Daily Devotional #1,734

The other night I was working with a youngster as he was memorizing a verse. It was one that I knew and  loved and I wanted to see him commit it to memory before we ended our short time together. He was a worker  and kept going over it again and again and finally was able to say it to me. It was John 3:16… For God so  loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have  eternal life. He did a good job and was pleased that he got his verse committed to memory enough that he could  say it to me. I loved the way he really worked on that. He doesn’t really know all that this verse means, but  now it is tied into his memory banks in some way forever. I loved that this youngster will have that in his heart  and my hope and prayer is that God will bring that back to him often. I know he’s not going to sit around and  recite it at home over and over. He’s going to hang out with other kids his age and do stuff! And play video  games. And spend too much time on that phone. But in his heart now is embedded a truth from the Bible that  will always be there. I pray that it will remind his heart that he is so wonderfully loved by this God of the Bible.  And because he has trusted this Jesus, he has been promised eternal life. I pray that verse will come back to  him many times in his life and that together we can fill his heart with other things that are good and noble and  true. And that his heart, which will determine the course of his life, will filled with the promises of the love and  kindness of this Jesus it speaks of. That’s a good thing for all those who choose to follow this Jesus of the Bible  to do too. Guard what comes into that heart of yours, because it will be the thing that will end up determining  the course of your life. Here’s our Bible verse for today…  
Proverbs 4:23 NLT Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.  Remember I’m praying for you!
With love, PJ