Lift Up Your Day
Lift Up Your Day with Pastor Rodney Coe — a 5-minute Christian devotional podcast for the heart that needs lifting.
Every Take 5 episode is a true story from history and Scripture about ordinary people God used to do extraordinary things. Pastor Rodney Coe — author of 5 books, devotional writer, and pastor — tells the stories warm, well-paced, and pointed at the part of your day that needs the most lifting.
You'll meet missionaries saved by angels (John Paton), a watchmaker's daughter who forgave a Nazi guard (Corrie ten Boom), a Tennessee farm boy who took a hill in the Argonne (Alvin York), a Senate chaplain who wasn't ready (Peter Marshall), a man who walked with God at 4 a.m. (George Washington Carver), and more.
Each episode ends the same way: "And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day."
Free 7-day devotional When Worry Won't Let Go at rodneycoe.com/worry-devotional. Books and blog at rodneycoe.com.
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Lift Up Your Day
Amy Carmichael: The Prayer God Answered with No (Isaiah 55:8)
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The true story of missionary Amy Carmichael and the childhood prayer God answered with 'no' (Isaiah 55:8).
A little girl in Ireland once begged God for blue eyes and woke up disappointed. She had no idea He was preparing her for a rescue that would not make sense for another forty years. This is the story of Amy Carmichael, the missionary who slipped past temple gates in the dark to save children from slavery, and the plain brown eyes God used to do it. A five-minute reminder that the prayer you think He ignored may be the one He is answering most carefully of all. "And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day."
— Pastor Rodney Coe
Full blog post + Scripture references: https://rodneycoe.com/amy-carmichael-prayer-god-answered/
Pastor Rodney's books: https://rodneycoe.com/books/
Scripture: Isaiah 55:8 • Isaiah 6:8 • 2 Corinthians 12:9
Episode 13 of the Take 5 series (True Stories of Faith)
A little girl in Ireland knelt by her bed one night and asked God for blue eyes. She had read that he answers prayer and she believed it with all her heart. So she prayed hard, climbed under the covers, and fell asleep certain that morning would bring change. When the sun came up, she ran to the mirror, brown, still brown. The same as the night before. She was three years old and she decided right there that God had told her no. Don't go anywhere. The best part hasn't happened yet. Welcome to Lift Up Your Day, a daily five-minute devotional, short stories with a biblical heartbeat. I'm Rodney Coe, and today a little girl's disappointment turns into one of the most beautiful answered prayers you will ever hear. Her name was Amy Carmichael, born in 1867 in a small seaside village in Northern Ireland, the oldest of seven. She gave her heart to Christ as a girl and felt a steady pull toward the people most folks walk right past. As a young woman, she gathered the mill girls of Belfast, the poor Shawlees nobody wanted in a pew, and told them about the love of Jesus Christ. Then came the call to the mission field. After a short season in Japan, she landed in southern India in 1901 in a place called Donover. She stayed for 55 years and never once came home. In India, she uncovered a hidden grief. Little girls, some barely more than babies, were being handed over to the Hindu temples and sold into a life no child should ever know. One day, a seven-year-old named Prina slipped away from the temple and ran straight into Amy's arms. She was the first. Then came another and another, until Amy was raising hundreds of rescued children. They called her Ama, and Tamil, it means mother. But reaching those children meant going where a fair skinned English woman could never be seen. So Amy darkened her skin with coffee, wrapped herself in an Indian sari, and slipped through temple gates in the dark. And her eyes, those plain brown eyes that never turned blue, let her pass without a second glance. Blue eyes would have given her away in a heartbeat, and the child would have been lost. That is when she understood. The morning she was three and ran to the mirror, God had not said no, he had said wait. He was handing her the very eyes she would need. In nineteen thirty one Amy took a bad fall and spent her last twenty years mostly confined to a bed, often in real pain. Yet from that bed she wrote book after book, words that still steady weary believers today. When she died in nineteen fifty one, she asked that no stone be placed over her grave. The children set a simple bird bath there instead, with one word on it Alma. Maybe you've prayed for the blue eyes and woken up to Bram. You asked for a yes and you heard a no. Before you decide God turned away, listen to what he says in Isaiah fifty five, eight and nine. My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than yours. A three year old cannot see why brown eyes mattered. You cannot always see why your answer came the way it did either. But the God who shaped Amy's eyes for a rescue she would not understand for forty years is shaping your life with that same careful love. The closed door you are grieving today may be the very thing he uses to open a life tomorrow. And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.