ChristianMilitaryWives

When you feel like your strength has run out and you are running on empty, take a look at these verses from God’s Word. There are many, many more verses about strength in the Bible, but these are some of my favorites. I have been so encouraged just putting this list together for you today, and I hope your spirits will be lifted by this as well!

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).

“Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always” (1 Chronicles 16:11).

“For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9a).

“Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).

LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song” (Psalm 28:7).

“The LORD gives strength to his people; the LORD blesses his people with peace” (Psalm 29:11).

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).

“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage” (Psalm 84:5).

“The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation” (Psalm 118:14).

“My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word” (Psalm 119:28).

“but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:31).

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

“He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:8).

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:16-19).

“I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

“May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word” (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17).

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast” (1 Peter 5:10).

Having trouble sleeping? You’re not alone! Last month, veteran military wife Rosie Williams wrote a great column on the subject called “Zzzzzzs Please!” Today, I’d like to just share with you some great Bible verses for those nights of insomnia. (You might also check out the “Go-to Scriptures for when you’re fearful or anxious.”) Print these out and keep them on your nightstand.

“On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night” (Psalm 63:6).

“Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord” (Lamentations 2:19a).

“I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word. My eyes stay open through the watches of the night,  that I may meditate on your promises” (Psalm 119:147-148).

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

“I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8).

“When you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the LORD will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared” (Proverbs 3:24-26).

“You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you” (Psalm 91:5-7).

“I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me” (Psalm 3:5)

“He will not let your foot slip— he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:3-4).

“Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him” (Psalm 62:5).

“You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3).

“He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD” (Psalm 112:7).

“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7).

This post first appeared at www.faithdeployed.com.

by Kathy Guzzo

After Flag Day last year, I was thinking about what the flag represents not just to Americans as a whole, but to me as an individual. Four words immediately came to mind; strength, unity, liberty (freedom) and of course hope. America’s 200 plus years are described in those four words, and we would not be the country we are if we took away even one of them.Later reflecting on those same thoughts, my mind went a different direction. I changed the focus of those four words from being what our Flag represents to our country, to seeing how those same four words represent who and what our Heavenly Father is to us,  Think about it:

Strength:  Psalm 46:1
“God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble.”

Unity: Romans 15:5
“May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus.”

Liberty: 2 Corinthians 3:17
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

Hope: Psalm 25:5
“Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior and my hope is in you all day long.”

So although as Americans and military families the hearing of these words may impact us greatly because they represent foundational ‘things’ in our country;  as followers of Jesus, these words should have an even greater impact, because they are not just things, they are actions. They represent what He is and always will be: Our Strength, Our Unity, Our Liberty, and Our Hope. Just four simple words, but with God behind them, they become mighty!

Kathy Guzzo is a mom of a Marine and leader of Hope @ Home, a group of women with loved ones in the military.

This post originally appeared at www.faithdeployed.com.

by Donna Tallman

Note from Jocelyn: This is the third devotion from Donna in a series I’m posting this week to honor the upcoming Memorial Day holiday.

Gently and quietly he clicks the door shut on his sedan so that even the breeze is unruffled. He deliberately walks toward the oldest row of graves in Section 60. His perfect posture looks military-trained, while the lines on his face mark him Vietnam era. Always focused forward, the eyes of the man in his sixties hone in on one of the markers at the far end. Finally, he reaches the right one and slowly kneels in the grass. The grieving father bows his head.  

Some have said that hospital waiting rooms are the great equalizers of life – that injury and sickness recognize no social class, no ethnic divide, and no age category. All are equally at risk. Cemeteries are even more equalizing than waiting rooms. None recovers here.

The father does not tarry long at his son’s grave. He’s not really here to visit him. Instead, he has come to care for the living. While no one else dares interrupt a widow’s vigil out of respect for her grief, the father does. This tender, caring man can approach where others never should. He is a fellow sufferer, a tempest traveler…one who knows first hand the cost of war.

The father begins his rounds of visitation to the daughters he has adopted in the graveyard. He knows each one by name and checks on their welfare. Over the months they have all visited Arlington to grieve alone together; this unlikely group has grown from being intimate strangers among the tombstones, to caretakers of one another’s sorrow.

While he knows that he cannot bring his son home from Afghanistan, the father seeks to heal the history death attempts to write in each of their hearts. Rising above his own agony, he reaches out to care for those around him, and in the process, finds refuge for his own soul.

