Tag Archives: Prayer

Ray Stedman

Ray Stedman -The New Covenant

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Read: Jeremiah 31:23-40

The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah… This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, Know the Lord, because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. (Jeremiah 31:31a, 33, 34)

This is a marvelous promise. God is going to do what the people themselves could never do. Despite all their failure, he is going to bring them around. He will do it by a new process. First, he says, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. That is a new motive. God is going to change the motivation of a person’s life; changing it to come from within instead of without. The Old Covenant is a demand made on us from without. This is impossible for us to carry out. But the New Covenant is something put within us. What is it? Love. Love is the motive in the New Covenant. To respond out of love for God, out of love for what he has already done in our life and heart, that is the new motive.

The second manifestation is a new power. I will be their God, and they will be my people. God himself is the strength of man’s life. He supplies all the power to act. They are the ones who do the acting; he is the One who does the supplying. This is a beautiful description of the New Covenant. Everything coming from God; nothing coming from me. Not, I, trying to do something for God, but God doing something for me, through me, in everything I do. That is the new power.

Then there is a new family. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, Know the Lord, because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. All those in the family know each other. We already know what are the dominant drives, and underlying hopes and passions of each life, because they are all the same: That we might know Him better, become like Him. That is why, when Christians meet one another, though they have never met before, they always have a ground of sharing. They know each other and share the same life.

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Words of Hope

Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – All Creatures Praise the Lord

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Read: Psalm 148

Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! (v. 9)

This psalm of praise is all-inclusive. Nothing is left out. All creatures praise the Lord. Angels in heaven. Sun and moon and stars. Sea monsters and creatures of the ocean deep. Fire and hail and snow and frost. Mountains and hills. Animals wild and domestic. Lowly snails and high-flying falcons. Kings and queens. The poor and the homeless. Humans male and female. All people, young and old.

And wedged in the middle of this doxology are trees. “Fruit trees and all cedars” to be specific. That brief list includes lots of trees. Almond, apple, carob, date palm, fig, mulberry, olive, pomegranate, sycomore (not to be confused with sycamore), and terebinth—to name just the fruit trees native to the Middle East. And there are many species of cedar around the world, the most famous being the cedar of Lebanon—a symbol of strength, splendor, and glory.

What does it mean for trees to praise God? Is this just a case of personification, attributing human qualities to nonhuman creatures? Or can we imagine nonhuman creatures praising God, each in their own creature-specific way? New scientific evidence says there is much more to trees than meets the eye. For example, trees communicate with other trees and they nurse sick neighbors. Perhaps if we had the eyes to see and ears to hear, we could acknowledge that trees praise God in their own tree-like ways. If so, then we could tune in to the symphony of creation.

Prayer:

Loving Lord, may all we do give praise to you.

Author: Steven Bouma-Prediger

 

https://woh.org/

Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie – The Purpose of a Testimony

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But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.—Romans 5:8

When you tell other people about what God has done for you, you are sharing your testimony. A testimony is when you share your story of how you came to faith. Every Christian has a testimony.

Some Christians have dramatic testimonies where they tell of being delivered from a life of drug addiction or crime or some sordid deeds. Other Christians don’t have testimonies that are quite as dramatic—but they are just as significant.

I like to hear how people came to Christ, but I don’t like it when people go into gory details about their past. Then there are testimonies where people tell how much they have given up for Jesus. They’ll say things like, “I gave up this and that for Jesus. I have made such sacrifices for the Lord. I have done it all for Him!”

Your testimony is not about what you gave up for Jesus. It’s about what He gave up for you. Don’t share what you have done for Jesus. Share what Jesus has done for you. Jesus is the one who has done the work. It is Jesus whom we are proclaiming.

A good, strong testimony will lift up what Christ has accomplished. The fact of the matter is that all of us were sinners hopelessly separated from God, traveling in the same boat on our way to hell; and the same gospel came and transformed us. That is the testimony we all have.

