Michael Irwin Smith

Good morning! Thank you Lord for answering our prayers. If You Are Still Here And Breathing Your Prayers Have Been Answered Sometimes the answered prayer is not the soaring, but the walking, the steady, unspectacular step that keeps you upright when everything in you wants to stop. Strength is often renewed in the middle of the troubled walk, not before it. 2 Corinthians 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” You may still feel the weakness. That does not cancel the answer. The grace that held you through the night is the same grace holding you now. Enough was given, and it is still enough. Psalm 46:1 “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” If trouble came and you are still here, then help was present, even when it did not feel like rescue, even when it only felt like endurance. Presence is a form of answer. The deeper thing is this: many prayers are answered not by the removal of the trial, but by the quiet sustaining of the one who walks through it. You are still standing. That is not small. That is the Lord’s faithfulness made visible in the simple fact that you remain. Father, we come as people who have not been consumed. You heard the prayers we could barely say, the ones for strength we did not feel, for protection we could not see, for one more morning when the night felt longer than our courage. We thank You that Your answers are sometimes simply this: that we are still here. Still able to stand. Still able to speak Your name. Teach us to recognize the miracle in the ordinary fact of our remaining, and to trust that the same hands that kept us will also carry us forward. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Good morning! Thank You Lord for another blessed day. The Fires Within You The flame is not meant to destroy you. It is meant to keep you alive. Leviticus 6:13 “The fire on the altar must be kept burning; it must not go out.” Jeremiah 20:9 “But if I say, ‘I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” Luke 12:49 “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Acts 2:3 “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.” Malachi 3:2–3 “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.” 1 Peter 1:7 “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” Lord, There are places in me where the fire has grown quiet. Not gone, but low, coals under ash, warm but not bright. You know the corners where the passion once leapt and now only smolders. I bring those places to You without holding back. Stir them again. Not with spectacle, but with the kind of flame that stays. The kind that cleanses as it warms. The kind that refuses to go out because it was never mine to keep alive in the first place. Burn what needs burning. Leave what is meant to remain. And teach me, even in the heat, to trust the hands that tend the fire. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Good morning! Heavenly Father thank you for another wonderful day. The Wonderous Dangers of These Days. Be Careful What You Listen To. Matthew 7:15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Romans 16:17–18 “I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.” 2 Timothy 4:3–4 “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” 1 John 4:1 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” 2 Peter 2:1–3 “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words.” Jeremiah 23:16 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord.’” Lord, guard our ears from the soft voice that flatters, and our eyes from the smile that hides the snare. Give us a quiet steadiness that does not rush toward what feels good, but pauses to ask what is true. When words arrive smooth as oil and warm as comfort, let Your Word stand clear beside them, sharp enough to show the difference. Keep our feet on the narrow path even when the wider one is crowded and cheerful. Protect us not only from being fooled, but from the slow drift that begins when we stop testing. Teach us to love the sound of truth more than the sound of approval. And when we are uncertain, hold us close enough to You that we recognize Your voice above every other. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Good evening! Thank You Lord for another blessed day. Have You Looked at Yourself Lately? What Needs Fixing? The deeper work of knowing yourself is often not finding a new list of rules you have broken, but noticing what you have stopped noticing: the subtle preference for being right over being reconciled, the way self-protection has become more natural than love, the quiet agreements you have made with bitterness or distraction. The invitation is less “try harder” and more “let yourself be known.” Most of what needs fixing is already known by the One who is patient enough to stay while you look. “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” — Psalm 139:23-24 “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.” — Lamentations 3:40 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? … First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly…” — Matthew 7:3, 5 “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” — Proverbs 4:23 “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” — 1 John 1:8-9 Father, I come without the usual defenses. Not to list my strengths, but to ask for light. Search me deep for the rooms I keep closed. Show me the patterns I have renamed as “just who I am,” the silences I have called peace, the small thick headed ways I no longer feel. What am I protecting that You would rather free? What am I repeating that keeps me from You and from others? I know some of my obvious failures; but show me the quieter ones, the places I have grown used to being wrong. Give me courage to stay when the light is uncomfortable. Teach me the difference between self-condemnation and honest seeing. And when You show me what needs fixing, stay with me in the mending. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Can we go fishing please! Please, Please! Please! She talks to me!

