Posts from July 2020 (Page 3)
Reopening to Guests mid-September!
We are so excited to be welcoming guests again! Our doors open mid-September and we are looking forward to seeing old friends and preparing to meet new ones. At Spirit in the Desert Retreat Center we have been busy deep cleaning and disinfecting while the center has been on hiatus. New protocols are in place for dealing with COVID-19 so if you have any questions, please call us at 480-488-5218 and we will be happy to give you more information.Our…
Daily Devotions: July 7, 2020
July 7, 2020 Psalm 65:9-10 … “You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it.” vs. 9 For much of our existence, humans lived close to nature and were familiar with the rhythms of the seasons. They saw God connections clearly and recognized the presence of the Lord in the tilling of crops and the watering of the…
Daily Devotions: July 6, 2020
July 6, 2020 Isaiah 55:10-13 … “For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” vs. 12 When the Prophet brought the word of the Lord to the returned exiles, they had a hard time believing that the nation could ever be restored to its former glory. And to think that the nation of…
Daily Devotions: July 5, 2020
July 5, 2020 Matthew 11:25-30 … “At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants;’” vs. 30 These words from Jesus remind us that not everyone was excited about his ministry to the least and the lost. It seems that those cities most closely tied to the Jewish traditions and the teaching of the elders had a…
Daily Devotions: July 4, 2020
July 4, 2020 Matthew 11:16-19 … “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’” vss. 16-17 Jesus marveled at the fickleness of the crowds that he encountered. They were never satisfied and always critical in their assessments of those God had sent to them. They called John demonic and…
Daily Devotions: July 3, 2020
July 3, 2020 Romans 7:15-25a … “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” vs. 24-25a Paul had gotten caught up in what we might call ‘dualistic thinking’ and it was driving him crazy. He describes himself as being caught between the law of God, which was what he wanted to do, and the law of sin, which dictated his actions. When he wanted to…
Daily Devotions: July 2, 2020
July 2, 2020 Psalm 145:11-14 … “The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.” vs. 14 Through the centuries we’ve had varying attitudes about God and some very different definitions of God’s being. Those ideas even change within the course of a lifetime, as most all of us can testify. When we were children we probably tended to attach human attributes to God, making God a kind of a ‘superman in the sky.’…
Daily Devotions: July 1, 2020
July 1, 2020 Psalm 145:8-10 … “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” vs. 8 Words of love never get old! We can hear words of love and affirmation from one another every day, many times a day, and they never fail to work their magic. They bring healing to hurting hearts and lift our sagging spirits. In the same way, we never tire of hearing from Scripture that the Lord abounds in…