Walking with God: 26 Devotionals from the Story of Us: Weeks 1-26

By Diane Johnson

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A strange thing started happening to me a few months back. I found myself waking up around 5:00 a.m. or so several mornings with a strong need to study the Bible on a particular subject or maybe a special scripture. I found myself pouring out my heart into written devotionals. I write about depression, anger, love, trust, finding new siblings, and always trusting in God for the strength and guidance through each new journey. The more I allowed the Holy Spirit to guide me, the more at peace my life became, and the more I wanted to share my experiences with others.

I set out to write a year's worth of weekly devotionals. Walking with God contains the first twenty-six of those fifty-two devotionals. The life lessons that I write about are some that I am sure a lot of us face. My hope is that this book, which is filled with God's words and His love, will give someone a little more hope, a little more strength, and a little more peace to keep fighting the fight and staying on the winning team. God's team.

Romans 8:37-39 says, "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781642587494

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Walking with God

26 Devotionals from the Story of Us: Weeks 1-26

Diane Johnson

ISBN 978-1-64258-748-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64258-749-4 (digital)

Copyright © 2018 by Diane Johnson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

The Beginning

The journey I’m going to

start with began sometime in late spring of 1961. Dorothy Newland found herself knocking on a door that would be opened by a nine-year-old boy who was taking care of three small children and an infant set of twins. That’s a scene that Dorothy will always remember. I was one of the twins. Dorothy and her husband, JC, became my twin brother Roger’s and my parents in September of 1961. Along with their two daughters, Karen and Barbara, we were raised in a Christian home, taught good values, and most importantly, shown the love of God in our everyday lives.

Were you adopted? Placed a child for adoption? Known someone adopted? If yes to any of these, this story might hit close to home.

For the next part of the journey, we advance on a few (okay… a lot of) years. I’ve been married nearly thirty-five years. Gary and I have raised three children. We have struggled through challenges of life. I have been united with my biological siblings and most recently written and published my first book. The book tells the story of how God worked to bring thirteen siblings together after over fifty years of being separated, and turned this group of individuals into a family. I wrote about the first time I met my biological mother and two younger sisters, and a few months later met another sister. Then I met two aunts and two uncles on my biological father’s side. The story continues all the way to 2012 and our last United Sibling reunion, where, for the one and only time, thirteen strangers were brought together and became family. I titled the book How God Turned Strangers into Family: The Story of Us.

God seemed to have his timing planned out for this story to unfold. I met my Uncle Jessie just a few months before he died of cancer. He had wondered, after his brother, my biological father, had died, what happened to his nieces and nephews. I was able to share with him what information that I had.

My oldest brother, Woodrow, started treatment for hepatitis shortly after we met. He needed to know that he had family out here in order to fight through the treatment. Year 2010 seemed to be the year that God had planned for each one of the thirteen of us to be ready to meet. All our doors seemed to open that year. Some of the siblings began looking for family that might be out there; others were searched for and finally found. Genealogical websites were used to help us, as well as Facebook, and even snail mail. In one case, a neighbor down the street went and knocked on one brother’s door to tell him that he had family looking for him. Bottom line, God was the only reason that it all came together Labor Day weekend 2010. With every step that I took along the road, God continued to bless me more and more. I now have a very close relationship with several of my siblings. Without God’s watchful eye, some of those relationships may not have ever happened.

The book, now written, paperback copies in hand, I began to get feedback. I was asked several times, What made you write the book? The first few times I answered, I’ve been told that someone needed to write a book. The more I thought about that question, the more my answer changed. The answer now is more about how much God has blessed me in this journey, how much he blesses all of us, and how much I want to share his blessings with others. My brother, Jim, and I have discussed the book title several times. We were all strangers, and through God’s love, we have been turned into family.

God’s plan for his children is that they be part of a family… part of his family. He is the creator and the heavenly Father of all of us. In Psalms 133:1, it says, How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! In Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesians, he speaks primarily to non-Jewish Christians about the importance of the church and how the church must be united in working together for the cause of Christ. After sharing with them all the changes that have taken place in Ephesus, we read in Ephesians 1:3–6:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

After Paul shared with them all the changes that have taken place in Christ Jesus, he makes this monumental statement of belonging:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2: 19–22)

By bringing us into his church, God is turning strangers into family. So now, in Christ, wherever we go, no matter whether we might be, strangers or not, in the church, we are God’s family.

I will end with this thought. None of us know what God has in store for us. Eight months ago, I had no idea that I would have ever sat down and written about finding a part of my family that was lost to me for so many years. Even after that, the positive feedback that I am getting for something that only God could have done still amazes me. And believe it or not, when I typed this out, I had no plans or ideas of who I might be sharing it with. I just knew that God wanted me to share it.

I pray that we will always be open to sharing the love of God with others.

Thoughts:

Have you ever visited at another church when you are on a vacation?

Were you made to feel welcome?

Have you seen visitors at your home congregation?

Have you made them feel welcome?

Prayer: Dear God, thank You for being our heavenly Father and for making us Your children. Help us to treat others as family just as you would want us to do. In Jesus name we pray.

Praying Hands

I know that we all

have turning points in our lives where something just clicks. Well, one of mine that I will always remember happened while I was sitting in front of my house, in a car, talking to my mom. My mom had come over to visit, and we had gone out to sit in her van for a few minutes. Our discussion was about how I was supposed to handle my two teenage boys.

My oldest was bipolar and wouldn’t take his medicine. His two-year-younger brother had his first girlfriend and had decided that parents in general and moms specifically were worthless. With tears in my eyes, I am pretty sure I looked at my mom and said, I just don’t know what else to do. I can’t handle anymore, Mom. What can I do? With all the love that my mom had for me and for her grandsons, she very calmly looked at me and said, It isn’t yours to handle. Give it to God. I looked confused and told her that I had, but it wasn’t working. Here’s what she had me do next: Diane, you know the ceramic hands that represent God’s hands that were in your kid’s nurseries? I answered that, yes, I did. "Well, hold your hands out like that. Okay, now, picture yourself putting James in those hands. Let go. Now put Casey in those hands. Let go. Now, turn around, walk away