Good morning! Thank You Lord for this glorious day. Father, we reach for You and find ourselves drawn to those who don't know You. You did not stay far off when we became lost. You stepped into our darkness, looked for the ones who had stopped looking, and called them home. Now, when we stretch toward Your heart, that same motion carries us into the places where Your name is still unknown. Reaching for You means reaching for them. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” — Luke 19:10 Lord, the closer we come, the wider the circle grows. Intimacy with You does not close us in; it opens us. We learn Your voice by listening for the ones who have not yet heard it. We feel Your nearness most clearly when we walk beside those still far away. “How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” — Romans 10:14 Send us gently. Not as people who have arrived, but as people still on the way, carrying only the light we ourselves have been given. Let our normal days become invitations. Let our tables, our conversations, our quiet courage say what words alone cannot: that You are still seeking, and that no one is too far. “You are the light of the world... let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” — Matthew 5:14, 16 We open our lives the way You opened Yours. In the reaching, keep us close. In the going, keep us near. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Good morning! Thank You Lord for another wonderful day in Your Kingdom. Heaven is not first a reward for good behavior. It is a place where the One who made us is fully present, and where everything that has been broken is finally set right. The scriptures do not argue us into believing it; they simply speak as if it is already true, the way a father speaks of the house his children will come home to. Whether that house is as literal as walls and streets or as deep as the fullness of God’s own presence, the promise is the same: we were not made to be finished here. Something waits. Something has already been prepared. Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:2-3) “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 3:20) “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2 Corinthians 5:1) “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4) Lord, sometimes the world feels so solid under our feet that the thought of another place seems like a story told to children. Yet something in us keeps looking past the edges of the day, as if we were made for more than what we can measure. If You have prepared a home, let our hearts recognize the promise the way a traveler recognizes the light of his own window at the end of a long road. Not because we understand every room, but because we trust the One who has already gone ahead. Quiet the part of us that needs to see before it believes. And when doubt returns, as it will, remind us that You have never been less real simply because we could not yet touch You. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Good morning! Thank You Lord for this perfect day. Without Jesus, the road simply runs out. Not in some distant theological sense, but in the most ordinary ways: the quiet that never quite becomes peace, the striving that never quite arrives, the sense that something essential is missing and no amount of effort or distraction can name it. The options narrow to what we can manufacture for ourselves, and that is a grimly limited path. John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” There is no softer phrasing of it. The way is Jesus. Remove Him, and what remains is not an alternate path but the absence of one. John 3:36 “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” The contrast is absolute: life, or the continuing reality of what already rests upon us. Wrath is not a threat added later; it is the present condition of a world that has turned away from its only light. Acts 4:12 “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Other names can comfort, inspire, organize, or distract. None of them can do what His Name does. 1 John 5:12 “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” It is not that life is harder without Him. It is that life, in the sense that matters, is simply not there. Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Sin pays what it owes. The only thing that interrupts the transaction is a gift that comes from the One who paid the price and died for us. Father, the options without Your Son are emptier than we like to admit. We can keep moving, keep building, keep hoping in smaller things, but the deeper hunger remains unfed and the final accounting unchanged. Apart from Him there is no true life, no open way to You, no name, no act we can do that saves except to repent and follow Him. We confess how easily we pretend otherwise. Have mercy on us. Open our eyes to the emptiness of every other road, and draw us to the One who is Himself the way, the truth, and the life. In His name we ask it. Amen.