 

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

Kids 4 Truth

Kids 4 Truth International – God Helps Our Unbelief

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“Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” (Mark 9:23-24)

The crowds that had gathered around Jesus were shocked and probably a little frightened. A man had brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus. As soon as the boy met Jesus, he fell to the ground, rolling and foaming at the mouth.

Jesus asked the father how long this problem had been going on. The father replied that the boy had had the demon since he was a child. Sometimes the demon threw the boy into fire or water as though trying to destroy him. If you can do anything, please have compassion on us, and help us, the father pleaded.

Jesus’ eyes saw right into the man’s heart as He said, All things are possible to him who believes.

The father knew that he had unbelief in his heart. He said to Jesus very honestly, Lord, I believe; help me overcome my unbelief.

Jesus rebuked the demon and told it to come out of the boy – and with an awful cry, it did! For a moment, everyone thought the boy was dead. Then Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up. He was healed – free from the horrible demon that had tortured him all his life.

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BreakPoint

BreakPoint – How to Live as a Counter-Cultural Christian in a Fallen World

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In the opening scene of the 2001 film adaptation of “The Fellowship of the Ring,” Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel whispers hauntingly, “The world has changed. I can feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it.”

Western Christians in 2016 can relate. Something has shifted. The world we inhabit seems to have become disenchanted, and so many of those around us have entered a state in some ways worse than atheism—a state of indifference toward God and the supernatural.

All of this has made evangelism and discipleship a lot more challenging. As sociologist Peter Berger wrote, we live in “a world without windows.” And for the inhabitants of windowless late modernity, questions about sin, salvation and ultimate meaning just don’t matter that much.

So, how did we get here? And more importantly, what does being a Christian look like in this context? Os Guinness, who needs no introduction, says the only right response today is to become what he calls “Impossible People.” That’s the name of his latest book, appropriately subtitled, “Christian Courage, and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization.” Folks, this book is a manifesto for our moment—a guide on how to live counter-culturally in what Os describes as our “cut-flower civilization.”

But what about the bizarre term “impossible people”? Where does that come from? Well, it was originally applied to eleventh-century Benedictine reformer, Peter Damian. Among other things, this “impossible man” spoke out against the practice of selling church positions for money as well as against widespread sexual sin among the clergy. His commitment to Jesus alone was so fierce that he won a reputation for being, as Os puts it, “unmanipulable, unbribable, and undeterrable.”

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Moody Global Ministries

Moody Global Ministries – Today in the Word – THE TRINITY AND GOD’S GIFTS

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Read LUKE 11:5–13

When we call God “Father,” we associate that term with “affection and authority,” according to author Ben White. But this would have been countercultural in the New Testament world. In the Roman Empire, fathers played virtually no part in parenting, infanticide was practiced regularly, and men ruled their families as absolute tyrants, including owning all property and having the right to make or break children’s marriages.

In other words, White says, “The New Testament authors portray God the Father as radically unlike Roman fathers.” When we as God’s children pray to Him, then, we are not praying to a romanticized version of a human father but to a far superior Father. If even human fathers normally do the right thing by their children, how much more so will God (vv. 11–13)? Or if even a grumpy person for whom it is inconvenient will give a friend bread because of that friend’s tenacity, how much more so will God (vv. 5–8)? He has none of the sinfulness that causes human fathers to sometimes wrong their children or friends to sometimes act selfishly.

In today’s passage, Jesus taught His disciples about prayer, mainly highlighting the need for boldness and persistence. To say, “Ask and it will be given to you,” was not a blank check for getting our own wishes and desires. Rather, Jesus meant that prayer is how we seek to align our wills with God’s will, and when that happens our prayers will be granted. His ways are higher, His plans are better, and one day we’ll see that all His answers to our prayers were best.

The third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is described here as an answer to prayer (v. 13). To those who ask, God gives the best gift of all—Himself.

