DEVOTIONALS

As I read God's word, the Holy Bible, things come to mind. I hope you don't mind if I share what He's been showing me. Each devotional will hopefully give some food for thought, and draw each of us closer to our God who loves us!  

  • A lesser god

    When we begin to pick and choose what we believe about God, when we decide which of the scriptures in His Word we like, and which we would rather discard, we become as those mentioned within its very pages - those creating a god of our own making. 

    That is the truth that woke me in the wee hours.  As I lay there and wrestled with the thought, how do I try to shape God into a lesser god than He is? 

    We know of the Ten Commandments, with the first being, "You shall have no other gods before Me."1 And, although we may not have sat down lately to create a golden calf, there are plenty of ways that we have tried to fashion God into a lesser god by our own life and choices.  

    But He is not an ala carte god whom we can add to or take from.  

    We must either choose to accept ALL of Him as God, or we end up designing a lesser god who is really no god at all.  Like those whom the Apostle Paul mentions in the book of Acts who were "very religious" making gods of their own out of "gold, silver or stone," images "formed by the art and thought of man."2 Stop and think, do our thoughts design a god we can live with?  Do we, as mentioned in Romans, become those who "exchanged the truth of God for a lie...", do we become "fools" having a "depraved mind"3?

    With our sinful nature we are apt to do as Eve did when she changed God's words in answer to Lucifer in the garden to make it suit her desires.  We do it when we think the Bible is outdated and doesn't really apply to our current culture or generation, and certainly not to our situation. Like Israel (the people that God chose as the nation to bring forth the Savior) who chose lesser gods continuously, making images with their own hands to worship. I remember reading that as a child and thinking how silly and foolish to create something and then worship it as if it created you.  But every time we decide to take from His love and grace yet push aside His call to holy and righteous living, we make a lesser god. When we choose to accept God as a loving father but leave out the part that He disciplines His own, or the fact that judgment is also His, we have designed a lesser god.  When we choose to accept the promises of the Bible and leave off the dire warnings within its pages to live holy, we make Him a lesser god.

    Like those in Athens that Paul speaks of, many of us believe there's a God but what kind of god have we tried to make Him to be? One that fits our own wants? Has the Bible become inconvenient to read so we really don't even know Who He is? Do we let the world around us define God? Like the Athenians, do we pray to the "UNKNOWN GOD"? 

    For generations now we have been taught that we can have what we want, in fact, we can have it all, we deserve it, we are worth it, we should have it, and somewhere along the way, the shift of thought (maybe even from the beginning of creation) has been that it's all about my desires.  I have choices. I have a mind of my own and I know how to assert it.  I have my likes and dislikes, and you can have yours, too, (as long as they don't mess with mine.) 

    I see this same thought process playing out in the Church today:  I believe in Jesus, I'm saved, so now I can live how I want.  Of course, there are some socially accepted moral boundaries that we will straddle, but ultimately...  we think we can live our life under this umbrella of an overall generous God who is far above us, like a doting father who doles out blessings to His children, and we are so good with that, as long as He doesn't try to cramp our lifestyle, right? 

    In social media, we hear others say that the Bible is no longer relevant, its archaic.  It doesn't fit our culture.  But, did you know there is nothing new under the sun? (That's in the Bible too, Ecclesiastes 1:9) Sin has been prevalent since the fall of mankind, and although we are very aware that the world is in a downward spiral, God has been dealing with the sin of man since He made the first sacrifice to cover Adam and Eve in the garden.  It was God, the omniscient one, who knew sin would happen and had already laid out a plan for a Savior.  It was God, the Almighty one, who maneuvered it into place so that the Messiah could not be thwarted.  It was God, the patient one, who didn't just obliterate the whole world and start over with a smarter version, a more obedient version.  It was God, the longsuffering one, who set principles in motion and allows man to live out life until the day He returns for us.  Yes, He is also loving and merciful (praise His name!) but He is not to be weakened or made less than He is.  He is The GOD.  Creator of all. Giver of breath and life, and can take breath away.  He is Judge over all.  He is sovereign, Lord of lords and King of kings.  There is no greater being than Him, and our thoughts cannot even rise to the same level as His lowest thought. 