Good morning! Thank You Lord for the kindness we carry through this day and for the sword of truth when the need arises. Kindness is real. So is the sword. Both belong to the same Lord. Matthew 10:34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Joshua 5:13–14 When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord.” Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Ephesians 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Revelation 19:15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. Lord, You have taught us the weight of kindness. You have shown us how a soft word can turn away wrath, how a cup of cold water is not forgotten, how mercy can reach where force never will. Yet You have also shown us the edges of the world. There are places kindness cannot enter, doors it cannot open, chains it will not break. There are times when gentleness is not the answer, only the companion of something sharper. So we ask for both. Keep our hearts soft toward the wounded and the weary. And make our spirits steady when the moment calls for clarity, for courage, for the clean cut of truth. Teach us when to offer flowers and when to stand with a sword, not in anger, but in faithfulness. Not everything yields to warmth. Some things must be met with light that does not flinch. Give us the wisdom to know the difference, and the love to carry both. In Jesus Name, Amen.

It's great to see Amber outside enjoying the evening sun, a nice fire, and feeling good for a change. The dialysis has really turned things around for her.

Good morning! Thank You Lord for the Home we have with You. Being Home Is The Best The feeling of being at home with God is not mainly an emotion we manage; it is the fruit of a reality already true. We were made to live from Him and toward Him. When that ancient ache is met, even in ordinary hours, by His steady presence, the heart recognizes its first language again. Home is not the absence of trouble. It is the presence of the One who has already made His home with us. “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” —Psalm 90:1 “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord… Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise.” —Psalm 84:1–2, 4 “Jesus answered him, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.’” —John 14:23 “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” —Romans 8:15–16 Father, thank You for the quiet place You have made inside us, where Your nearness feels like coming home. Not a house of walls, but a resting of the heart. We have wandered, we have braced ourselves, yet again and again You have drawn us back into the simple knowing that we belong with You. You have not left us as guests in our own lives. You have stayed. You have made room. You have let us breathe. Thank You for the ordinary days when Your presence is the only place we are truly at ease. Keep us there. Keep teaching our hearts to settle where You already are. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Good morning! Heavenly Father thank you for another wonderful day. Getting Old Is Not An Illness Isaiah 46:4 “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” Psalm 92:14 “They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green.” Proverbs 16:31 “Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness.” Job 12:12 “Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding?” Lord, Day by day, the years keep arriving, quietly, steadily, and we sometimes meet them as if they were a diagnosis. But You have never called the lengthening of days an illness. You numbered them before we took the first one. You walk the later ones with the same nearness You walked the first ones. The body changes; the hair turns; the pace softens. None of that means we are sick. It means we are still here, still held, still invited to bear fruit in a different season. Teach us to receive these years not as something to cure, but as something to inhabit with dignity. Let the slower step still carry kindness. Let the quieter voice still carry wisdom. And when strength thins, remind us that You do not. You have carried us this far; You will carry us still. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Good evening! Heavenly Father thank you for carrying us this day. Felt Weak This Morning 2 Corinthians 4:16 “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” Lord, this morning the hours felt heavy before they had even begun, the body slow, the spirit withered, as if the day had started already tired. But evening has come, and with it a quieter mercy. The ache has loosened. The breath comes easier. Thank You for this turning, small as it is to feel good before nightfall. Thank You for the kindness. You who keep watch through both the hard hours and the gentle ones, let me not rush past this relief. Let me receive it as a sign that You remain near, even when the morning does not feel kind. Rest me in that nearness tonight. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Good morning! Thank You Lord for walking this day with us. Own Your Path With Courage Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Courage here is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to move while fear is still present, because the presence of God is the greater truth. Proverbs 3:5–6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Owning your path does not mean controlling it. It means releasing the need to understand every turn in advance, and still choosing to walk it with open hands. Isaiah 40:31 “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.” Strength is not manufactured. It is renewed in the act of hoping, returning again and again to the One who holds the path, even when the walking feels ordinary and slow. Psalm 37:23–24 “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.” The path belongs to you, yet it is held by God. Stumbling is a part of life and so is His hand to keep you moving. God, I am tired of waiting for the path to feel clear or easy. So I take it as it is, mine to walk, You right next to me to steady the way. I own the next step, the one that is mine alone with You, no one else can see. I own the places where I have been, sometimes broken, sometimes afraid, sometimes exhausted thinking I was alone. But You have never left me to walk alone. Thank You. Refresh me with courage, let it rise again, not as a self righteous force, but as a steady willingness to keep going, even when the ground feels uncertain. Walk with me. Keep me honest. Keep me moving. