Pastor Wally Odum has been in ministry for over 30 years and loves to share the Gospel. He brings a relevant, inspirational approach to the Bible. Wally values relevance, but he also values authenticity. His goal is to make Biblical truth relevant to the lives of all who hear him.
“David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the LORD his God.“ ( OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt) NIV)
Circumstances can change so quickly. David and his men came to Ziklag, their home town, and found that a raiding party had taken their families, carried off their property and burned their town. David was, literally, in a tight place. Even his loyal followers had turned against him and were talking of stoning him. They were grieving, frustrated, and bitter.
Sometimes life hands us difficulties we can’t understand or explain. We have each faced the distress that comes when we get in a tight spot. It is alarming to find ourselves in situations that lay outside our control.
The parable is told of an old dog that fell into a farmer’s well. After assessing the situation, the farmer sympathized with the dog but decided that neither the dog nor the well were worth the trouble of saving. Instead, he planned to bury the old dog in the well and put him out of his misery. When the farmer began shoveling, initially the old dog was hysterical. But as the farmer continued shoveling and the dirt hit his back, a thought struck him. It dawned on him that every time a shovel load of dirt landed on his back he should shake it off and step up. This he did blow after blow. “Shake it off and step up, shake it off and step up, shake it off and step up!” he repeated to encourage himself. Eventually, the farmer filled the well and the dog stepped out of it onto firm ground.
That is the key to any crisis. It’s not what is happening but how we respond to it. What seemed as though it would bury him actually benefitted the old dog—all because of the way he handled adversity.
David’s situation was both precarious and painful. He, too, had lost his family. Now he had seemed to lose the support of his friends. David demonstrated how we can successfully handle those situations. He “found strength in the Lord his God.”
The story ended with David and his men pursuing the raiders and recovering their families and their property. There is a moment in any crisis, though, when the happy ending is not in sight. That's when it is important to turn to the Lord. When we strengthen ourselves in the Lord He can lead us out of our narrow places to eventual victory.
Later, when David reflected on God’s hand in his life, he wrote a psalm that expressed his confidence in God.
“I called to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and have been saved from my enemies.” ( NIV)
No matter how the enemy attacked him, David learned that turning to God was his key to victory. It’s our key as well.
God doesn't want us to let our circumstances drive us. He is our Hope and our Deliverer. When pressure comes we can find our strength in the Lord. He is our source of strength, even when life seems to be against us. We can trust Him in the face of uncertainty because He always has our best interest at heart.
Copyright © Wally Odum, used with permission.
"For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith" ( OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt) NIV).
When he described the "world" John used the word "kosmos." The "kosmos" depicts a system that is warped by sin and opposed to God. We live in perpetual conflict with that system. The good news is believers are not subject to its power and influence because we are born of God.
The life we receive from Him enables us to live in victory over all the corruption around us. Some of us have interpreted this to mean our victory is up to us. Now that we are born of God, we presume we are to sweat, struggle, and resist the influence of the world with all our might. We feel certain our victory depends on us and our efforts. It doesn't. We resist the world and the devil, but that is because we are empowered by our faith in Jesus.
It is easy to couple faith with other things. I saw a picture of a cat hanging onto a bowl with a caption: "Faith isn't faith until it's all you're holding onto." Our faith means we can place our confidence entirely in Jesus and what He's done for us.
John makes the point that our faith is the sole reason for our triumph over the world, the flesh, and the devil. The next verse helps define that faith. "Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God." ( NIV). Our victory is due to our faith in Jesus as the Son of God. When we trust who He is and what He did for us we simply can't lose.
My wife, Gwen, did the premarital counseling and I performed the wedding for a Navy Seal and his fiancée. He lived a life of violence and was constantly in danger of death. Twice he was wounded so badly his heart stopped beating and both times medics brought him back.
He told us the most painful moment in his life: he held his friend in his arms while his friend died. They had been laying landmines in a South American country to hinder the movement of Communist guerillas. After they laid the land mines, they saw a young girl wandering aimlessly toward the minefield. They raced to her and saved her, but his friend was blown up by a landmine.
We were wandering helplessly in a minefield and Jesus took the full effect of danger so we could live. We have all lived in danger, but Jesus came to our rescue. He died so we can live. Our victory is assured because Jesus died to save us and give us the gift of life.
Copyright © Wally Odum 2014, used with permission.
