Beauty

3 Say to Tyre, situated at the gateway to the sea, merchant of peoples on many coasts, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says:

“‘You say, Tyre,
    “I am perfect in beauty.”  

...

35 All who live in the coastlands

    are appalled at you;

their kings shudder with horror

    and their faces are distorted with fear.  Ezekiel 27

That's quite the turnaround.  The city of Tyre thinks very highly of itself and God is going to humble them.  This makes me think of the Twilight Zone episode The Eye of the Beholder, how you see yourself may not be how others see you.

We need to perform regular and accurate self assessments on ourselves.  We need to look at how we see ourselves and also how others see us.  My church is currently doing a Bible study through Romans 12.  I recommend everyone read it.  The chapter details what we need to be as Christians.  If you read through this, can you honestly say you follow all of those points?  Which ones can you agree to?

Now, read it again.  Which of those points do you think your spouse would agree to?  Your children?  Your parents?  Your friends?  Your coworkers?  God?

Get all in.  Really examine yourself and get beyond the superficial.  Are your inner desires to follow Christ?  

Thurs Devo: Fearless Life

How fearless are you and I? How fearless are you and I when it comes to living for Christ?

Revelation 2:8-11     ⁸ “To the angel of the church in Smyrna write:

These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. ⁹ I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.¹⁰ Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.

¹¹ Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.

After reading about what the Smyrna church faced and what Jesus said they would face in the future, how fearless do you think you are now?

I wouldn’t like getting a letter telling me I was going to face even more persecution and suffering. However, it would be encouraging, knowing Jesus saw everything I already endured, knows what I’m about to face, and guarantees my eternal future.

Jesus reminded Smyrna (and us) that He was already victorious over earthly suffering and death. Therefore, He can promise life after death to His faithful followers. We do not have to be hurt by the second death, which is eternal separate from God in Hell.

How can you and I be prepared to maintain joy and faithfulness through suffering? The more we know God, love Him and understand what He’s done for us, the easier it will be to live fearlessly for Him!  

Alice

The Humor of Our Dumb Questions

Late in the afternoon the twelve disciples came to him and said, “Send the crowds away to the nearby villages and farms, so they can find food and lodging for the night. There is nothing to eat here in this remote place.”

But Jesus said, “You feed them.”

“But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. “Or are you expecting us to go and buy enough food for this whole crowd?”  For there were about 5,000 men there.

Jesus replied, “Tell them to sit down in groups of about fifty each.”  So the people all sat down.  Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, looked up toward heaven, and blessed them. Then, breaking the loaves into pieces, he kept giving the bread and fish to the disciples so they could distribute it to the people.  They all ate as much as they wanted, and afterward, the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftovers!  Luke 9:12-17

When I was young, I found myself asking a lot of dumb questions.  At times, it led to some level of embarrassment, but other times, it made a difference in someone’s life.  Once before my 10^th birthday, I asked my mom a simple dumb question, “Why do you smoke?  Isn’t that bad for you?”  My mother would soon thereafter stop smoking altogether, and I have not seen her smoke over the past forty years.  My wife and I were arguing with each other in the very young days of our marriage.  It got to be so loud once that our son came in crying asking why we were yelling at each other.  I promised to never yell at her mother like that, and have not since to this day.  Sometimes, a simple dumb question can lead to powerful change.

God will sometimes wait for us to ask him the question so that He can show us something powerful and amazing.  I have heard many times the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand people with the loaves of bread and two fish.  However, I realized reading it today how the amazing feat did not occur until the disciples had ‘asked a dumb question.’  I laughed because you can hear the incredulous doubt in the disciples’ voices as they said, “Or are you expecting us to go and buy enough food for this whole crowd?”  It’s like when I ‘brilliantly’ ask my wife after work looking at the counter and seeing nothing thawed out for dinner, “So what are we going to eat for dinner, honey?”  Of course, I do not notice dinner is already on the stove!  Ok, back to the story!  So they asked Jesus this question.   These were not the Pharisees who have been looking to trip up Jesus since He started preaching the Good News gospel or the Gentiles who had no idea who Jesus was.  These were the disciples who were as close to Jesus as they come, and they had seen Him do all these miraculous things.  Yet, they ask the dumb question anyway!  So Jesus instructed them, and it said, “He kept giving the bread and fish to the disciples.”  It was as if Jesus was looking at them with a confident all-knowing smile saying, “Now watch this!”  He of course fed the crowd not only until they were full but also where there was “twelve baskets of leftovers!”

God is waiting for us to reach out to Him and ask what it is we need from Him because He is the great provider!  How often do we look at our situation going to God saying, “I can’t do this?”  We need to stop looking at what we cannot do and focus on what God can do because frankly that is what He expects from us; total dependency!  Jesus said, “For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.” (Matthew 19:14b)  Jesus said this because He understood children are dependent on their fathers just as we should be on our Heavenly Father.  What is it that you need to ask of God today?  What seemingly audacious dream or problem can you take to God?  My prayer is that we can all laugh at our big situations knowing God is the answer to our ‘dumb question.’  Amen.

Tues Deov: The happy kind of sorrow...

2 Corinthians 7:8-10 “For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it; though I did regret it—for I see that that letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while— I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.  For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.” (NASB)

Hello,

As I was preparing to write this, I was going to use sadness and sorrow interchangeably. (notice sorrow appearing 7 times in these verses alone) But I looked it up, and sorrow is just plain deeper than sadness. You can be superficially sad –but there is no such thing with sorrow, it has roots that go deep. What struck me though was the different possibilities that come from sorrow – repentance or death. You see the depth of the sorrow is reflective of why there is a result from sorrow. Superficial sadness doesn’t produce a long term result. But there is a fork in the road with the sorrow – will you see that something is grieving God, leading you into repentance? Or, will you see the sorrow as a reason to keep looking to yourself (either try on your own harder, or to give up) which doesn’t end up with the right result.

I guess my point for us today is that when the rough stuff comes, don’t get caught in it –but what does that push you to do?

Have a blessed day,

Will Hill

Becoming a Man of God

Isaiah 1:18

Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

This past week was a bit of a challenge with my son.  He’s at that age where he says “No!” a lot.  He finds himself in time out for disobeying.  Last night we were reading from his “Little Boys Bible Storybook for Mothers and Sons” book and the story was so fitting.  It was the story of Eve getting Adam to take a bite of the apple.  While this is written for a young child, I think there is a lot that we can take from it too, so I wanted to share it. 

Becoming a Man of God

A man of God takes responsibility for his sin.

Adam and Eve were made in God’s image.  But they didn’t have to always do what he wanted them to do. They could choose to obey or not to obey.  In this story, they made a bad choice – they sinned – and God punished them.  Sometimes the only way we learn lessons is through punishment.  That’s not much fun, is it?  But we remember the lessons we learn when we’ve been punished.

Everybody sins – even if we try hard not to we do.  When was a time that you did something wrong? Were you punished? How?

While this is written for young children, I think we can all relate as we do all sin.  Sin does come with consequences and   from those, we should learn lessons, that hopefully teach us to not repeat that sin.  I encourage you today to think over your past “punishments” to see how you can move forward in life to live a life that is more pleasing to God.