APPLY THE WORD

Ask the Spirit to help you to reflect on your prayer life. In verse 9, the imperative verbs imply a continuous action: “Keep on asking,” “Keep on seeking,” and “Keep on knocking.” A prayer request is not a one-time event; instead, prayer is a spiritual habit or discipline, a way of life. That’s how Paul could exhort us to “pray continually” (1 Thess. 5:17).

http://www.todayintheword.org

Denison Forum

Denison Forum – FAKE ISIS ATTACK CAUSES WIDESPREAD PANIC

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Today’s news takes us from the momentous to the mundane.

This morning’s New York Times reports that a fake ISIS attack in Prague, intended to protest the threat of Islam, caused widespread panic in the streets instead. The suicide attack in Turkey has now claimed fifty-four lives, twenty-two of whom were under fourteen years of age. Students beginning school in Miami yesterday were coated in bug spray to prevent the Zika virus. And Speedo USA has dropped Ryan Lochte’s sponsorship after the Rio scandal.

Meanwhile, the highest and longest glass-bottomed bridge in the world has just opened. It stretches 1,410 feet (nearly five football fields) over a valley that is nearly 1,000 feet deep. It will feature the world’s highest bungee jump (count me out).

Closer to home, St. Dominic’s Catholic Church in San Francisco has been the custodian of a fragment believed to be part of the True Cross of Jesus Christ. According to its priest, “The True Cross is a relic that goes back 2,000 years to the very cross of Christ himself.” The fragment was stolen from the church last week. A sign has been placed on the case asking for the thief to return the relic, no questions asked.

Here’s what the bridge in China and the relic in San Francisco have in common: they serve as parables for the greatest privilege in life. This privilege is relevant to terrorism and disease and every human frailty.

The Chinese bridge is the highest on earth, but it cannot compare to the bridge between you and heaven. The True Cross relic is historic, but as St. Dominic’s members know, we don’t need the physical cross to pray to the One who died on it.

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Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – God’s Condition for His Full Blessing

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Matthew 16:24-27

The Lord wants to give each of us an abundance of blessings. Let’s explore what is required so that we may enjoy all that He has planned.

Today’s passage clarifies the one necessary condition for receiving His best: surrender. Every aspect of our being—body, soul, and spirit—is to be a living sacrifice. This may sound dreary, but contrary to human logic, true freedom is found only when we fully yield to Christ.

In the Old Testament, sacrifice was very common. To atone for sin, a person could bring a lamb to the altar. The animal was set apart for God’s purposes as a holy offering, and through its death, restitution was made.

When we give ourselves as a sacrifice, there is, thankfully, no need for our blood to be shed. Jesus died to atone for all of our sin. So out of love and gratitude, every aspect of our life should be dedicated to Him.

What does a surrendered life entail? Most importantly, it involves complete commitment to Christ, unaltered by the world’s influence. Our desires and old ways of functioning are no longer driving forces. Instead, God’s Spirit guides us, and His will is the goal. Yielding to Him means following His way in attitude, words, thoughts, and deeds—and doing so unapologetically, unwaveringly, and fearlessly.

You have a choice: Either be content with less than God’s best, or give yourself fully to Him. Complete surrender is not an easy road; it means dying to your desires and selfishness. But remember that the Lord is willing and able to do more than we can even imagine (Eph. 3:20).

Bible in One Year: Jeremiah 46-48

 

http://www.intouch.org/

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — At Risk of Falling

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Read: 1 Corinthians 10:1–13 | Bible in a Year: Psalms 110–112; 1 Corinthians 5

If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 1 Corinthians 10:12

When my friend Elaine was recovering after a bad fall, a hospital worker placed a bright yellow bracelet on her wrist. It read: Fall Risk. That phrase meant: Watch this person carefully. She may be unsteady on her feet. Help her get from place to place.

First Corinthians 10 contains something like a “Fall Risk” warning for believers. With a glance back at his ancestors, Paul noted the human potential to fall into sin. The Israelites complained, worshiped idols, and had immoral relationships. God grew unhappy with them and allowed them to experience consequences for their wrongdoing. However, Paul said, “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us . . . . So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (vv. 11–12).

