Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted
TO PONDER
When we reflect on our lives, there are multiple instances in any week or month where we find ourselves simply having to trust another party and believe the information or advice we are given. This occurs generally because we are either comfortable from the outset or gain comfort that the individual knows more about the topic in question than we do.
I don't know about you, but I am not very mechanically minded. I take my car to our mechanic for a service or a problem, and I am left with no choice really but to accept what he tells me is wrong, what he needs to do to fix the problem, and the cost.
My G.P has referred me to a handful of medical specialists over the years to enable me to receive optimum advice with regard to investigations, diagnosis and treatment. These referrals have varied in nature from musculo-skeletal problems to oncology investigations looking for a form of blood cancer, which thankfully, turned out to be benign in nature. Irrespective, these specialists knew far more about their area of expertise than me and my G.P, so essentially, I was left to accept their advice and guidance. Interestingly, as I reflect on these times of uncertainty in my life, I did include myself and the specialists in my prayers.
I am sure there are plenty more examples of trust (or doubt) that you can think of applicable to yourself.
As Christians, we have a gracious God who we know loves us dearly and died for us to provide us with the promise of eternal life with Him. Do we merely forget this then, when we either doubt (as some of the disciples did) or question God's Will or plans in our lives?
When have you doubted or questioned what God is doing in your life? Why?
PRAYER: Lord of All. Help me to grow in my faith so that I can accept your will and plans for my life as your disciple. Continually provide me with comfort in the fact that you are forever walking with me and will never leave my side. Amen
Today's devotion written by Shane Burdack, LifeWay Epping
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
TO PONDER
I live with my wife in a retirement village. The facilities and resources here are fantastic for caring for people as they age (from their 60s to their 90s). We have staff and resources to help us keep our bodies fit and healthy; we have facilities and programs to keep our minds active and we have a chaplain to support us spiritually and emotionally. One downside of living in this environment, however, is that we are very aware of the impact of the ageing process on people, with regular funerals for those who have died. So the subject often comes up on how people would like to die – with a consensus that dying in our sleep is the preferred way to depart this life.
The subject also comes up about how we wouldn’t like to die, and I guess we are all aware of friends and family who have suffered to some extent in their last days and hours. So I have been pondering this question (or maybe the Holy Spirit has been stirring me). If we trust in God’s love and commitment to us, He will be with us in our dying as much as in our living. I’m not saying that it won’t be hard, but God has promised to be with us always and accompany us in this journey, even to a greater extent than His love and support in our other journeys.
I’ve mentioned in my earlier devotions how God often works through us to impact the lives of others, and I am very open to God also using His journey with me in my dying to bring a needed message to someone else.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, sometimes we need a greater trust in your love for us that you won’t take us anywhere that you don’t travel along with us on the journey. We know you have been with us in wonderful ways in the past. Please help us to remember all these times so that we have confidence in your presence with us as you take us on new journeys, even our final journey on this earth. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier. LifeWay Epping
Matthew 5:6
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
TO PONDER
I am quite familiar with this verse from my regular reading of the bible, hearing it read in church and reading devotional materials. But I am not sure I fully understand what it means. I guess I feel it means something like living to God’s rules. Anyway, not being sure, I did some research, and I have come up with a practical understanding. To be righteous, we will have an attitude to other people, and to God, the same as the attitude that Jesus demonstrated by His life while here on earth. But it is an attitude that is active, caring practically about the needs of others, and listening to where God is calling us to go and doing what God is calling us to do. In the next chapter of Matthew (Matthew 6:33), Jesus promises that if we are focused on living our God’s love and care for others (His righteousness), He will look after our own personal needs for us.
When we are physically hungry or thirsty, our attention will tend to focus on obtaining food or drink to satisfy our hunger or thirst. When we are emotionally of spiritually empty, similarly we will seek activities which will fill that emptiness. From my own experience, these tend to often be just time wasters, activities that bring some instant satisfaction or distraction, but no lasting relief. Playing solitaire is just one example – I’m so absorbed in my own little world, that I forget my emptiness – for a while.
What Jesus is trying to get through to us is that He has things for us to do that not only fill the emptiness, but bring on-going joy and fulfilment into our lives. Sometimes, God just wants us to go and see what He is doing in other people’s lives – to just be a spectator. The experience will change us, and even if we just share with other what we have seen God doing, we will be living God’s righteousness. Think about the shepherds at the first Christmas. After witnessing what God had done, they just couldn’t stop telling everyone they met what they had just witnessed. Not very hard, even for us introverts. They just had to obey one command from God: Go!
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, so often we can become paralysed by our insecurities and feelings of emptiness or failure. Help us to remember that your answer is often for us to get up and go where you are calling us to go, so that you can give us experiences that refocus us on living in the relationship we have with you. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
TO PONDER
Today’s bible verses were directed at Christian slaves. However, slaves back in Roman times were in many ways not too different from employees today. In return for their work, they received accommodation, clothes and food. They may not have received as much free time as we generally have today, but I know some employees who may as well be slaves due to the amount of time they commit to their employers.
