a death sentence for us; it is a form of worship. It is an outward sign of our trust that God will do the vindicating for us, that God keeps His promises, and that He will take good care of us.

Viewing forgiveness in that perspective seems to take all the sting out of it, doesn’t it? In fact, it may even make you feel sorry for those who harm you because they may have to face God’s wrath. And we all know what God’s Word says about His wrath—it’s a fearful thing!

For we know Him who said, Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the LORD. And again, The LORD will judge His people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:30–31 NKJV)

tb Lemons

The world tells us that when life gives us lemons, we are to make lemonade. That sounds good, encouraging, but God tells us that when life gives us lemons, we are to thank Him for the lemon tree!

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18 NKJV)

tb Which Road?

Which road of life are you traveling? My Own Will Highway? Broad Street? Or God’s Narrow Gate Lane?

Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13–24 NKJV)

tb Power over Demons

Luke 4:31–41 is a must read. It talks about the power Jesus has over demons. By just speaking a word, Jesus cast out demons, who oddly enough, seemed to know who Jesus was. And even more odd, they had to obey Jesus. Our Bible tell us that when Jesus spoke, the demons had to leave.

Now in the synagogue there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon. And he cried out with a loud voice, saying, Let us alone! What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!

But Jesus rebuked him, saying, Be quiet, and come out of him! And when