Our goal is to live godly lives. Those of us who have tried to do that know how hard it is to accomplish in our own strength. We have made promises to God we failed to keep. We have disciplined ourselves with rules we have broken. It's not an easy thing to be godly when we try to do it by ourselves.
God knows that and He has an answer.
"His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness." OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt) (NIV)
The power for godly living doesn't come from us, it comes from God. It comes through our knowing Him. When we know Him, He gives us the divine power we need to live like Him.
The problem we often have is we forget His power is our source and we take on the burden of godliness. That can only produce a religion that ends in failure and frustration. It is fruitless to attempt living the Christian life without the resource of God's power.
Dr. A. J. Gordon pastored in New England and was founder of Gordon-Conwell College and Seminary. He loved to take walks in the crisp morning air. One morning he saw a man behind a farmhouse pumping an outdoor water pump furiously. He was amazed the man could pump so fast without stopping.
He became so absorbed with the scene he wandered across the field to get a closer look. He saw it was not a man at all, but a wooden cut-out that looked like a man. The elbow was a hinge and the hand was wired to the pump handle. The man wasn't pumping the pump handle. It was an artesian well and the pump handle was pumping the man. That is what it is like to serve the Lord.
Too many people believe we have to supply the power for living the Christian life. We simply attach ourselves by faith to the One who has all the power we need. That eliminates any room for pride. Our success in godly living is due to the fact that we are connected to Him.
Dr. Manford Gutzke, in one of his sermons, told of an old sculptor who was ill. He was recuperating during the summer at his son's home. His son bought him a block of marble to work with and placed it in a shaded corner of the backyard. The grandson watched his grandfather work in the early days of summer but then lost interest. That fall, the grandson was in the shaded part of the backyard and saw a marble angel on a marble pedestal. He was puzzled for a moment, then grinned and looked at his grandfather. "You knew he was in there all the time."
Jesus knows what He can make of us when He first calls us. After all, when we were really messed up He called us. That's because He knew what He could make of us with His divine power. Our godliness is not because we are perfect. It's because He is perfect and He empowers us. We get blessed and He gets the glory.
Copyright © Wally Odum 2014, used with permission.
Halford E. Luccock shares this story in his book, Unfinished Business:
"One night at dinner a man, who had spent many summers in Maine, fascinated his companions by telling of his experiences in a little town named Flagstaff. The town was to be flooded, as part of a large lake for which a dam was being built. In the months before it was to be flooded, all improvements and repairs in the whole town were stopped. What was the use of painting a house if it were to be covered with water in six months? Why repair anything when the whole village was to be wiped out? So, week by week, the whole town became more and more bedraggled, more gone to seed, more woebegone."
Then he added by way of explanation:
"Where there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present."
Isaiah spoke about Jesus hundreds of years before Jesus' birth. Matthew reached back to that prophecy to help us understand who Jesus is and what He came to do. Jesus came to bring hope to the world. Hope is so often in short supply in our world. Fear and negativity can cloud our vision of the future. Jesus has come for those whose hope is failing.
Isaiah put it this way:
"A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out" ( OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt) NIV).
Matthew quoted him,
"He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle. Finally he will cause justice to be victorious. And his name will be the hope of all the world." ( NLT).
His name is not only the hope of the world at large. He is the hope for the weakest and smallest person. He is the hope for us all. He takes us, weak as we are, and builds on the smallest glimmer of hope.
Jamie Buckingham quoted Hugo Gryn, a London rabbi, in Charisma magazine. Hugo told of a holocaust experience in the German magazine, Der Morgen:
"It was the cold winter of 1944 and although we had nothing like calendars, my father who was a fellow prisoner there, took me and some of our friends to a corner of the barrack. He announced it was the eve of Hanukkah, produced a curious-shaped clay bowl, and began to light a wick immersed in his precious, but now melted, margarine ration.
Before he could recite the blessing, I protested at this waste of food. He said, 'You and I have seen that it is possible to live up to three weeks without food. We once lived almost three days without water. But you cannot live properly for three minutes without hope.' "
No matter what we face today, Jesus is our hope. Even if we're weak and our hope is small, He has come to give us a bright picture of tomorrow. We can rest in that.
Copyright © 2014 Wally Odum, used with permission.
