{"id":5037,"date":"2023-09-25T18:11:26","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T23:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=5037"},"modified":"2023-09-25T18:11:26","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T23:11:26","slug":"devotional-on-esther-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-esther-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Esther"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-sKhjdO21WyM\/Xw9jKsrOD8I\/AAAAAAABFhM\/ExKFRbaAAvUgJ9PcqNL7BwosYPoVa67RgCPcBGAsYHg\/s1600\/IMG_20190621_160624.jpg\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2019 &#8211; Colonial Beach, VA<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nSometimes a book is not just a book<br \/>\nEsther 6: That night the king couldn&#8217;t sleep.<br \/>\nEven as Haman dreams of power and revenge king Xerxes is having a sleepless night. He decides a cure for his insomnia might be a bit of light reading so he has the daily journal brought to him and as he reads it he\u2019s reminded of Mordecai&#8217;s heroism in foiling the plot against his own life. What an interesting set of coincidences! The king can&#8217;t sleep, Haman is planning to take Mordecai&#8217;s life in the morning, the king asks for some journals to read and some unnamed servant just happens to pick the journal that includes Mordecai&#8217;s heroism. We know there\u2019s more going on here than circumstance. In all this we see the hand of God. Does this teach me that every time I can&#8217;t sleep God has something to tell me or that everything I happen to read is supposed to remind me of something important? Of course not! Sometimes I can&#8217;t sleep because I\u2019m simply too wound up from my day. Sometimes I read stuff that\u2019s just a plain waste of time. But not always. As a worshipper of God I believe that God is active in this world and that he\u2019s a communicating God. Sometimes, therefore, a book is just a book. Other times, though, it\u2019s a message from God. The important thing for me is to be aware of that and to remain open, to paraphrase J.B. Phillips, on the &#8220;God-ward&#8221; side of life.<br \/>\nTake Away: Don\u2019t be surprised when the Lord shows up in surprising ways!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes a book is not just a book Esther 6: That night the king couldn&#8217;t sleep. Even as Haman dreams of power and revenge king Xerxes is having a sleepless night. He decides a cure for his insomnia might be a bit of light reading so he has the daily journal brought to him and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1492,7],"tags":[123,189,497],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5037"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14694,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037\/revisions\/14694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}