The Overflowing Cup: A Devotional


The Woman at the well


“Fill my cup, Lord; I lift it up, Lord…” These simple yet profound words from the hymn express a heart yearning to be filled by the Lord’s presence. It reminds us of the story of the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:7-14, where Jesus offers living water that quenches spiritual thirst eternally.

Life often leaves us parched, seeking satisfaction in things that fade—success, possessions, or approval. Yet, Christ’s invitation is clear: “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst” (John 4:14). Only He can fill the emptiness within us and give us a life of abundance that overflows.

To lift our cup is to humbly admit our need and surrender to His grace. It’s an act of trust, inviting God to meet us in our brokenness and renew our spirits. When He fills us, our lives become vessels of His love and blessings, spilling over into the lives of others.

As you meditate on this hymn, take a moment to lift your own “cup” to God. Pray for His living water to refresh and sustain you. Trust that He is faithful to meet you right where you are and to fill you—not just for today, but for eternity.


May this devotional remind you of the richness of God’s grace and the sufficiency of His provision in every season. What part of the hymn speaks most deeply to your heart?

FILL MY CUP LORD

George Beverly Shea

Like the woman at the well I was seeking
For things that could not satisfy;
And then I heard my Savior speaking:
“Draw from my well that never shall run dry”.

Fill my cup Lord, I lift it up, Lord!
Come and quench this thirsting of my soul;
Bread of heaven, Feed me till I want no more
Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole!

There are millions in this world who are craving
The pleasures earthly things afford;
But none can match the wondrous treasure
That I find in Jesus Christ my Lord.

Fill my cup Lord, I lift it up, Lord!
Come and quench this thirsting of my soul;
Bread of heaven, Feed me till I want no more
Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole!

REFLECTIONS ON THE PASSION OF CHRIST


Reflecting on the Passion Week: A Journey of Love and Sacrifice

The Passion Week, also known as Holy Week, is a cornerstone of Christian faith. It commemorates the final week of Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry—a period filled with profound teachings, acts of love, and a sacrifice that changed the course of history. Each day of this sacred week offers a poignant glimpse into Jesus’ unwavering mission and the depth of His love for humanity.

Palm Sunday: The Triumphal Entry

The week begins with Palm Sunday, a day of celebration as Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling Old Testament prophecies. Crowds welcomed Him with shouts of “Hosanna!” and palm branches, recognizing Him as the promised Messiah. Yet, beneath this joyous occasion lay the shadow of what was to come. It was a moment of triumph mixed with the foreshadowing of sacrifice.

Holy Monday and Tuesday: Cleansing the Temple and Teaching

On Monday, Jesus cleansed the temple, driving out merchants who had turned a house of prayer into a marketplace. This act highlighted His zeal for holiness and reverence. On Tuesday, He engaged in profound teachings and parables, addressing topics like faith, hypocrisy, and the coming kingdom of God. These days were marked by Jesus’ wisdom and authority, which amazed both His followers and His critics.

Spy Wednesday: The Betrayal Begins

Wednesday is often referred to as “Spy Wednesday,” as it marks Judas Iscariot’s decision to betray Jesus. For thirty pieces of silver, Judas conspired with religious leaders to hand Jesus over. This act of betrayal reminds us of human frailty and the cost of sin, yet it also sets the stage for God’s redemptive plan.

Maundy Thursday: A Final Act of Love

On Maundy Thursday, Jesus gathered with His disciples for the Last Supper, instituting the sacrament of Communion. He washed their feet, demonstrating humility and servanthood. It was a night of love and fellowship, yet it ended with Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, fully aware of the suffering He was about to endure. His agony in the garden revealed His humanity and submission to God’s will.

Good Friday: The Ultimate Sacrifice

Good Friday is the somber culmination of Passion Week. Jesus was arrested, falsely accused, and subjected to unimaginable suffering. He was crucified on a Roman cross, bearing the weight of humanity’s sins. As He breathed His last and declared, “It is finished,” the veil in the temple tore, symbolizing the new access to God made possible through His sacrifice. Good Friday is both heart-wrenching and awe-inspiring—a day of immense sorrow and divine grace.

Holy Saturday: Waiting in Silence

Holy Saturday is a day of quiet reflection. Jesus lay in the tomb, and His followers mourned, grappling with grief and uncertainty. It is a day that reminds us of the tension between despair and hope, as God’s redemptive plan was still unfolding.