If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 1 Corinthians 10:12

It’s easy to trick ourselves into believing that we’re done with a particular sort of sin. Even when we’ve struggled through the worst of it—admitting our problem, repenting, and recommitting ourselves to following God’s ways—temptation may come calling. God makes it possible for us to avoid falling back into the same patterns. He does this by providing a way out of the sinful act we’re considering. Our part is to respond to His offer of escape.

Lord, let me see the way of escape You offer when I am tempted. Give me the strength to accept Your help so I can stay faithful to You. I know this is Your desire for me, and I thank You that You are at work in me.

Great blessings are often followed by great temptations.

INSIGHT:

Paul tells us that the temptation to do evil is common. But God in His goodness has provided a way to escape sin. More often than not it’s best to plan an escape route before we encounter temptation. It is wise to avoid those circumstances where we are most vulnerable to sin.

 

http://www.odb.org

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Rebellion or Resignation

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I have always loved that theologian David Wells refers to prayer as “rebelling against the status quo.”(1) No doubt the feisty among us have eyes that light up at the thought. To rebel against the status quo in this light is to challenge life where it has resigned itself to something less, to bring about rebirth and reformation where life or faith have grown stale.

Others may wonder what Christianity, and specifically Christian prayer, has to do with rebellion at all. The candid lyrics of a haunting song speak of Jesus Christ as a man of love and strength, but a man very much separated from everything we see and experience today. The lyrics sing of his living only inside our prayers, and come to the conclusion that while what Christ was may have indeed been beautiful, a man of the past can offer nothing at all for the here and now of real and wearying pain. The sentiment reflects a sorely honest philosophy that many have of the world today: It is what it is. And it won’t change anything to worry about it. Prayer, within such an imagination, is useless. The here and now of suffering is untouchable.

From headline to headline we find the weariness of life and the problem of a dark world screaming at us. Many have grown to see it as an unchangeable reality. But if we have come to terms with the world as it is, it is only because we have come to refuse thinking about how it could be, or how it was supposed to be, or how we could even have an idea that something is wrong in the first place. It is not that we are unconscious of the injustice, suffering, and even evil around us, but that we feel utterly powerless to do anything about it. Still others among us optimistically call for the abolishing of poverty or the end of trafficking or the stopping of whatever cause they are presently championing. While their efforts are needed, the end they call for doesn’t seem to ever occur.

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John MacArthur

John MacArthur – Strength for Today – Materialistic Christians

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“‘Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth’” (Matthew 6:19).

Ours is a society consumed with material things. Status, success, and importance are all too often measured by a person’s financial worth. Those with wealth flaunt it; those without wealth fake it. People often rack up huge debts in their desperate and futile pursuit of happiness through accumulating material things.

Sadly, that same materialistic mind-set permeates the church. Instead of offering an alternative, that of being distinct from the world, the church joins the world in its pursuit of riches. Most tragically of all, the saving message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is lost in the process.

It is not wrong to have possessions. Job, Abraham, and Solomon were among the wealthiest men of their day. But it is wrong to covet, to make the pursuit of material things the main goal of your life, to serve mammon instead of God. “Do not love the world,” wrote the apostle John, “nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). James addressed these scathing words to those whose focus is on material things: “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Behind much of the pursuit of riches in the church is a lack of trust in God’s provision. Instead of finding security in His promise to supply all our needs (Phil. 4:19), we seek it in a house, a bank account, or a stock portfolio. God did not give us our money and possessions so we wouldn’t have to trust Him. He gave them to us to enjoy (1 Tim. 6:17) and to test the legitimacy of our spirituality (Luke 16:11).

Whether you are rich or poor, your attitude toward your possessions and how you handle them is a test of your spirituality. How are you doing?

Suggestions for Prayer

Pray with Agur, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is my portion, lest I be full and deny Thee and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or lest I be in want and steal, and profane the name of my God” (Prov. 30:8-9).

For Further Study

What do the following verses teach about our attitude toward wealth: Psalms 49:5-9; 52:7; 62:10?