    In Job 38, God speaks to Job and says, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, who sets its measurements? Since you know, or who stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?  Or who enclosed the sea with doors when, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; When I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and I placed boundaries on it and set a bolt and doors, and I said, 'Thus far you shall come, but no farther; and here shall your proud waves stop'? Have you ever in your life commanded the morning, and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of the earth..."4  And  on He goes to describe His acts of creating things that mankind could not dream of because we are the created not the creator.  Like Job we cannot fathom all that God is but we can certainly know all He is not.  He is not lesser than God Himself. 

    Father, may we never try to diminish who You are by lifting our own thoughts above Your own.  May we always remember that You are God and we are not.  Help us to never settle for a lesser god, designed and thought of by our own convenience or desires, for You alone are God.  THE God.  Our God. Forgive us when we try to take away any of who You are, or diminish the words You have spoken to us. Help us to bow our knees before You, and in faith live according to Your word.  You are the unfathomable God, no lesser god can compare.  Lead us by Your Spirit, as we come in the name of Christ Jesus to live focused on You as God of all.  Amen.

     

    Scriptures for your reading:

    1 Exodus 20:1-3

    2 Acts 17:22-31

    3 Romans 1:22, 25, 28

    4 Job 38:4-13

  • Be Holy, For I Am Holy

    "Did you clean your room?"  "Yes, I did."  "Then why are there still socks on the floor and papers behind the desk? And what's this candy wrapper doing here?"  I've had conversations like that too many times to count.  For some reason, what is clean to one person is not clean at all to another.  And then I realize that I often do the same thing with the Lord. "Is your heart clean?" "Yes, Lord" "Then what is that anger about? Why do you elevate yourself over that person? Why are you still feeding that sinful habit?"

     

    And I'm struck with the hard truth that partial obedience isn't really obeying at all.  God has called us to live and walk in the holiness that we became when we accepted Christ Jesus.  Don't miss that tidbit there.  We BECAME HOLY the moment we accepted Christ BECAUSE CHRIST IS HOLY, and since at salvation we are placed into Christ, all that He is, and all that He has, is ours.  His heart for others is ours, His Spirit is ours, His scars are ours.

     

    Then why does God have to say, "Be Holy for I am Holy" (I Peter 1:16 nasb)?  Why tell us to be holy if we already have that in Christ?  Because there is a large difference between our position in Christ, and what we experience in this world in our flesh.   We find ourselves willing to oblige God... in certain ways.  We are willing to set ourselves apart from certain behaviors, we clean ourselves up to a degree, but our fleshly desires hold on to things of this world, whether it's language we shouldn't be using, or looking like the world to fit in, or accepting things in our life that are truthfully unholy. 

     

    The more we walk with Him, the more we see that when He asks for obedience, He wants total compliance, all of us, our whole obedience: body, soul, mind and strength.  The more I know Him and His holiness, the more I realize how far I indeed fall short of His glory.  Ladies, God did not send His Son to suffer humiliation, die a horrendous death for us to say in exchange, I will obey You if it's convenient for me, or when it makes sense to me.  He called us to something much more.  He called us to Holiness.

     

    In 1 Samuel 15 we find the example of Saul only partially obeying God, and the result was that God removed him from his throne.  Saul quickly tried to justify his sin, he tried to rationalize the bits of obedience as if that were the whole.  But ultimately, his lack of obedience in one point made him guilty of all.  That is true for all of us, as James 2:10 points out.