CBN.com - Have you ever been disappointed? Either someone lets you down or circumstances don’t work out the way you thought they would. A woman in Terre Haute, Indiana, called the local police station to report a skunk in her cellar. The police told the woman to make a trail of bread crumbs from the basement to the yard and to wait for the skunk to follow the line of crumbs outside. A little later the woman called back and said, “I did what you told me. Now I’ve got two skunks in my basement.”
We have all experienced the truth of , “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” That kind of disappointment can touch every area of our lives. Jimmy Evans, teaching on marriage, points out that there once were three major causes of divorce: money, sex, and power (or control). Now, however, the number one cause of divorce is none of those three. It is disappointment. “You’re not who I thought you were.”
One of the major causes of disappointment is promises that are not kept. A church choir director was being driven out of his mind at the rehearsals for the Christmas choral concert. It seemed that at least one or more members of the choir was absent at every rehearsal. Finally they reached the last rehearsal and he announced: “I want to personally thank the pianist for being the only person in this entire church choir to attend each and every rehearsal during the past two months.” At this, the pianist rose, bowed, and said, “It was the least I could do, considering I won’t be able to be at the concert tonight.”
Cartoonist Rob Portlock, in Leadership Journal, portrays a pastor making a Sunday morning announcement: “We have a special gift for a lady that hasn’t missed a service in forty-five years. Eleanor Smith! Where is Eleanor sitting? Eleanor? Eleanor ...”
Not all occasions of disappointment, though, are due to someone intentionally breaking a promise. Sometimes circumstances beyond anyone’s control interfere with our plans. That was the case in one of the most disappointing times of my life.
My dad had bone cancer. He lived two years with the disease. During the last year of Dad’s life we planned to ride Amtrak together to Oregon to see my sister, Rosalie, and my brother-in-law, Mac. Knowing how ill Dad had been, I was looking forward to that time with him. In April of his last year he went into remission. We went to a train station together, planning the trip in August. Then in August, when we thought we would be traveling to Oregon, Dad died. I not only was broken up by his death, but I felt that my last chance to be with him without distractions was stolen. It wasn’t Dad’s fault. The circumstances were beyond his control.
Here is the problem with disappointments. They can color our outlook on life, and can even change the way we see God.
Jimmy Harris said, “A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.”
I have met any number of people who have allowed their disappointments to color their view of God. They see God as an extension of people who are either short on commitment or are short on the power to control things.
Here is the good news. God is faithful. I have often been encouraged by Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.” ( )
When I face my weaknesses, whether those weaknesses are character issues I have or are just my powerlessness in the face of events, I am encouraged to know that my destiny rests on the faithfulness of God.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that I have no responsibility. I do. But it does mean that while I am growing in faith and obedience God’s faithfulness protects me.
As the psalmist says, “His faithfulness will be your shield.” ( )
When I understand the faithfulness of God, I can rise above every past circumstance that left me disappointed. I can take His promises seriously and can put my life and my future in His hands.
William Penn, the founder of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was well liked by the Indians. Once they told him he could have as much of their land as he could encompass on foot in a single day. So, early the next morning he started out and walked until late that night. When he finally went to claim his land, the Indians were greatly surprised, for they really didn't think he would take them seriously. But they kept their promise and gave him a large area which today is part of the city of Philadelphia. William Penn simply believed what they said. If William Penn found the Indians to be faithful to their words, I can certainly expect God to be faithful to His.
Moses pointed that out to Israel a long time ago: “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” ( )
If God said it, His character stands behind it. He is in control of circumstances and will never have to say, “I never saw that coming.” He not only intends to fulfill His Word. He is able to fulfill His Word.
God’s commitment to us is more extensive than most of us imagine. Author and business leader, Fred Smith wrote about an experience that helps us understand this. He wrote, “One of my treasured memories comes from a doughnut shop in Grand Saline, Texas. There was a young farm couple sitting at the table next to mine. He was wearing overalls and she a gingham dress. After finishing their doughnuts, he got up to pay the bill, and I noticed she didn’t get up to follow him.
“But then he came back and stood in front of her. She put her arms around his neck, and he lifted her up, revealing that she was wearing a full-body brace. He lifted her out of her chair and backed out the front door to the pickup truck, with her hanging from his neck. As he gently put her into the truck, everyone in the shop watched. No one said anything until a waitress remarked, almost reverently, ‘He took his vows seriously.’ ”
God takes His vows seriously. The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy: “If we are faithless, he will remain faithful” ( ). When I am weak, and even when my faith is weak, He is faithful. We can depend on that.