 

http://www.gty.org

 

Turning Point

Today’s Turning Point with David Jeremiah – A Lifetime’s Journey

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Indeed these are the mere edges of His ways, and how small a whisper we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand?

Job 26:14

Recommended Reading

Job 37:4-5

It happens the first time a visitor walks up to the edge of the Grand Canyon in Arizona or stands at the base of a giant redwood tree in northern California. It also happens when people enter St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome or when people see an ocean for the first time: “I had no idea!”

We can see pictures and hear others’ descriptions, but until we’ve experienced things ourselves we are just nibbling at the edge; we are hearing just a whisper of the truth. That’s how Job described trying to know God even after knowing Him! Job knew the works of God firsthand; he described them in detail in Job 26. Yet in spite of his firsthand knowledge, his conclusion was one of futility: “These are the mere edges of His ways” (verse 14). But rather than discourage us about knowing God, it should encourage us! If what we know of God in creation, in Christ, and by His Word and Spirit is just the “edge” and a “whisper,” think how much more there is to discover. And think how much greater are His abilities and resources than what we have even experienced.

Let the greatness of God spur you to know Him better—the journey of a lifetime.

The larger the God we know, the larger will be our faith.

  1. B. Simpson

Read-Thru-the-Bible

Lamentations 1 – 2

 

http://www.davidjeremiah.org/

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Molded into His Image

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And I am convinced and sure of this very thing, that He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ [right up to the time of His return], developing [that good work] and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you.- Philippians 1:6

According to the Bible, God is the Potter, and we are the clay (See Romans 9:20-21). When we first come to the Lord, we are like a hard lump of clay that is not very pliable or easy to work with. But God puts us on His potter’s wheel and begins to refashion and remake us so that we can discover the wonderful plan He has for our lives.

Sometimes that process of molding is uncomfortable at first. The reason it hurts is because God has to peel away the things in our lives that would keep us distant from Him. So out of His love for us, He keeps working and working on us, trimming away this bad attitude and that wrong mind-set, carefully reshaping us until gradually we are changed into the likeness of His Son Jesus.

Don’t be discouraged with yourself because you have not yet arrived. The more God works in your life, the closer you are growing in relationship to Him. Enjoy your life each day, even as God is shaping you. Let the Potter do His work, and trust that He has your best interest at heart.

You can always trust God that He has your best interest at heart, and all that He does in your life is for your benefit.

From the book Closer to God Each Day by Joyce Meyer.

 

http://www.joycemeyer.org

Girlfriends in God

Girlfriends in God – When you Feel Like This World Has Gone Crazy

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Today’s Truth

He (God) has planted eternity in the human heart.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

Friend to Friend

Do you ever feel like you are not at home here on earth? That something is missing? The reason is because you’re not at home, and something is missing. C.S. Lewis said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in the world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Solomon reminds us, “He (God) has planted eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT). You were made for eternity—for glory, and as long as your feet are here on this earth, you will experience a glory ache that only Heaven can fully satisfy. You will feel a certain something missing that may be hard to define.

One spring, our family hosted a ten-year-old Russian foreign exchange student named Alex. He went to school with my son, and got a taste of what the American Christian family is all about. Alex’s English was very limited and we depended on hand signals and facial expressions to get by.

On one occasion, I was trying to get him to write a letter to his parents. I pulled out the stationary, handed him a pen, and pointed to a picture of his mother and father. “Why don’t you write a letter to your parents?” I suggested. He had no idea what I was talking about.

For twenty minutes I drew pictures and tried to get him to understand what I wanted him to do. Finally, with tears in his eyes, he looked up at me and said, “What do?”

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Campus Crusade for Christ

Campus Crusade for Christ; Bill Bright – Put God to the Test 

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“Oh, put God to the test and see how kind He is! See for yourself the way His mercies shower down on all who trust in Him” (Psalm 34:8).

Sam wanted to receive Christ, but he was reluctant. Somehow, he just could not bring himself to make that necessary commitment of the will to exercise his faith and receive Christ. Because of unfortunate experiences in his youth, he had a distorted view of the goodness of God.