Yes, Arlington is a graveyard, a place of the dead. It is also a showcase for valor, a field of honor for America’s most courageous soldiers. And for those knit together by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Arlington is a place of healing from war’s ultimate sacrifice.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3).

Prayer: When life’s raging tempest threatens to break my heart and my spirit, would you, oh Lord, step in with Your authority and restore calm to the churning waves around me? Deliver me and bind up any wounds incurred by my sojourn here on earth.

*This devotion is an excerpt from Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq and Afghanistan (AMG Publishers, fall 2009), which I co-authored with Jane Hampton Cook and John Croushorn. Order your copy from Amazon.com.

Jocelyn Green is also the author of Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives and maintains a Web site for military wives at www.faithdeployed.com.

by Donna A. Tallman

Note from Jocelyn: This is the second devotion from Donna in a series I’m posting this week to honor the upcoming Memorial Day holiday. (Read the first devo, “Free Because of Sacrifice,” here.) This is a very powerful piece- if you would rather not read it, I understand, but consider reposting the link to help others to better grasp the sacrifices required of both military members and those who love them.

A caisson rides by and I leave to follow it to the next funeral. Just across the road a sign reads, “Section 61.”  It is a massive parcel of uncultivated dirt growing only two lone trees. As I wonder why an empty lot sits nearby, the top of the Washington Monument peeks above the small rise holding its breath, waiting for my realization.

“O God, the next war!”  

I steady myself as waves of grief overtake me. Before I know it, I have taken out my camera, and am taking pictures so I never forget their sacrifice. I walk by the headstones of many highly decorated service members. There is a middle-age grandmother, a Marine who loves the Boston Red Sox, a team of five soldiers, and a grave marker for a Muslim. I stop to pray for these families and weep for their loss.

The cadre of mourners attending the earlier service has mostly disappeared. In its place a non-organized yet subconsciously synchronized, convoy of mini vans arrives.  A woman gets out of her van, grabs a blanket, lawn chair, and a jug of water before slamming the door. Mounted on the back of her car is a sticker that reads, “Half my heart in Heaven.”  Another mini van arrives, and another. Each van carries a single woman armed with grief and memories.

Her home has betrayed her. It is no longer full of the life and hope of her husband’s return, so she escapes to Arlington to reflect. The widow comes to say the things that she cannot say at home . . . to utter aloud the unspeakable agony of her heart. Surrounded by a field of dead strangers, the widow now feels more at home in a cemetery than she does in her own house. She is tired. She is lonely. She is broken.

In the waning afternoon hours of what has become a typical day, the widow lies face down over her husband’s grave aching to hold and be held. She whispers a prayer of surrender, and asks for the strength for just one more day. Despite the challenges she knows await her, yesterday’s widow rises to conquer her own battle…the battle for her future.

“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak”  (Isaiah 40:29).

Lord, when I have expended all that I have, remind me that your resources are limitless and you eagerly desire to add your strength to my faith.

*This devotion is an excerpt from Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq and Afghanistan (AMG Publishers, fall 2009), which I co-authored with Jane Hampton Cook and John Croushorn. Order your copy from Amazon.com.

In honor of Memorial Day coming up next Monday, I'm posting this devotion written by Donna Tallman:

Step by determined step I walk on through Arlington Cemetery.  A car passes on my left, then another and another. The procession of mourners drives by in slow motion making its way to the grave site. A color guard stands at attention near a freshly dug grave. A bugler waits for his call, and a squad of seven riflemen stands across the field for their moment of tribute. Cicadas hum just below the surface of unspeakable grief.

I hurry under a tree, not suitably dressed for a funeral nor invited by the family; but here by circumstance in my nation’s field of honor. He is my soldier.

Beautiful in its simplicity, the military funeral proceeds with expected precision.  A minister addresses the young crowd of mourners. The flag covering the soldier’s coffin is folded and given to today’s grieving widow whose two restless toddlers squirm next to her. She bows her head in anguished respect – uncertain the nation is truly grateful for her sacrifice, but so very proud of the hero her husband is. The riflemen give a twenty-one gun salute matched by twenty-one unexpected echoes from another burial in progress on the cemetery grounds. The shots of honor reverberate back and forth across the valley as if to emphasize the sobering cost of freedom.  

