Sit Back and Enjoy the Ride: Enjoying the Trip to Heaven

Copyright © 2015 Patti Womack.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 (866) 928-1240

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5127-1924-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-1925-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-1923-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015918558

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/06/2015

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Breathe or Blow a Gasket

Attention Grabber

Apple of God’s Eye

Afraid of the Dark

What Attitude Are You Toting Around?

Appraisal Is Good for the Soul

Blind Spots

The Before and After Effect

A Balancing Act

Know When to Duck or Say No

What Blows Us Out of the Water

Chains or Change

Feeling Blessed

Pushing Our Buttons

I Would Give You a Kidney

Critical Spirits

Bellyaching

Comfortable in My Skin

Lesson Learned from a Piece of Chocolate

What Can Happen While Standing in Line

Communication Is an Art

Spiritually Stressed Out

The Gospel Simply Put

We Can Have It All

A Clear Conscience

Choices Make or Break Us

Get Out of the Boat

Our Faces Will Tell on Us

What Will Really Count

A Good Report

Driving under the Influence

God Has Our Backs

In a Slump

Working against or through Struggles

What Defines You

Drama Free

Delays

Slow Learners

The Proof Is in the Pudding

Just Claim It

Bosom Buddies

Going through a Funk

My Favorite Things

Friday the Thirteenth

Going Forward

Facebook Religion

Faith

Grace

Throwing in the Towel

Guilt-Free Conscience

Use It or Lose It

Gospel Hardened

How Do We View Our Giants?

Spiritually Gullible

What Grade Are We Making?

Holiness

Beautiful Harmony

Hide-and-Seek

Heart of the Matter

Help or Hindrance

Humdrum Moments

Humor Me

Home Sweet Home

Habit Forming

Impossibilites

The Insignificant

What Are You Inhaling?

The Invisible

Out of My League

Judgment Calls

Just a …

Judgment Day

Loving-kindness

Lessons Learned from a Child

Labels

Love versus Fear

Live in the Moment

Is Our Loaf Moldy?

Life’s Not Fair

What a Difference a Day Makes

Coming in Second Place

Modern-Day Miracles

Motives of the Heart

Drop the Act

Maturity Level

Missed Opportunities

Nobody Gave You That Bad Mood

We Can’t Do It All

Nurturing Isn’t for the Faint of Heart

I Found My Niche

What to Overlook

Outward versus Inward

This Ain’t It

Let God Call the Shots

Push the Pause Button

Living inside the Hedge

Someone Only a Mother Could Love

Passion

Our Help Is Just a Prayer Away

It’s All in How You Look at It

Our Daily Appointment with God

Relationships

R & R

Romanticism

How We Will Be Remembered

Random Questions

Small Stuff

The Sacred Moments

Support Group

Just a Big Toe Syndrome

In the Eye of a Storm

A Servant’s Heart

Rockin’ the Outfit

Anchors Aweigh

Caught off Guard

Pleasant Surprises

Workout Journey

No More Sin

Steadfast or Stubborn

I’m a Survivor

Passing with Flying Colors

Walk in Truth

Lesson Learned from a Jigsaw Puzzle

Doughnut Holes

Watch That Tone

Touchy-Feely Kind

Wishing Our Lives Away

Finding God’s Will

Are You Packing Heat?

Not One of My Best Days

What to Put On

Vulnerable

Worship

The Last Chapter

Dedication

This book was birthed out of devotional e-mails I sent to a friend who also works in education. I sent one devotional daily to help jump-start our day at school. She kept telling me I should write a book. So, Marcy Winter, this book is dedicated to you, my friend. Thank you for giving me the push it took for me to step out and share what I love to do. I’m thankful God allowed our paths to cross so we could help each other on our journey to heaven. You’ve made the ride enjoyable.

Preface

I’m very directionally challenged. I can get turned around and end up getting lost leaving a parking lot. Please tell me to turn right or left, not north or south. Thank goodness for that little compass in my car’s rearview mirror. That lady inside my phone’s GPS even gets testy when I can’t seem to follow her directions. She is always recalculating. I then find myself taking yet another lap around the block to get back on the right road. Today there isn’t really any excuse to get lost with all the technology that lets us know our location at all times. We just need to avail ourselves of this great convenience.