Paul’s directive relates to the motive for producing high quality work. Generally, a slave was motivated by a threat of punishment of some sort if they failed to meet the master’s requirements. So a slave would quickly learn what the minimum requirements were to escape the punishment. This was definitely the case if the master was harsh and cruel.
If a slave had a kind master, they might put in an extra effort to ingratiate themselves to the master to gain some future benefit (like being still cared for when they get old or sick).
Paul’s directive provides a different motive for the quality of our work. In spite of our lowly position here on this earth, we are now children of the Heavenly King, provided with a certificate guaranteeing the resources and treasures that are now ours. And we have the Holy Spirit by our side, guiding us and giving us hints on how to improve on the quality without having to work any harder. And because we are now producing a quality result, we get great joy out of what we are doing.
I know from experience that it is very easy to forget God’s purpose for us, especially when we are loaded down with the pressures of daily living. But we can pray at the beginning of each day that God would keep reminding us of his presence with us. Some people put little reminder dots where they will regularly see them. Other set reminders on their smart devices.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, I want to live a life that honours you. Thank you for the ways you remind me of your presence with me all the time, and help me to listen to the guidance you provide me during each day. Amen.
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
TO PONDER
In our verses for today, the writer to the Hebrews mentions two sources of encouragement for our life’s journey. The first one we may refer to as the heroes or champions of living the Christian life. As we read through the list in Chapter 11 of Hebrews, we find a list of very ordinary people who made some very serious mistakes in life (including murder for a number of them). Yet they allowed themselves to be used by God for God to achieve his saving purposes through them. Many of them struggled at first to believe God could or would want to use them. God has included their stories in the bible as an encouragement to us, not to try to be like them and emulate their successes, but to learn to trust God when he calls us to go, so that He can work through us to achieve His purposes of bringing His love, healing and support to others.
The second source of encouragement is in keeping our focus on Jesus who has adopted us to be his brothers and sisters. Jesus, during His time here on earth, experienced the full gamut of life’s experiences, so when He asks us to follow Him, He is not asking us to do anything He has not already experienced. Notice that Jesus didn’t just grin and bear it in carrying out His Father’s tasks for Him, including the suffering and death he went through. But He experienced joy in what he was achieving, rescuing us so that we could live with Him.
Jesus’s vision for us is a full life, an overflowing life (see Luke 6:38), even as we face challenges along the way because Jesus is travelling with us.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you that we are not in this business of life on our own. Thank you for carrying out your promise to always be with us on our life’s journey. Thankyou for also continuing to remind us of all the resources you have made available to us to use on our journey. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
TO PONDER
In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul spends the first 11 chapters detailing all that God has done to make us his children, to enable us to live in a close intimate relationship with our God, and begin the adventure of living now and eternity in that relationship. He explains that we don’t have a distant God who we have to try to appease, but one who is committed to enriching our lives. Then we get to chapter 12 where Paul provides some practical ways that we live out this new relationship.
I like the translation of verse 11 from The Voice: Do not slack in your faithfulness and hard work. Let your spirit be on fire, bubbling up and boiling over, as you serve the Lord. Paul’s directive only makes sense if we have fully internalised those first 11 chapters of the letter. We are not going to be committed to excellence and find excitement in what God is calling us to do if we don’t first grasp how much God has already done for us in making us his children and inviting us to be part of the heavenly family for eternity.
If you are like me, in the busyness of life, it is easy to be so preoccupied with dealing with the realities in front of me that it is easy to forget what God has done for us and how God would be wanting to help us deal with the issues we are facing. I think we have become so compartmentalised in our relationship with God that we have parts of our lives where He is involved and other parts where we tend to act as if He didn’t exist. Could we envision our lives being so transformed by God that 100% of the things we do and say are motivated by God’s love and commitment to us and filled with the joy of God guiding us in serving Him and others.
Although we know we could never achieve this in practice, we believe that this was the way Jesus lived out his life while on this earth - 100% of the things He did and said were motivated by the Father’s love and commitment to Him and His love and commitment to doing what His Father asked Him to do for us. We believe that the Holy Spirit is working in our lives to change us to be more like Jesus. May we surrender to the Holy Spirit to continue his work of changing us.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, there are so many parts of my life where I want to remain in control and not hand them over to You. I know that’s crazy, because You only want what is best for me. Thank You for the way You are working with me to help me let go of the things I cling to, and discover more of the joy of You working in my life to bless others. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Then the master told his servant, “Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.”
TO PONDER
Jesus often compared our new life as His brothers and sisters to a lavish banquet or a wedding feast. I think it would be safe to say that none of us would reject an invitation to such a celebration unless we had a very good excuse. But in the parable that Jesus told, the excuses people gave were very flimsy. So this challenged me to think about the excuses I use to NOT get involved in the things God might be inviting me to. A good initial excuse is that it wasn’t a specific invitation, but just a notification that volunteers were needed. The excuse I use a lot is that the invitation involves interacting with people and I am an introvert and find it hard to start conversations with people I don’t know.
