Devotions

ONLY ONE REASON – John 15:8-11 NIV

“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.  As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked this question:  “Why are we here?”  The answer is very simple.  We are here for only one reason – to bring glory to God.

Awesome, isn’t it?  We are not here to achieve great things for humanity.  We are not here to tithe.  We are not here to be great teachers, or doctors, or lawyers, or clerks, or mechanics.  We are not here to build huge church buildings, or write great books, or drill profitable oil wells.  If we are selfish in our aims, all our efforts will bring us is compliments from man.  And we will have received our entire reward.

But our reward is so much greater than that.  We are here for one very simple, basic reason – to bring glory to God.  Our reward is to spend eternity with Him.

If we do all of the things we do with that in mind, then the efforts listed above and all others like them will do simply that – they will bring glory to God.  And we will receive the blessings of the promise Jesus made in John 15:7 – all that we ask will be done for us.  That’s a promise He will keep, because IF we are abiding in Him, IF we are totally and intimately involved with Him, everything we ask will be within His will.  And, obviously, if it’s within His will, it will be done.

Awesome, isn’t it?

LIVING BY FAITH – 2 Corinthians 5:7 NIV

We live by faith, not by sight.

What we are witnessing in the world today is described in Scripture as ‘the day of the Lord’s vengeance, and the year of recompense for the controversy of Zion” (Isaiah 34:8)

I believe that through all the churning and chaotic events going on in the world today, the period of history that Isaiah describes is one full of weeping, fear and trembling. Yet the Lord gave Isaiah a word of assurance for his people: Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will come and save you. (Isaiah 35:4)

A time comes when all weeping must come to an end. It’s then God’s people who are to rise above their grieving and live by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ who is the author and finisher of our faith.

To live by faith… what a frightening thought that is to some people… in fact, to most people! Living by faith means that you have to get up every single day and depend on someone else for everything in your life – your food, your clothing, your air conditioning, your car, your job, your family… your everything. Whether you want to admit it or not, if you’re a normal, healthy human being, you are – to some extent – a control freak. That’s why self-help books sell so many copies, and why self-help videos line the shelves of bookstores.

That’s why “how to”  articles appear in almost every issue of every magazine, showing us how to improve our lives, improve our outlooks, reduce our stress, overcome our problems, and make ourselves better people. That’s why “status symbols” are so popular – the bigger house, the nicer yard, the prettier furniture, the “name brand” clothing, the bass boats and jet skis and hunting gear and motor homes and just about everything else that people put themselves in debt to own.

And that’s why so many people have such a hard time placing all of their faith in Jesus.

They can’t see him. They can’t touch him. They have great difficulty believing in and depending on someone that lived 2,000 years ago! In truth, most people have more faith in their garbage men than they do in Jesus. Even professing Christians give lip service to having faith, but when it comes down to the basics, even they have as little faith as their non-believing neighbours.

Why is this true? What is it about having total faith in Jesus that is so frightening, and oft-times so unobtainable for so many people? It’s because we – all of us – want to be in control. We’ve been surrounded by “me generation” thinking in our magazines, our newspapers, our movies, our books – everything in our lives has pushed us to focus on being “in control” – and we fight desperately in an effort to hang onto that control, even after we place our faith in Jesus. Oh, we’ll believe in him where our eternity is concerned, but have absolute faith here and now? That’s a different matter!

So we go along, being “in control” on the surface, but secretly realizing that we are not in control of anything. We think we’re in control of our jobs, and then the company goes belly-up, and we’re jobless.

And then all those status symbols – those things we bought with money we didn’t have to impress those people we didn’t like in the first place – are repossessed because we can’t keep up the payments. We think we’re in control of our marriages, and then our spouses leave or die, and we’re all alone. We think we’re in control of our children, and then one gets arrested for possessing drugs or gets pregnant out of wedlock, and we realize we didn’t have control after all. We think we’re in control of our world, and then 19 madmen hijack four airplanes, and 3,000 people die, – and we realize that no one is safe, anywhere.

So where do we turn? The ONLY place we can turn to find solace, to find peace, to find confidence in tomorrow is Jesus. When all else has failed us, we realize we should have turned to him in the first place.