I encouraged Him to make his commitment, but he still hesitated. Finally, I turned to that wonderful promise of our Scripture for today and asked him to read it. As he read, the Holy Spirit gave him the faith to believe that he could trust God.

Put God to the test. Taste and see how good and kind He is. Sam discovered that day, and for the rest of his life, the faithfulness and the goodness and the kindness of God.

Do you have reservations, uncertainties, fears about the trustworthiness of God? If so, I encourage you to place your trust in Him, and you will find, as millions have found, and as I have found, that God is good, faithful, and true.

Similarly, you and I can put God to the test and find a friendly haven in the midst of enemy territory. More important, perhaps, is the certainty we can have that God does hear and answer our prayers – in situations where He and He alone knows the end from the beginning and can provide deliverance.

How vital to the supernatural life to know that we have immediate access to the God of the universe, the very one who alone can guarantee victory and deliverance.

Bible Reading: I Peter 2:1-5

TODAY’S ACTION POINT: Realizing that, as a believer, I am constantly in “enemy territory,” I will trust God and encourage others to trust Him moment by moment for deliverance, for I know that He is just and kind and good. He is a loving, heavenly Father whom I can trust. I will encourage others to put God to the test and see how kind He is, to discover for themselves His mercies that He showers on all who place their trust in Him.

 

http://www.cru.org

Ray Stedman

Ray Stedman -Everlasting Love

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Read: Jeremiah 31:1-22

I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness… Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him, declares the Lord. Jeremiah 31:3, 20

As a Father who cannot forget his son — no matter how sharply he must reprimand him, but whose heart is tender toward him — so God is tender toward his people. And behind the darkness and the distress is the everlasting love of God. This phrase, I have loved you with an everlasting love, is very beautiful. The word everlasting is one of those words which baffle us. Even in the original language it is difficult to define. Everlasting connotes more than duration, means more than merely eternal; it has in it an element of mystery. Let your mind run back into the past over all the years of history, and you come to a place where finally you just cannot think any further. Yet logic affirms that even beyond this point there has been existence and time. This is what everlasting means. Let your mind run into the future, and you come to the same kind of haziness, a place where you no longer can comprehend what the ages mean, where times and durations seem meaningless. That is the vanishing point in the future, beyond which lie experiences for God’s people, but which we are unable to grasp. That is the mystery of this word, everlasting. It is a word which means, beyond dimension,greater than we can think. This is what Paul is expressing in Ephesians: …that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, (Ephesians 3:18-19a RSV).

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Words of Hope

Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – Singing for Joy

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Read: Psalm 96

Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy. (v. 12)

The tall eastern white pine, a favorite home for bald eagles, whistles its familiar tune when the west wind blows through its bundles of long needles, singing praise to the God who made it. The smooth-barked American beech, whose nuts are sought after by grouse, raccoons, and bear, slowly bends in the breeze, bowing in reverence to the God who tends it.

The broad-crowned white oak, whose acorns are nourishment for famished turkeys, squirrels, and deer, turns red-brown each autumn as the days grow shorter, saying thank you to the God who nourishes it. The crooked crab apple, its white-pink flowers exploding with color each spring, hunkers down close to the ground, glorifying the God who rejuvenates it.

The giant sequoia, by volume the world’s largest living tree, whose bark is 20 inches thick, whose crown is more than 300 feet above the ground, who was an adult long before Jesus was born, in whose presence one can only gaze slack-jawed and stone silent—this Tree of trees sings for joy to God, the Maker and Sustainer and Redeemer of all.

All the trees of the forest shall sing for joy. In this hymn of praise to our Lord, Maker of heaven and earth, all creatures—human and nonhuman—worship God. So be it. Amen!

Prayer:

O Lord, help us, your human earthkeepers, to live in such a way that all the trees of the forest shall sing to you for joy.