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Pastor Wally Odum is the pastor of OBX Nationin the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He has been in ministry for thirty years and loves to share the Gospel. He is passionate about encouraging others to grow in God through sharing scriptures, stories, and personal experiences.
© OBX Nation, Wally Odum. Used with permission.
CBN.com - Faith is a difficult concept for many people to understand, but it is central to all our lives. For example, we go to a doctor whose name we cannot pronounce and whose degrees we have never verified. He gives us a prescription we cannot read. We take it to a pharmacist we have never seen before. He gives us a chemical compound we do not understand. Then we go home and take the pill according to the instructions on the bottle. All in trusting, sincere faith.
In the New Testament, Paul portrays Abraham as the model of faith for all believers.
“Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.” ( )
Abraham’s faith sets the pattern for all of us who choose to walk in faith.
By understanding Abraham’s faith, I can understand more clearly the kind of faith God wants from me. Abraham’s faith began with obedience. He obeyed God when God told him to pack up and move without telling him where he was going.
makes that clear:
“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”
I often find it hard to obey God even when I know where I am going. Abraham’s faith enabled him to follow instructions without knowing the outcome of his decisions.
In Genesis 12, where the story of Abraham’s faith is recorded, there is an aspect of it that stands out to me. His faith was exercised against all the measurable obstacles in his life. The journey from Ur, in what is now Iraq, to the Promised Land would have led Abraham through bandit-infested country. He and his wife are promised a child, but they couldn’t have children. God promised him the land, but when his wife, Sarah, died he purchased a burial place and that is the only title deed he possessed at his death.
In addition to those challenges, he arrived at his destination during a famine. His neighbors were a variety of Canaanite tribes that were formidable and powerful. Archaeologists have uncovered massive fortresses from Abraham’s time at Hazor and Megiddo. Not only were they imposing militarily, but the morals of that society were decidedly ungodly.
states about that culture,
“They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood.”
Here’s one of my problems with faith. I want to exercise faith in a perfect environment. I want the ones among whom I live and work to believe with me. That, however, isn’t how faith works. Faith calls for us to trust God when everything around us may be out of step with God.
That is the kind of faith Martin Luther exercised. On one occasion, he received word that his assistant, Myconius, was sick. In fact, Myconius wrote Luther a tender farewell letter. When Luther received the letter he penned a response: “I command thee in the name of God to live because I still have need of thee in the work of restoring the Church.... The Lord will never let me hear that thou art dead, but will permit thee to survive me. For this I am praying, it is my will and may my will be done, because I seek only to glorify the name of God.”
Maybe we can find fault with some of the assumptions Luther made. But Myconius was healed when he read the letter. Just to verify Luther’s proclamation, “The Lord will never let me hear that thou art dead,” Myconius lived six more years and died two months after Luther’s death.
Luther’s was the faith of Abraham. It was faith that looked in the face of adversity and dared to trust God’s provision.
How can we have that kind of triumphant faith when we live in a culture that is largely secular and godless? Abraham found a solution. In the land populated by ungodly Canaanites he created his own faith-filled environment.
One of the truths of Genesis 12 has sustained me when I have been tempted to question God’s promises.
says about Abraham,
“From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.”
Note the power of these two expressions: He “pitched his tent…he built an altar.” His tent was movable. He could fold it up, put it on his back and carry it to the next place. His altar was permanent! In a hostile environment he had an altar to which he could go and commune with God. The place where he met God was more permanent than the location of his dwelling place.
It would be wonderful if everyone around us spoke positive words and encouraged us in our walk of faith. They probably won’t; but we have an option. We can do what Abraham did. We can build an altar where we meet God. When we have an altar where we commune with God our faith can be increased even if those around us don’t believe.
The first diving bells were shown in a National Geographic magazine. They were inverted bells that trapped 20 minutes worth of air inside. If you have ever been submerged in water, you discovered that we can’t breathe water. We simply don’t have gills to separate the oxygen from the water. The earliest diving bells were the first devices that allowed divers to work underwater. The process is simple. A diver could work under water for an extended period of time by returning to the diving bell to catch his breath in the air trapped below the surface.
