The Circle of Life Restored
The Spirit moves again, stirring what once lay still.
📖 Devotional Credit: Immeasurably More
📷 Photo Credit: Unsplash
Today’s reflection from Ray Stedman invites us into the quiet, sacred moment when Peter, through the power of Christ, speaks life into a lifeless body—and Tabitha rises. Her story is more than a miracle of physical resurrection; it is a portrait of what Christ does to the heart that has grown cold, calloused, or numb through pain, betrayal, or disappointment.
Ray Stedman reminds us that spiritual death can creep in unnoticed, often the result of wounds we never fully brought into the circle of God's grace. Life may go on outwardly, but inwardly the joy, zeal, and tenderness of ministry quietly shut down. The flame flickers. The fruit withers. And yet, God does not abandon us in that condition. Just as Peter was used to raise Tabitha from death, Christ longs to raise in us what once seemed lost.
Bitterness, betrayal, and burnout don’t have the final word. As seen in Edwin Markham’s story, even years of artistic silence can give way to a fresh outpouring of life when love takes the lead. That’s what Jesus does—He draws a circle that takes us in and breathes life where death once claimed victory. No situation is too hardened, no heart too far gone. He is still in the business of restoration.
✍🏼 Personalized Journal Entry – Voice of the Holy Spirit Through Scripture
I have never left you, even when you felt the warmth drain from your spirit and the light dim in your heart. I saw what interrupted your joy. I know what numbed your soul. And I stayed. I waited.
What others might call wasted years, I call moments of mercy—because I knew the time would come when you’d hear My voice again and rise. The bitterness that dulled your compassion, the silence that replaced your song, the weight that kept you from lifting others—I am lifting it now. I am the resurrection and the life, not just at the end of your days, but right here in this moment.
I have drawn a circle of grace so wide it swallows every wound. Come stand in it. I do not ask you to fix yourself or pretend to feel alive. I speak life into you because I am Life in you. And I will restore what has been lost—not with effort, but with intimacy. Let your heart awaken to Me again. The ministry I prepared for you was never about what you could do for Me, but about what I desired to do through you. Let’s begin again, not from the beginning, but from right here—hand in hand.
Scriptures referenced: Acts 9:40–41; John 11:25; Ezekiel 36:26; Joel 2:25; Romans 8:11
🧺 Real-Life Analogy
It’s like turning on a ceiling fan that hasn’t been used in years. At first, it groans and stutters, coated in dust and cobwebs, hesitant to move. But then—slowly, steadily—it begins to spin again. And before long, the stale air in the room is stirred, the stillness broken. That’s what it’s like when the Spirit begins to move again in a heart that had been sitting still.
🙏🏼 Prayer of Confidence
Father, I thank You that the years the locusts have eaten are not beyond Your redemption. You never required me to resurrect myself. You are the One who calls the dead to life, and I rejoice that You are restoring the song of my heart, the softness of my spirit, and the joy of being Yours. I rest in the truth that nothing in my past disqualifies me from Your present grace. I rise today not in strength of my own, but in the life of Christ within me—alive again, willing, and available.