Author: Steven Bouma-Prediger

 

https://woh.org/

Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie – True Conversion

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“And when people escape from the wicked ways of the world by learning about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up with sin and become its slave again, they are worse off than before.”—2 Peter 2:20

Sometimes we hear about well-known people who claim to have made a commitment to Jesus Christ. Often, it is around election time. When they address Christians, they speak of their great faith in God. After the elections, we seldom hear about it again.

Then there are people who say they are believers, but a month or two later, they go back to their old ways again. They say, “I tried Christianity, but it didn’t work for me.” But in reality, they never really found Christ.

Others will turn to God when they hit hard times. Awhile later, you see them going back to their old ways, and you wonder what happened. I would suggest that many of these people never were converted at all. They went through the motions, but Jesus Christ never became a part of their lives. Often, they end up worse than before.

When Jesus Christ truly comes into our lives, He takes up residence. And He doesn’t just do a basic housecleaning; He does a thorough one. There is real change. But when a house has only been swept, that is, when someone has made only moral changes, he or she is still vulnerable to the enemy. This is why we must recognize the futility of simply turning over a new leaf or making a few new resolutions. We must realize the problem is deeper than our moral sins. We must get to the heart of the matter and have Jesus Christ take residence in our lives and change us from the inside out.

 

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

 

The Navigators

The Navigators – Jerry Bridges – Holiness Day by Day Devotional – A Heart Warmed for Work

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Today’s Scripture: Psalm 119:32

“I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart!”

We must keep going back to his grace. Only the grace of God revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ will give us the courage to get up again and keep on going even after we have failed for the umpteenth time. Only grace will allow us to be as honest about our sin as David was about his.

The desire to engage in the discipline of mortification comes only from the gratitude and joy of knowing that, however miserably I’ve failed, God’s grace is greater than my sin.

The godly Scottish pastor Horatius Bonar expressed it this way: “It is forgiveness that sets a man working for God. He does not work in order to be forgiven, but because he has been forgiven, and the consciousness of his sin being pardoned makes him long more for its entire removal than ever he did before. An unforgiven man cannot work. He has not the will, nor the power, nor the liberty. He is in chains. a forgiven man is the true worker, the true law-keeper. He can, he will, he must work for God. He has come into contact with that part of God’s character which warms his cold heart. Forgiving love constrains him. He cannot but work for him who has removed his sins from him as far as the east is from the west. Forgiveness has made him a free man, and given him a new and most loving Master. Forgiveness, received freely from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, acts as a spring, an impulse, a stimulus of divine potency. It is more irresistible than law, or terror, or threat.”

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The Navigators – Leroy Eims – Daily Discipleship Devotional – Christ’s Death

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Today’s Scripture: John 19:1-37

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. – Isaiah 53:5

I’ve always enjoyed reading the history of the Old West. The days of Custer, Doc Holliday, and Wyatt Earp hold a special fascination for me. I’ve been to the site of the O.K. Corral, but there is one tragic story in Western history that I can’t forget.

It concerns a young woman from Boston who came west in a stagecoach to teach school in a frontier town. Out on the prairie, a gang of drunken outlaws intercepted the stage, killed the drivers, and took the young woman to an abandoned shack, where they raped and beat her throughout the night.

Can you possibly imagine the revulsion, the shame, the pain and agony she went through? Here was an innocent, refined, young woman suddenly thrust into a world so horrifying it defied description. That scene has helped me imagine just a fraction of the agony of Jesus on the cross, where on a tragic day He was made sin for us as He suffered and died for you and me.

The physical agony was great, but it did not compare with the agony that was His when all the sin and moral filth of the world was laid on Him, and His spotless soul–which had known only the purity and glory of His home in heaven–was made sin on our behalf. He died that we might live.

Jesus took our sin and clothed us in the robes of His own eternal righteousness. We can echo the apostle Paul when He wrote, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).

Prayer

Lord, You are my righteousness. Amen.

To Ponder

We cannot fully comprehend what it meant for Jesus Christ to be made sin for us–to be forsaken by God, when He took on all the filth of the world that ever was and ever would be. But now He is risen to His glory and is sitting at the right hand of the Father.

 

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