Easter Sunday: Victory Over Death

The week culminates in the glorious celebration of Easter Sunday, when Jesus rose from the dead, conquering sin and death. His resurrection is the cornerstone of Christian faith, offering hope, redemption, and the promise of eternal life to all who believe.

Final Thoughts

Passion Week is more than a historical account; it is a spiritual journey that invites reflection, gratitude, and renewed faith. It reminds us of the depth of God’s love and the lengths He went to reconcile humanity to Himself. As we meditate on these events, may we find inspiration to live lives marked by love, humility, and a steadfast hope in the risen Christ.

Views From the Nest 2-6-2015


 

 

 

 

“Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.”

–Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803

TurboTax Temporarily Halts E-Filing In All States Amid Fraud Concerns

Up to 18 states are reporting significant upticks in fraudulent activity and there may be a common thread: tax preparation software.y


As of yesterday, Thursday, February 5, Intuit is temporarily pausing transmission of state e-filing tax returns. This is effective for all states. Intuit will be working with the states today to begin turning transmissions back on.

In the meantime, to assist any customers who believe they are victims of tax fraud, Intuit has a dedicated toll-free number, 1.800.944.8596, with direct access to specially trained identity protection agents who will provide comprehensive support and filing assistance. You might note that’s the same number that Minnesota has provided to taxpayers. It is not a state-specific number. It is available to all potentially affected taxpayers.

In addition, Intuit will provide identity protection services and free credit monitoring, as well as provide access to all versions of its software or to the assistance of one of Intuit’s credentialed tax experts who will prepare taxes for affected customers at no expense.

It’s important to note that as of now, this issue is only being reported by taxpayers using TurboTax.

So far, there has been no indication that federal returns have been affected.

The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment

Here’s something that many Americans — including some of the smartest and most educated among us — don’t know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading. Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%.

The unemployment numbers are misleading because they fail to indicate the number of people who have given up looking for work but are UNEMPLOYED. The number also includes part-time workers who are counted as EMPLOYED by the government figures but are not working at a full-time job. In fact full-time jobs are at an all time low with only 44% of the population holding full-time jobs (30+ hours a week). If you work one hour a week and get paid a measely $20 you are counted as employed by the government numbers.

Since Obama assumed the office of President the JUnited States has lost 13million full-time jobs and to date has only gained back 3 million. We have another 10 million jobs to go just to break even. There is nothing good about the jobs report other than to say it is trending upward ever so slowly.


By the Numbers: Obama’s Economic, Jobs and Deficit Performance Worst on Record

Given what we know now, only Barack Obama could attempt to characterize his economic record as one of achievement rather than historic failure. Only Obama could attempt to characterize his record on deficits, which dwarf those of any other president that preceded him, as a successful one.

And only Obama could characterize today’s record federal spending and incoming tax receipts as “senseless austerity.”


How Public School Administrators Endanger Special-Needs Kids
When faced with the choice between protecting children or protecting the public school system, the system’s lawyers chose to protect the system.

If a parent in Virginia repeatedly locked a 7-year-old child in a closet, child-protective social service agencies would come down on him like a ton of bricks. But if a school administrator does the same thing, he has a green light to keep it up. Hypothetical? Not at all.


Happy Birthday Mr Reagan
Ronald Reagan’s Birthday

February 6, 2015, marks the 104th anniversary of President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s birthday, or as he would have phrased it, the 65th anniversary of his 39th birthday. Either way, we are grateful beyond measure for his great service to our country, the shining City on a Hill, and his steadfast devotion to Essential Liberty.


TAIL FEATHERS

other news from around the web

U.S. measles outbreak prompts vaccine crackdown in New Mexico schools

New Minimum Wage Law Forces Small Businesses to Close


Franklin Graham to Obama: Muhammad Killed Innocents, Christ Didn’t


THE LOONEY BIN

Stories from the looney land of leftists

Charge: 2012 TEACHER OF THE YEAR Took Boy Into Her Home, Had Lots Of Sex With Him


EPA Crafts Regulation on Wood Stoves

After going after coal companies, the Environmental Protection Agency has decided to hit every self-sufficient American. The EPA has created a 344-page rule tightening the emission standards of the humble wood stove.


Welfare for Joints in Colorado

Taxpayer dollars in Denver are going to pot. Literally.