Our altars are our spiritual diving bells. We go there to breathe the air of heaven in the midst of the polluted atmosphere of the world that doesn’t sustain faith. Then we can leave our altars to live by faith in a world that doesn’t understand what it means to trust God.
A man by the name of Mallory led an expedition to try to conquer Mount Everest in the 1920s. Three attempts failed. On the third try an avalanche hit the team. It killed Mallory and most of the party. A member of the team, Sir Edmund Hillary, survived. He returned to a hero’s welcome in London, England, where a banquet held in his honor was attended by the lords and ladies and powerful people of the British empire. Behind the speakers’ platform were huge blown-up photographs of Mount Everest. When Hillary arose to receive the acclaim of the distinguished audience, he turned around and faced the photographs of the mountain and said, “Mount Everest, you have defeated me. But I will return. And I will defeat you. Because you can’t get any bigger and I can.”
Sir Edmund did return and he did reach the summit of Everest—at 11:30 on the morning of May 29, 1953. When a mountain seems to have mastered you, don’t give up. Build an altar. Meet with God. Let Him strengthen your faith. You will find that God is able to make you and your faith more than adequate to face any difficulty.
Send Pastor Wally your comments.
More Devotions on Spiritual Life
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Pastor Wally Odum is the pastor of OBX Nationin the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He has been in ministry for thirty years and loves to share the Gospel. He is passionate about encouraging others to grow in God through sharing scriptures, stories, and personal experiences.
© OBX Nation, Wally Odum. Used with permission.
A few years ago, Gwen and I joined our small group in a Christmas celebration. We went to a restaurant in Chesapeake, Virginia on a cold December evening. When I walked into the lobby, I smelled hot apple cider. There were two containers. There was no line at one of the ceramic bowls. I walked over to it and detected the unmistakable aroma of hot apple cider. I determined the smart thing to do was to take a cup and scoop cider out of the pot that was getting no attention. I did it and drank a mouthful of foul-tasting potpourri. I learned an important lesson. Don’t go for the phony when the real is available.
That’s what the apostle Paul was saying to the church in Colosse. There was a smorgasbord of false teachings available, all of which demeaned Christ. He reminded them, in the letter to the Colossians, “Jesus is everything.”
Colosse was a pluralistic city with competing ideas, philosophies, and worldviews. False teachers were telling believers there was a better way to God than through Jesus. Paul responded by pointing out who Jesus is and what He did for us are the non-negotiable truths of Christianity.
For those who want to know more about Jesus, there is no passage in Scripture that better describes him than Paul’s words to the Colossian church. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt) NASB
The heart of Paul’s argument is that Jesus is God. “He is the image of the invisible God.” ( ) That is an essential truth. There were different prevailing views about God in the culture of that day. The Greeks thought at least two things about God. The Stoics taught God was without feeling and was totally unconcerned about us. The Epicureans believed God wasn’t interested in us because He was preoccupied with His own pleasure. The Hebrews, familiar with the Old Testament, knew God was invisible.
The Christian view of God is shaped by what Paul wrote. Jesus is the “image” of God. The Greeks used a form of this word for a drawn portrait, the nearest thing at that time to our photograph. When the Greeks made a formal contract, they included the chief characteristics and distinguishing marks of the contracting parties. That detailed description was called the “image.”
The world is looking to see God and we are the ones to whom He has entrusted His picture—Jesus. If we wonder how God feels about sinners, the answer is the way Jesus reached out to them. If we doubt that God really loves us, we see Jesus dying on the Cross. As Paul expressed it, Jesus “is the image of the invisible God.”
One other description Paul gives of Jesus is striking. “In him all things hold together.” It doesn’t take more than casual observation to note that things have a tendency to deteriorate if left unattended: old cars, houses, and relationships. One of the miracles Jesus brings to us is His willingness and ability to hold things together. He not only holds the universe together, but He holds us together.
If someone were to say to me, “Wally, I’m falling apart, going to pieces,” I would say, “You don’t have to fall apart, trust Jesus to hold you together.” The One who made the universe and holds it together has reached down to touch our lives with His creative power and sustain us.
The good news is the same now as it was the day Paul wrote his letter. Jesus paid for us so we could enjoy the promises of God. I can know what God is like because of Jesus and I can participate in God’s blessing because Jesus, my Savior, has paid the bill for me. He holds us together, even if the world seems to be falling apart.
Copyright © Wally Odum 2012. Used by permission.