     

    The story of Balaam in Numbers 22 is another example of trying to do what we want to do under the guise of obedience.  We are incredibly adept at rationalizing lifestyles, aren't we?  We have been taught tolerance so long that we allow what is unholy into our day as if it were acceptable to a HOLY and PERFECT God.  Psalm 50 talks about living that kind of life, and in verse 21 He sums it up by saying to those living in sin, "These things you have done and I have kept silence; You thought I was just like you; I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes."   You thought I was just like you!  God is nothing like us!  He is faithful ALWAYS, we are faithful if its convenient.  He does only what is best for us, where we often do the worst.  He is Just, Loving, Immutable, we run with the winds of change.  God is most assuredly, HOLY.  And let's not forget, Christ Jesus is our standard, not the person next to us.  He is our example of holy perfection.  His complete obedience is what we are to follow. 

     

    The excuses come easily.  Well, Jesus was God, I can't be like Him, I'm human. Then we have missed the point of His coming.  He came as a human, setting aside His deity as something not to be held on to (Philippians 2:5-8).  He was born a baby, to be tempted as we are tempted, yet without sin.  How did He accomplish that?  He accomplished it by only doing what the Father said, and always submitting to the control of the Holy Spirit in His life, every moment. He was in the world, but not of the world.  Christ lived holy. We, too, are called by God to be holy.  To separate ourselves out from the world, and it requires us to be obedient to His leading, every moment, not just the moments of our choosing.  Take a look at your day, has it been holy unto the Lord, has your heart reflected His?  If not, don't even take the time to beat yourself up, just take a minute to confess it to Him, and get to following Him again.

     

    He provided grace in Christ Jesus to make it possible.   He sent a Helper to help us achieve it, but it requires our walking in Him and the plan He has for each of us.  It requires, dare I say it again, submission. Submitting to Him is often hard, but once we make that first move to do it, He carries us along in it.  So, walk with Him today. Submit to His Spirit's leading today, and walk in holiness.  Be set apart to Him in our words, in what we put in front of our eyes, and in what we do.  For we belong to Him if we have indeed asked Jesus to be our Lord and Savior.

     

    "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you,

    whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?"

    1 Corinthians 6:19

     

    Be Holy, for He is Holy.

     

    Father, we understand we cannot be holy on our own.  It is only through Your Son that we are made holy before such a holy God. It is only through Your Spirit that we can live holy. Forgive us the times we fall short each day and help us to live in Christ, holy before You.  May we not look like the world, act like the world or be absorbed by the world, but rather, be recognized as belonging to You.  Lord, the fact that You can take such unholy people and make them clean is truly a gift to us. Thank You for Your great love.  Help us to walk in that holiness today.  Amen

  • Grace & Compassion

    I've always thought of the story of Jonah to be about a disobedient man and a big fish, but reading through God's word always seems to bring new insight, and today it brought great hope!

    You can find the story for yourself toward the end of the Old Testament in the book entitled, "Jonah". It's the story of a prophet whom God sent to preach repentance to a rebellious and wicked place called Ninevah.   It was a large city, so large it would take about three days of walking to reach from one end to the other.  And although the Lord tells him to go, Jonah really does not want to go to Ninevah (we could stop a while right here and ask, "what's your Ninevah?" but we'll tackle that one another day.  Today I think we need to focus on the hope found within the pages.)

    We've heard the story of Jonah trying to run from God (uh, that never works, in case you're wondering) and he ends up getting thrown overboard by his shipmates when they find out that he is the reason the seas are so stormy.   Jonah ends up in the belly of a great fish, until he finally repents and tells the Lord, he will obey Him and go to Ninevah.  (Lesson #1 - don't try to run from an omnipresent God.   Lesson #2 - when He tells you to do something, do it right away.  Lesson #3 - if you don't obey right away and find yourself being divinely disciplined, REPENT QUICKER!  Don't wait three days!  Three days in the belly of a fish, ewww... I'm pretty sure that the smells and the discomfort would have brought me to my knees a whole lot sooner than three days! But then again, I can be as stubborn as the next one.)  So, that's the story and the lessons we grew up with.  A story of repentance.  A story of obedience.  A story of learning to follow God's leading, and finding Him to be a God of second chances. (Oh how I love that!)