A Lesson in Contrast

On the one hand you have ISIS barbarism which President Obama compares to the Christian Crusades which were a result of Muslim barbarism.

Blockbuster Report from the UN: ISIS is Selling, Crucifying and Burying Children Alive in Iraq

(There is photographic evidence of ISIS’ various crimes against children, and humanity in general… but I couldn’t stomach them. If you want to see them do a simple Google search – but don’t say I didn’t warn you.) Does it seem like a new story of ISIS atrocities makes itself known each new day?y


Obama defends Islamic terrorism

Obama Defends Islam while Scapegoating Christians at Prayer Breakfast

What amazes me most about Barack Hussein Obama is the fact that he cannot attribute the barbaric deeds taught in the Koran by Muslims in the Islamic State to Islam, but he can apparently attack Christians over deeds that are not taught in the Bible.y


That is all for today. Eagle out!

 

 

 

If You Love God, the World is Going to Hate You


“… Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4, ESV).

 

This week in Pakistan, a pregnant Christian mother of four and her husband, falsely accused of burning pages of the Koran, were beaten by a Muslim mob and thrown into a kiln, a fiery oven at a brick factory, where they were roasted alive.

Over 200 Christian girls in Nigeria were captured by Boko Haram. “I abducted your girls, said its leader, Abubakar Shekau in May; “By Allah I will sell them in the marketplace” as slaves.

Pastor Saeed Abedini, an American, is still being held in prison in Iran for apostasy and practicing his Christian faith. Source

The current trend in society today is for everyone to get along. The tag-line is tolerance. Except when it comes to morality and societal norms than tolerance becomes lost in the rhetoric and vitriol.

No one likes to be told what to do, and yet that is exactly what is happening in our society. A few people are telling everyone else how they are to behave and act. They are pushing their views of morality upon the masses, and refuse to show any tolerance to those who might not hold to their moral standards. These preachers of hate stand in the city square and pontificate loudly and forcibly their viewpoints and even threaten dissenters with legal action. They are all for freedom of speech and assembly as long as those who are speaking are using the approved talking points and are gathered in support of the ‘cause’. There is no room for opposing viewpoints.

If anyone does happen to offer an opposing viewpoint or even question the legitimacy of the issue they are shouted down, or worse yet browbeaten into submission.

Who are these militant purveyors of hate? If you said right-wing conservative Christians you would be 180 degrees out of step with the real world. The true haters are all those who hate God. They call themselves progressive, liberal, or free-thinkers. They portray themselves are ‘enlightened’ and educated, while portraying their adversaries as ignorant, unenlightened, and regressive. They only wish to hear one side of an argument, and that has to agree with their viewpoint.

Real enlightened individuals espouse multiple viewpoints, and ponder all differences of opinions, and weigh all options before forming a defining position on any issue. The ones who militantly vocalize only one viewpoint are not open-minded at all but are rather close-minded and dogmatic. They show no tolerance or mercy. They are hateful, vindictive, and vile ideologues.

They do however have one thing in common, they have a uniform dislike for anything that resembles God or godliness. They hate the sound of Jesus’ name, and run with their ears stopped when scripture is read out loud. They bash Christianity and decency at every opportunity. They are lawless, abusive, selfish, slanderous, ungrateful, unthankful, disrespectful, loud, obnoxious, unforgiving, proud, abusive, greedy, brutal, lack any self-control, are conceited, and boastful. They rejoice in wrongdoing, and actually encourage others to take part in their destructive behavior as if to be promoting a worthwhile cause.

Those who espouse Christian principles and a Godly worldview, attempt to live at peace with all men. They are loving and kind, generous, forgiving, merciful, law-abiding, honest, truthful, and humble. And because they love Jesus Christ and have faith in the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, they are hated by the world, just like Jesus was.

2 Timothy 3:2-4 (NIV)
2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God–

We have been warned that this day would come.  There will be those who will pretend to be godly and even use scripture to support their perversions, and the bible tells us to have nothing to do with them. Do not imitate their ways, do not even engage them in their folly, simply have nothing to do with them. Let them go and do what they are going to do, because in the end they will receive the rewards their folly deserve, for they have rejected the wisdom of their elders, and have forsaken the sure paths to walk in crooked paths. They have built their lives on the shifting sand of moral relativism and as a result what they are building will crumble and fall. It is inevitable and their destruction is sure.

