Thursday Devotional - No Separation from God's Love

Romans 8:35-39 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:35-39 

Last night James thanked God for His love for us and that He always loves us. What a difference it would make if we could all remember that all the time!!! Nothing can separate us from His love. Believers aren’t exempt from troubles and times of suffering, but we know that in the end we will be more than conquerors through Christ who made it possible for us to have eternal salvation!   

Do you ever feel like the world is against you? What about family members, friends, co-workers, etc.? 

When feelings like this surface, how can you and I remind ourselves and claim the fact that God always loves us? 

What encouragement will you and I receive by remembering that NO ONE and NO THING can separate us (who are children of God) from God’s love?

Alice

Each And Every Day

And Samuel said to the whole house of Israel, "If you are returning to the LORD with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the LORD and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.”  1 Samuel 7:3

When I got married, I was convinced in every word that was said in our wedding vows.  To love and cherish.  To have and to hold.  In sicknesses and in health.  Until death do us part.  All that stuff was about Loretta and me.  We didn’t get there overnight.  We had ups and downs, and times where family and my own silliness pulled us apart.  But we always ended back up together.  She stood above all as the best thing that ever happened to me.  I couldn’t say that back when I was going through it with her.  But now, it is crystal clear.  She is worth every fight, argument, disappointment, and tear that we went through to get to today.  And the funny thing is our love grows every day.  This is who we are, and we are committed to making our love for each other better.

When we have a relationship with God, we are bound to a relationship that will continue to grow and have value.  We always think of our relationship with God as at times ‘hot and cold.’  The people of Israel were in their ‘cold’ stretch, but this one lasted for twenty years!  Ouch!  Samuel’s words were to help the Israelites understand that those things that divided them from God were within their control (FYI – Ashtoreths were idols representing the Canaanites goddess Ashtoreth – see https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/ashtoreth/ for more details).  Shortly after following Samuel’s instruction, God defeats the Philistines when they attempted to attack Israel.  When reading the chapter, it should serve as a reminder of our commitment to God.  If we are too proud or focused on things that detract from Him or His will for our lives, we are destined to be in the cold stretch like Israel.  However if we remove those obstacles that could separate us from Him, we will have our great and awesome defender who will move mountains and protect us from harm.  We must ask ourselves, “Why is this so easy to understand and yet so hard to attain?”  The commitments that we have in our lives range from ‘what shirt to where’ to ‘do I want to be saved.’  How difficult the commitment is to God boils down to one thing: Who are you committed to?  Are you committed to the Lord, or are you committed to yourself?  Only you can answer that question, and it is only you who can make the decision.  Any great relationship has struggles.  Whether it gets repetitive or we see something more exciting or new, we can get distracted.  But if we focus on what matters to God, we will always find His faithfulness reassuring and His wisdom filled with something new.

God is constant.  Yes, there will be times where we do not make sense of what He wants from us, and we may stray away.  But whether it be for a day, a month, or even years, He is always there.  Waiting.  Loving. Saying to you as Jesus said to disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.”  (Matthew 16:24b)  Let us remove those things that inhibit our connectivity to our one true God.  What obstacles inhibit your connection with God?  How will you focus on what God wants above what you want?  My prayer is we recognize our relationship with God, and commit to growing our love for Him each and every day.

Tues Devo: Who decides what is important

Mark 10:13-16 “And they were bringing children to Him so that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them, “Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” And He took them in His arms and began blessing them, laying His hands on them.” (NASB)

It is not uncommon to find ourselves making priority choices. We do it every day at work and at home, we teach out kids about the impact of making priorities. One thing that struck me in this section of Mark was how we tend to put priority around the things that make us feel important. Picture these disciples (doesn’t say which ones) who are travelling with Jesus and He is THE person/sight to see. If you need help, He can help….if you just want to see something cool and unique, you go see what He is doing. So these disciples have some authority around Him and the crowds. They start to act as the gatekeeper, deciding what is important enough to get to Jesus. Whatever gets His attention they were part of this. I don’t know for sure, but I can see myself in that situation and starting to place my value/worth on the things Jesus was doing when I was there….so I very likely would have tried to just have the most impressive things be associated with my time with Him.

I don’t know if that was their motive or not, but I feel like this lesson is key for us. Our decisions of what is important are often selfishly motivated instead of Christ motivated. I hope this challenges all of us to check our motives, and align them with Christ.

Have a blessed day,

Will Hill

Rejoice, Pray, Give Thanks

First of all, I’d like to thank Erin for covering devotions for me in April as I was out.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Normally when I put the scripture in the devotion, I remove the numbers.  Today however, I wanted to leave them as I love how this breaks it out.  We are instructed to do three things here.

1.  Rejoice always – This is not something that is always easy to do.  Rejoice means to be very happy, be delighted, exult; to feel joy (Wiktionary.org).  There are certainly times that I don’t feel like rejoicing.
2.  Pray continually – I must admit that there are times I forget to pray over my meal, let along remember to pray continually.  Without ceasing! 
3.   Give thanks in all circumstances.  – Giving thanks when something bad happens?  This is extremely hard! 

As many of you already know from what I’ve shared in devotions in the past, I had a miscarriage before my son was born.  Recently I was talking with my son, who is 5.  He asked me, “Mommy, is it true that if my sister would have been born, that I wouldn’t be here?”.  I told him that it was true.  His response made me smile.  He told me that he was sorry that I had to lose my baby but that he was really happy that Jesus gave me him.  It was in that moment that I realized that I need to follow the instructions here in 1 Thessalonians and remember to rejoice always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances.

Today I’d like to have you think about something that you could improve in your life if you lived by these three instructions.  Have a blessed day!