    The story tells us much more though, and in fact, tells us exactly why Jonah didn't want to go to Ninevah in the first place - Chapter 1:2, God says to this prophet, Ninevah's "wickedness has come up before Me."  The wickedness in the city had come to a point that God could not overlook it (ever notice that God seems to overlook a lot of sin? Sometimes it frustrates us to no end that He doesn't pass judgment on others more quickly, doesn't it?).  But Jonah's reason for not going isn't because the people are so wicked, but rather, it's because of what he knows about the Lord. 

    We see in Chapter 4:2 these words regarding Jonah, "He prayed to the Lord and said, 'Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.'"  Jonah knows God well enough to know that He is full of grace and compassion.  What had he said, and what was he trying to forestall?  That answer was in Chapter 3:10, "When God saw their deeds [the people of Ninevah], that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it." Jonah knew that if there was any sign of repentance among this wicked people that God's grace and compassion would relent from destroying them.   He also knew He could not thwart God's overall plan, but he hoped to at least "forestall" it.

    The Lord goes on to reply to Jonah, "Should I not have compassion on Ninevah, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?"    120, 000 people who don't know the difference between their right and left hand.  God was not going to hold them accountable for what they did not know.  Nothing can thwart God's overall plan, and therein lies the hope!

    Whether we are looking at the political arena, the current state of the United States of America, or looking closer to home at situations in our own lives, we can know that the Lord is a God who is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and thankfully, one who relents concerning calamity.   With a God like that, there is always hope!

    There are so many who do not know the Lord God.  If you've watched any interviews lately, or watched the news, you know that there are so many that do not know their right from their left hand.  So many misguided.  So many lost.  So many who do not know God, nor His word.  Sadly, even among believers we are often quite biblically illiterate and have settled for having the golden ring to get into heaven, grabbing on to our "fire insurance", but content to live in spiritual immaturity; we have become a lazy people, thinking His word too hard to understand so why bother trying?  The result is that we, too, might as well be sitting in the belly of a stinky old fish, for we surely are not living out God's plan for our lives.

    But there is hope, because our God is one full of grace and compassion.   He is one who relents from calamity.   He is indeed a God of second chances.  

    Like Jonah, we, too, have been appointed to share the gospel, the good news that there is a Savior.

    And in truth, we would not be nearly as patient as the Lord is, and certainly not as slow to anger, would we?  Perhaps we are a bit like Jonah, and would rather others suffer rather than to know the saving grace of our Father. Sometimes I find us more concerned our own happiness than we are with the state of another's heart, having concluded that they are beyond hope. But, ladies, no one is ever beyond hope!  For our Lord God sees a much bigger plan.  He knows every need, and is good to provide.   He has given us instruction to share the gospel, to speak the truth in love.  And He offers second chances, even third and fourth and fifth... 

    He is a God that is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and His lovingkindness is ABUNDANT, greater than we can ever imagine.  So, when we fear this is the end, when we see the wickedness among us, know this... We serve a God of second chances, a God of great grace and compassion.  We can trust Him to do what it takes to make things right. 

    Let's do our part and walk in obedience to what He calls us to do.  To speak when we should speak.  To go where He would have us to go.  May our answer to His leading always be "Yes, Lord, send me."    

    Father, thank You for the hope we have in who You are.  You don't offer a smidgen of grace, or a pinch of compassion, but it is fully all we need that You bless us with minute by minute. Your lovingkindness is what has brought us into a relationship with You and we are blessed!   May we never try to thwart Your plans, nor Your forgiveness to others.  By Your Spirit, may we be quick to respond when You ask us to speak or act.  Bring healing to this land and to our hearts, for Your glory.  In Christ I pray, Amen.

    More Reading:

    Jonah 1-4

    Psalm 27:13

    Psalm 73