Navigating the Storms Devotional: 31 Days of Encouragement

By Dawn Victoria Hunt

A month-long devotional offering Bible-based encouragement and advice for maintaining faith through the chaos and turbulence of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312368385

Book preview

Navigating the Storms Devotional: 31 Days of Encouragement

Navigating the Storms Devotional

31 Days of Encouragement

Dawn Victoria Hunt

Also by Dawn Victoria Hunt

Navigating the Storms:

Encouragement for the New or Renewed Believer

Copyright © 2014 by Dawn Victoria Hunt

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the King James Bible (KJV), Public Domain.

Scripture quotations marked (NKJV) are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (AMP) are taken from the Amplified Bible, Copyright

© 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked (MSG) are taken from The Message, Copyright

© 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Published in the United States of America First printing: 2014

ISBN: 978-1-312-36838-5

The Lord is righteous in all His ways,

Gracious in all His works.

The Lord is near to all who call upon Him,

To all who call upon Him in truth.

He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him;

He also will hear their cry and save them.

The Lord preserves all who love Him,

But all the wicked He will destroy.

My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord,

And all flesh shall bless His holy name

Forever and ever.

Psalm 145:17-21 (NKJV)

In memory of my beloved father,

Wilbur W. Hunt

Introduction

Life sucks sometimes. That’s not what you’d expect to be the first line in a Christian inspirational book, but it’s true – sometimes life sucks. You probably wouldn’t have picked up this book if it didn’t. The point of this book isn’t to try to convince you that once you become a Christian life is all rainbows and lollipops. The cold, hard truth is that life is hard whether you’re a Christian or not. As a matter of fact, life actually gets harder for some people after they accept Christ as their Lord and Savior.

I’m compelled to write because too many people have been sold a fairy tale about how life is supposed to suddenly become perfect once they get saved; when they realized that’s not true they feel duped, depressed, disillusioned, and/or lied to and often turn away from God because they didn’t get the life they thought they were signing up for. A lot of believers, new or otherwise, aren’t versed enough in the Bible to know that an easy life isn’t what God promised us. He says His burden is easy, not that life would be. In fact, multiple times throughout the New Testament we are warned that we will have trials and suffering (Acts 14:22, Romans 8:18, 2 Corinthians 1:5-7, James 1:2-4). Jesus tells us that Himself (Matthew 13:21, John 15:18-21, John 16:33). (A quick side note in case you are not familiar with Scripture citation: the Bible is divided into 66 books with their own chapters and verses, the name is the name of the book within the Bible, the number before the colon refers to the chapter and the numbers after the colon are the verses.) My purpose here is to show you through the Word of God how to work through those periods of discouragement and disillusionment because they will come. There will