The same is true spiritually; there’s no excuse for losing our way with all the books, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit to lead us and keep us on the right track. This book is just a collection of devotionals out of my heart about different situations I’ve encountered on my journey. They are in no certain order or in a time frame. Just enjoy reading it at your leisure. Hopefully this little book will give you encouragement and direction as you travel to heaven. Nothing is better than a road trip, especially if you go with a friend and know where you’re going. So let’s enjoy our trip to heaven together and delight in reading about what we can do when life happens to us.

Breathe or Blow a Gasket

I sometimes become tired of people who continually have a negative attitude. No matter how many times you try to steer them down a more positive path, they soon veer off again. What’s ironic about this situation is that when I become frustrated with their attitudes, they end up giving me an attitude.

We need to guard against this tendency to become negative when we feel our emotions or attitudes heading south. I had a heating-and-air guy preach a sermonette to me one evening and didn’t realize that was what his service call had become, although I must say that he did take up an offering when he charged me for his services. He said that as long as there are moving parts, they don’t last forever, and they certainly have more of a chance to continue working if they are maintained. Obviously he didn’t think, by the looks of my furnace unit and its filter, that I had that done very often, if at all. He was right, of course.

Yes, my heating and cooling units will get dusty, and everything else will clog up my vents, my drains, and whatever else is involved with the moving parts. In the same way, spiritual life will get stifled, lose its effectiveness, and become stagnant because of attitudes, feelings that are stuffed down, or problems that make us want to blow a gasket. We maintain our spiritual moving parts by giving them to God and letting Him help with whatever is bugging the ever-loving delights out of us.

Philippians 4:4 says, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!

Attention Grabber

Hey! What gets your attention? This varies with different personalities. With some people, it takes just a touch or look to get their undivided attention. Others may need more of a jolt to get them to focus on what’s going on. Then there are others who are simply oblivious and don’t even know what’s going on around them.

Being a teacher, I have seen all of the above in my classroom. Sometimes we get so caught up in doing the game plan and getting it right, organized, or funded that we sometimes forget to look to our Coach for strength, direction, or just encouragement. Then we get discouraged when the plan isn’t working, the money isn’t covering the need, or people are just being people; then come frustration, irritation, and stress.

We need to stop, look over toward third base, and get our Coach’s sign to proceed with our game plan. Because just like a coach, God will get our attention one way or another. One night while lying on the couch, I felt the floor shake and realized we were experiencing an earthquake in Wichita, Kansas. I can tell you that God had my full attention. It shouldn’t take a jarring like that to get our attention or remind us of a truth. When we spend time with the Coach, all it takes is a check of the Spirit, a little prick of our conscience, or just a gut feeling of discernment. All these come through the Word and time spent in prayer. So let’s be in a place where we can hear the still, small voice and not be so consumed with obligations of life that God has to shout to be heard above all the distractions that can cover up His voice.

Colossians 3:2 says, Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.

Apple of God’s Eye

In chapter 1 in Deuteronomy Moses turned over the leadership to Joshua and was soon going to die. He reminded the people of Israel of all God had done on their behalf and said that though they had been through many tough situations, God really loved them. Moses made a statement in this chapter that is an encouraging thought for us today. We’re the apple of God’s eye. Some of us here on earth are, or were, the apple of our dad’s eye, but how awesome is it to know that we’re the apple of the eye of the God of the universe?

Just like He did for the Israelites, He knows where we are in our wilderness. He will instruct us on how to maneuver through that wilderness, and He will always surround us with His protection. So mark it down, my fellow Christian; we’re pretty special to God. My dad always carried my senior picture in his billfold; I like to think that if God had a wallet, my picture would be in there as well.

Deuteronomy 32:10 says, He found them in a desert land, and in the wasteland, a howling wilderness. He encircled, He instructed them, and He kept them as the apple of His eye.

Afraid of the Dark

I can’t say I’ve been afraid of the dark, but I haven’t been a real fan of it either. I know one thing for sure: I don’t like staying in the dark.

Spiritually we run into dark places. Some of these places can be doubts, fears, worries, sicknesses, circumstances, or disappointments. These are just a few on a long list. We might be in the dark, waiting to receive our answer to a prayer, to be healed, to feel confident in our faith, or to have the courage to step out of our comfort zone and be completely at rest in God’s will and direction for our lives. We need to step into the light; then things will look differently to us than from our viewpoint from the shadows.

Spiritually if there is light, then there is Jesus. If there is Jesus, then there is a firm belief for any doubt, courage to replace the spirit of fear, trust to cancel out our worry,