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Good morning! Heavenly Father thank you for another glorious day. A Good Neighbor Luke 10:36-37 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” The deeper invitation here is not merely to be nice, but to recognize that need is mutual and often unspoken. Most of us live close to people we barely know, each of us capable of both needing mercy and offering it. Jesus’ question quietly reverses the usual stance: instead of waiting to discover who is “my neighbor,” we are sent to become one, especially when it costs us something, and especially toward those we might otherwise overlook. In that choice, the street itself becomes a little more human. Galatians 5:14 “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” James 2:8 “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right.” Proverbs 3:27 “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.” 1 John 4:20–21 “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.” These verses keep circling the same quiet insistence: love is not only a feeling or a doctrine, but a way of moving through the ordinary places where we live, streets, hallways, shared walls. They remind us that the command is ancient and still unfinished in us, and that the neighbor we are called to love is rarely abstract. It is the one whose life brushes against ours, whose need we can actually meet. In that meeting, the law finds its true shape, and so do we. Lord, the houses around me hold ordinary lives that sometimes feel heavy or unseen. I know what it is to hope someone will notice, to wish a door would open with warmth instead of indifference. Help me remember that my neighbors carry that same quiet hope. Soften my hurry so I can stop long enough to ask, to listen, to offer the small kindness I myself would be grateful to receive. Make me the neighbor who crosses the street, who remembers a name, who shows up without needing anything back. Teach me that love is often just the willingness to be near, and that in being a good neighbor I begin to answer the very longing I carry too. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Good morning! Thank You Lord for another blessed day. Better Days Than War Isaiah 2:4 “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” There is a difference between laying weapons down because we are exhausted and laying them down because something better has claimed our hands. The image is not of people who have forgotten how to fight; it is of people who have found a deeper work. The same metal that once cut is reshaped for something that grows. That is the shape of the better day: not the end of strength, but its reassignment. Psalm 46:9 “He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.” Peace, in this telling, is not a fragile agreement. It is an act of dismantling. God does not merely quiet the fighting; He removes the means of returning to it. There is a severity in that kindness. The better day is not the one in which we carefully store our weapons for later use. It is the one in which the weapons themselves have been rendered unnecessary, and, in some strange mercy, even the memory of needing them begins to loosen its grip. Revelation 21:4 “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” The deepest war is not always between nations. Sometimes it is the long campaign fought inside a single life, against grief, against the fear that nothing will ever be different, against the slow erosion of hope. This promise does not offer a better strategy for surviving the old order. It declares that the old order itself will be finished. The better day is not an improved version of what we have known; it is the arrival of something that no longer needs the old vocabulary of loss. Micah 4:3–4 “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks… Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.” Here the vision becomes personal. It is not only that nations stop fighting; it is that ordinary people are no longer afraid in their own places. The better day is measured in the quiet dignity of sitting under something you planted, knowing that the shadow over you is shade, not threat. Peace, in the end, is not an abstract condition. It is the freedom to remain, unhurried and unafraid, in the small geography of a life. May the longing for such days keep us from mistaking the absence of fighting for the presence of peace, and may it keep our hands ready for the quieter, harder work of mending. Lord, We come to You tired of the noise. The ground still shakes from what has been broken, and the days feel heavy with what has not yet healed. We ask for better days than war, not merely quieter ones, but days where what was torn can be mended, where the energy spent on fear can be given back to life. Teach us to want the kind of peace that does not pretend the damage never happened, but that walks through it anyway, carrying both truth and mercy. We do not ask You to erase the memory of struggle; we ask You to redeem it. Let the longing itself become a kind of prayer, the ache for something more whole than victory, more lasting than the absence of enemies. Hold the future gently, Lord. Hold us in it. In Jesus Name, Amen.