Devotionals
Welcome the Season
 Fall is the season associated with harvesting.  It is the time to gather the ripe crops from the fields.  Like harvesting crops, we need to take time to enjoy the reaping of what we have sown.  Take time to look back over your year.  How have your grown? Worshipped? Laughed?  Instead of seeking to accomplish something new, take time to celebrate what has already been accomplished.  Thank God for the abundance in your life~~~family, friends, church, job, food ~~~the ways God meets your needs daily.  Embrace the present.  Savor it.  Prepare your heart for Thanksgiving with a posture of gratitude for the provisions God has already provided.  
 
Let's welcome the season of fall with these words from Psalm 95:1~7:
 
Come, let's shout joyfully to the Lord,
shout triumphantly to the rock of our salvation!
Let's enter his presence with thanksgiving;
let's shout triumphantly to him in song.
 
For the Lord is a great God,
a great King above all gods.
The depths of the earth are in his hand,
and the mountain peaks are His.
The sea is His; He made it.
His hands formed the dry land. 
 
Come, let's worship and bow down;
let's kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For He is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
the sheep under his care. 

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Morning, October 17
Today's Evening Reading
"And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul." - 1 Samuel 27:1

The thought of David's heart at this time was a false thought, because he certainly had no ground for thinking that God's anointing him by Samuel was intended to be left as an empty unmeaning act. On no one occasion had the Lord deserted his servant; he had been placed in perilous positions very often, but not one instance had occurred in which divine interposition had not delivered him. The trials to which he had been exposed had been varied; they had not assumed one form only, but many - yet in every case he who sent the trial had also graciously ordained a way of escape. David could not put his finger upon any entry in his diary, and say of it, "Here is evidence that the Lord will forsake me," for the entire tenor of his past life proved the very reverse. He should have argued from what God had done for him, that God would be his defender still. But is it not just in the same way that we doubt God's help? Is it not mistrust without a cause? Have we ever had the shadow of a reason to doubt our Father's goodness? Have not his lovingkindnesses been marvellous? Has he once failed to justify our trust? Ah, no! our God has not left us at any time. We have had dark nights, but the star of love has shone forth amid the blackness; we have been in stern conflicts, but over our head he has held aloft the shield of our defence. We have gone through many trials, but never to our detriment, always to our advantage; and the conclusion from our past experience is, that he who has been with us in six troubles, will not forsake us in the seventh. What we have known of our faithful God, proves that he will keep us to the end. Let us not, then, reason contrary to evidence. How can we ever be so ungenerous as to doubt our God? Lord, throw down the Jezebel of our unbelief, and let the dogs devour it.

-- C.H.Spurgeon Morning and Evening Daily Devotional
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