The cicadas pick up their song again whirring louder and louder until I feel them pounding in my ears. Looking up through the tree, I see that a helicopter has joined their cacophony giving tribute to this fallen hero. The bugler closes with the mournful notes of “Taps,” hanging onto the last note until it slowly dissolves into history.  

The crowd disperses while I wait under the tree. Stillness returns. Slowly, I begin to walk the uniform rows of gravestones. The magnitude of what we have asked of our soldiers and the grief these families are going through comes quickly into focus. I realize that for the first time ever, I am standing in the graveyard of a war in progress.

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”

(John 15:13).

Prayer: Father, remind me that liberty never travels without its companion, sacrifice, and that sacrifice never travels without love. When I am tempted to forget the sacrifices of others on my behalf, remind me that even You paid the ultimate price for my freedom – the life of your only Son because You loved me.

*This devotion is an excerpt from Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq and Afghanistan (AMG Publishers, fall 2009), which I co-authored with Jane Hampton Cook and John Croushorn. Order your copy from Amazon.com.

“Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God” (Isaiah 50:10b).

Ever since I bought Sara Groves’ latest album Fireflies and Songs, the song titled “From this one place” has really stuck in my mind. I bet most of you can relate to the theme of the song, too. She talks about not being able to see the road in front of her, not knowing what the future holds, and how scary that is. Here’s the chorus:

“From this one place I can’t see very far/ In this one moment I’m square in the dark/These are the things I will trust in my heart/ You can see something else”

Does this sound like something you have said or felt before? One struggling military wife once told me she felt like she was so in the dark she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, and it was all she could do to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. If we haven’t been in that place yet, I’m pretty confident that it’s only a matter of time before we are there too.

But the comfort comes in knowing that while we can’t see much from our point of view right now, God sees it all. He sees the big picture, and as Sara says in her song, He “can see something else.” Oh how we long to know what it is that God sees that we can’t! But if we could see it all at once, we wouldn’t have to trust Him. And I believe God wants to use the dark times of our lives to build our relationship with Him. In our darkest hours, it’s what we believe about God’s character that will sustain us. Do we believe that He is sovereign and in control? Do we believe that He is trustworthy? Our answers to these questions are more important than knowing the answers about what tomorrow will hold.

I absolutely love what Carolyn Custis James says in her book When Life and Beliefs Collide:

“God’s character is crucial, for there are moments in life when God’s goodness and love seem to come under a blackout. No matter how we strain our eyes, we cannot see any good, not a trace of God’s love . . . When faith cannot find something tangible to grasp, we are compelled to fly back to the ark of God’s unchanging, unfailing character. But faith will not find much of a foothold here if God is a stranger to us. Faith, in the finaly analysis, is trusting someone you know, even when you don’t always understand what he is doing” (page 73).

In a devotion titled “Faith Challenged” in the book Faith Deployed, Army wife Rebekah Benimoff shares this:

“When a young lady who once served on the chapel praise team with me learned that her husband had been killed in Iraq, those of us who served with her were shaken. while some people I knew were certain that God had told them everything would be okay, I had no such assurance. What God told me was quite different. He said that no matter what happens, He would carry me through. And to this day, He has” (page 216).

Rebekah was in the dark about her husband’s future, and about her future with him–as all of us are. But she learned to put her hope in the One who knows it all. “He can see something else…”

Jocelyn Green is the author of Faith Deployed: Daily Encoruagement for Military Wives, along with 14 other contributing writers, and maintains a Web site for military wives at www.faithdeployed.com.

In honor of the Month of the Military Child, I’d like to share this story to remember the children of the heroes who don’t come home. If you know a family who has lost a military member in Iraq or Afghanistan, please share this with them.

In November 2006, U.S. Air Force Major Steve Harrold, then stationed in Colorado Springs, lost a good friend who was killed in an F-16 crash in Iraq. He left behind a wife and five children, two of which were sons the same ages as Harrold’s boys: seven and nine years old. Harrold felt called to do something for these boys and others like them who had lost their fathers to the war.

Partnering with Journey Chapel Pastor Eric Eaton in Monument, Colo., a one-week camp was born in June 2007 called Modern Day Knights, later named Knights of Heroes. Sixteen boys from five states came to spend time together, be paired with a mentor and spend their days kayaking, rock climbing, camping, and doing other outdoor adventures. The camp pays for all expenses, including airfare for those who come and hotel stays for the moms and siblings.