But how do we do that? How do we live by faith, not by sight?

For the next versions, this series of devotionals will help you learn how to live by faith, not by sight. Practice each one every day until these supernatural steps become a natural part of your day, every day – and then you will be able to live by faith in God for rest of your life.

LIVING BY FAITH – BELIEVING HE IS WHO HE SAYS HE IS

John 8:24, 58 NIV

Jesus said to the Jews, “I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.”

“I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!”

The major concerns for the church today—the prevalence of faithlessness. The unbelief has the outward appearance of conservative approach to life, but works to subject God Himself to the mind and control of his children. It is very sad that so many people in the house of God need to prove that Lord actually does what I say I have seen and heard Him do. The strange thing is that when God works miracles before our eyes, we still want other confirmations, evidences and documents before we give God the honour and praises he deserves.

The above statement Jesus made is such powerful … Think about how the world perceives Jesus – giving him every description imaginable except the one that is true and correct – prophet, good man, reincarnated “Christ spirit”, Michael the Archangel in human form, one of the Gods – anything and everything to try to turn the world’s thinking away from who he said he was – and from who he really is.

But Jesus said – if you don’t believe he is who he claims to be, you will die in your sins. That’s a pretty cut-and-dried statement – one that doesn’t leave room for creative definition of who Jesus is. Perhaps the best thing to do is take a look at who Jesus is according to God’s Holy Word – the only source of truth that any of us has.

Jesus has existed eternally as God the Son. Romans 9:5 gives us, perhaps, the clearest statement of who Jesus is. “Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,and the Word was God.” The Greek text in this phrase uses a verb that does not refer to any point in time when Jesus began or came into existence. Rather, in the “beginning” it says that Jesus was ALREADY in existence. Jesus had no beginning, and he has no end. As God the Son, he is “from everlasting to everlasting”.“Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

(John 1:3) There is nothing “limiting” about this statement. It says ALL things, which includes the entire universe and all parts thereof – he created all of space, all of matter and all of time, along with every being that exists or has existed. He didn’t begin somewhere and then make just a few things. He made ALL things. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”

(Revelation 22:13) You and I want to put a beginning and an end on everything – because we are finite, and our minds cannot comprehend something that vast. But God the Son has no beginning and he has no end. He was not created at some point in time by another God. He is God.

LIVING BY FAITH – BELIEVE THAT ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE THROUGH HIM

Mark 9:14-23 NIV

When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law

Arguing with them, as soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him……..”‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.”

A man had brought his son to Jesus to be healed. The boy was possessed by a demon that not only made him mute, but that also threw the boy into convulsions, sometimes threatening his life. The man had asked Jesus’ disciples to cast the demon out, but they had been unable to do it.

So the man asked Jesus,

“If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

From reading this passage, it’s obvious that Jesus was getting a little frustrated, not only with this man, but also with his disciples. He had just said to the disciples, “How long must I put up with you? Where is your faith?” Then He is confronted by this man. I can just see Him throwing up his hands in frustration when He said “If you can!” He probably wanted to say, “How many times do I have to prove myself to you people before you’ll believe? How many miracles do I have to do?”

You and I have the same kind of faith as this man. We say we know Jesus can do everything, but do we really believe it? When it comes down to our own particular set of circumstances, we figure that, it must be the exception to the rule, right?

Beloved, the same is true for you and me today. There simply is nobody on earth who can lift your soul and troubles out of despair. No one, Government, Pastor, Husband or wife keep your spirit encouraged through duration of crises. We all have to get our own faith based on the word from the Lord.

For example, you’ve been through a bad situation with a job, followed by several more disastrous jobs.

As you look back over this mess, you realize that you keep getting into the same situation over and over again. You have several courses of action… you can keep up the bad work, for one. Or you can decide that all people in the world are screwy, so you will never have anything to do with them again, and instead of working, you can go be a street bum. Or you can buy twenty self-help books on being successful and dealing with co-workers and bosses, then memorize them. Or you can go to God’s Word and to Him in prayer, and ask that whatever it is in you that is causing or contributing to your history of bad work situations be healed.

Be encouraged. God has everything under control! ……..

To be continued….