What I am forgetting is that God has promised to be with us in whatever he has called us to do. We are not going on our own. (However, we can try to go alone if we want to ignore God’s presence with us and this will often lead to negative experiences that then make us afraid to respond to God’s call in the future.)
God has made me the person I am, and has placed me where I am for specific activities that he is calling me to do. Who am I to tell God that he has got it wrong and that he has not given me the skills and abilities to do what he has called me to do.
Many years ago I was asked to be a chaplain at a church conference. Part way through the conference, a pastor who I knew came into the chapel area and casually sat down beside me and we just started talking. I felt relaxed because I thought he was there in some minor oversight capacity. After he left, the though suddenly hit me that he had come in to see one of the chaplains to deal with an issue which was bothering him. If I had realised that he was visiting me in my role as chaplain, I am sure I would have been more concerned in how I was doing, rather than being the listening ear he needed at the time.
I love the way God sneaks up on us and achieves his purposes through us without us fully understanding what he was doing (until maybe later).
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us all the resources we need to do what you ask us to do and to go where you call us to go. Achieve your purpose and glorify your name through me today. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.
TO PONDER
I like the way God works. For some time now I have had a feeling of unease about how well I live out my Christian faith. Although I feel very secure in God’s love and commitment to me, I often wonder how well others, especially those who don’t know the love of Jesus, would see the love of Jesus reflected in what I say and do. And then Pastor Mat gives me a set of devotions to write under the heading of “Growing in Passion”.
Read the Bible verses above again. Although it speaks about love between a couple, it also describes how much Jesus loves us. His love and commitment to us was so strong that that it led to his death.
Generally, for me, trying harder to live the life God wants me to live ends in failure, then guilt and then depression, so I would never encourage anyone to go down this path. We are changed on the inside to be more like Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit in us. In addition to the Holy Spirit using the normal circumstances of life to grow us, He especially uses the time we spend in prayer and meditating on the Bible contents in our regular personal quiet times. And, of course, He uses the times we spend with our Christian brothers and sisters in church services and Life Groups and similar community activities.
In the Old Testament we read where Moses spent a month on Mt Sinai with God and when he came back down, his face shone so brightly that he had to wear a veil over his face. Similarly, when we spend time in conversation with God, we too are changed and God’s love shines out of us. And we are often surprised at what God achieves through what we do and say when we are not trying, but we give the Holy Spirit freedom to live in us.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for all the ways you have given us for us to grow as your children. Thank you for our freedom to worship you openly. Thank you for our Christian friends and the encouragement they give us. Thank you for the bible and the revelation of yourself in it and of how much you love us. But thank you most of all for the way your Holy Spirit is working in us to change us to be more like your Son in our love and care for others. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
So we have continued praying for you ever since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you a complete understanding of what he wants to do in your lives, and we ask him to make you wise with spiritual wisdom. Then the way you live will always honour and please the Lord, and you will continually do good, kind things for others. All the while you will learn to know God better and better.
TO PONDER:
Whilst living overseas, I needed to find something to help me unwind … One of my fellow teachers had been talking about volunteering at a Handicapped Children’s Orphanage (I know this is not the correct term in todays society, but this is what it was called back then) and invited me along. It was love at first sight. I’d found my niche. During those five years of my time in Vietnam, I spent the last four years, most mornings visiting those children, showering them with love, crawling around the floor with them, laying in bed with them, encouraging the workers and earning my place in their lives. Some of these children became “my kids.” We had English lessons, art lessons, and outings to the beach and zoo. One day I was allowed to take Bao, a 14 year old boy, severely paralysed, and in a wheel chair, who had never been outside the centre since he’d been dumped at the gate many years earlier, to the barber across the way. Oh! The joy and excitement such a small outing caused. He laughed and babbled the whole time, trying to direct the traffic, and telling the barber he charged too much. All the time the Holy Spirit was working in me and through me, not only in reaching out to those less fortunate, but opening those hearts and minds of the locals, to accept that its ok to show love, kindness and acceptance to those who are different.
I believe we were made on purpose, we were made for a purpose, and our purpose is to know God and to give God away. This adventure was meant to be. That door was opened for a reason and I had to be obedient and enter it and share God’s loving kindness. Something I will never regret. Once again, God had opened the door for another growing period.
Paul wrote these words to remind the Colossians (and us) that this knowledge has to do with obedience. It’s spiritual wisdom, meaning that it is of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit speaks through Scripture and what He says is to be put into practice. Spiritual wisdom isn’t about knowing what God's word says, it's about learning to trust and obey what it says.
PRAYER: Abba father. Please help me to grow in wisdom, and for my life to reflect your glory. I want others to see you shining through me. Fill me with your love and light. In Jesus name. Amen
Today's devotion written by Noeline Brock (Danny's Mum), LifeWay Online.