As for your my brothers and sisters in Christ:

Matthew 5:11-12 (BBE)
11 Happy are you when men give you a bad name, and are cruel to you, and say all evil things against you falsely, because of me. 12 Be glad and full of joy; for great is your reward in heaven: for so were the prophets attacked who were before you.

 

And that is the way I see it. What say you?

Fruit Inspectors, Log Detectors, or Foolish Advisors? You be the Judge!


Isaiah 59:14-15  “And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth has fallen in the streets and equity cannot enter.  Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey:  and the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no judgment.”

 

I am afraid that we have lost our way in America. For too long we have been fed this anti-biblical principle that no one is allowed to judge anyone for anything, and we are all just supposed to love one another no matter how the other person behaves or what the other person believes even if those beliefs are contrary to our own. We are being told over and over that tolerance is the way forward, and we all need to be accepting of others.

The only problem with this is those who are calling for others to not judge set themselves up as the arbiters and judges of all that is judgmental. In other words they judge others while exempting themselves from the same judgment they are meting out.

In fact, in today’s modern culture, “judge not” carries more weight than another of Christ’s one-liners, ”Go and sin no more.” This is a situation where a little Bible knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

JUDGE NOT and THOU SHALL NOT are not stand alone statements.

It is important to take scripture in context to get the full meaning of what Jesus or any of the other biblical writers are trying to say. Taken in context then we have our judge not comment below.

Mathew 7:1-5 “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

You see, Jesus commanded us to not judge hypocritically, He never commanded us not to judge. He asked us to remove the logs so we could “see clearly” to help our brother. How are we to remove a log if we feel that we do not have a log? And how is it that we learn about having a log in the first place? If everyone around us keeps telling us the way we  see things is right and good, then we will continue down a path that we think is right only to find that path led us right to our own demise. What was the problem? How did we get here? Why did God allow me to go down this road? My friend it was because you had believed the lie that you should not be judged in anything you said or did or thought. You were blinded by a huge log that you refused to allow anyone to point out to you.

So then how do we learn about our logs or specks for that matter? We learn from others who have already removed the logs from their eyes, or better had the logs removed for them by the Lord through spiritual encounters.

I Corinthians 2:15 “But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.”

We are instructed to judge all things….things…not people.  Actions, thoughts and words are things. Choices are things, what people do are things. You should judge decisions and actions of others to decide if those actions are good or bad. Yes my friends some things are bad for you. Heck if we follow the teaching of these blinded fools and not judge anything then we will not be long for this life since we will be eating poisoned fruit. Who is it among us who will stand and say that they do not judge what they eat? No one would intentionally ingest poison, and yet many, for lack of judgment, are ingesting a deadly poison, that of a failed worldview. Their visions are clouded by huge logs. Just like a good chef knows how to pick good fruits and vegetables to cook with, and seeks out only the freshest and finest ingredients, shouldn’t we do the same when it comes to things that pertain to this life?

Yes we are and yes we should!

I Corinthians 6:2-4 “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.”

….How much more the things that pertain to this life.

Only  a fool would willing eat poison, or follow a path that led off a cliff, and using sound judgment is the key to avoiding such deadly consequences. The problem with sin though is its subtlety. It is not  labeled poisonous and  there are no DANGER signs posted on the pathway of destruction. In fact sin is very enticing, it has an intoxicating appeal. It is addictive. Like the siren’s of Homer’s Odyssey sin’s haunting allure leads all to their destruction.

We all have specks in our eyes and our visions are cloudy, some even have forest growing in their eyes, therefore all of us need some guidance and direction when it comes to matters that pertain to life. It is where we go to get that instruction which could be a matter of life and death. Paul admonished the Corinthian church to set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. In other words listen to those who you might not otherwise esteem as notable. Many times God speaks through those we least expect and in ways that challenge our intellects.

How then can one know what is good and what is bad? Discernment is the short answer, but learning from others is probably the better answer. Allow others to look for logs and specks. Allow your fruit to be inspected by a certified fruit inspector.

Matthew 7:15-18 “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.”

Jesus clearly delineates between good and bad, and exhorts us to do the same. That requires judgment.

Do not think too highly of yourself that you feel you are above reproach in all areas of life. Pride will surely lead you down the road of self-destruction because you will not heed the warnings of others, or listen to the rebukes of those who have gone down the same path before you. You will simply cry out in a loud voice…WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE while you are speeding along the pathway of destruction.