Mobile Word on Youtube!

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We are excited to unveil the latest branch of our Mobile Word Ministry for 2017! This new ministry is a youtube channel called, The Daily Word.

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On this channel we will post a new video every day for the next 365 days! The videos will be short 5-6 minute devotional videos with an ESL/EAL teaching component attached.

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Check out this sample video and look forward to new videos every day alongside all of our devotionals on mobilewordministry.com.

If you like the videos remember to click subscribe and like.

Thanks for all of your support!

-Nathan

Tuesday Devotional: 2 Corinthians 8

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bible Read 2 Corinthians 8:1-15

A reborn spirit is a giving spirit. The spirit of Jesus gave everything he had to the point of death. Therefore, with the spirit of Jesus living in us as a new creation, we are aligned with and we manifest his sacrificial love in our own lives. Christian giving can be reduced to doctrine and it is indeed a requirement for a Christian to give. However, the giving heart and the Christian life need more than doctrine.

Just as the law was merely an instrument used to teach Paul that he was a sinner because he could never follow the commandments, so is the doctrine of the gospel to us. Rebuke the religious spirit that reduces the life, death and resurrection of Jesus to simple dos and don’ts. Jesus shows us the way but only by the power of the Holy Spirit in us can we ever manage to follow the way laid out for us. Christian, you give because God gave everything to you. He gave his son, for you. Christian, you give because in Jesus you have an eye for need. You seek out need and you desire to see a need fulfilled. You have been abundantly blessed and you rejoice in the blessing of others. Christian, you give because what you own or possess is not your own. No matter how hard you have worked for it. Ultimately, your possessions are investments. They are anointed and Holy loans. God has given you what you have so that you can reinvest in the kingdom of God. Not the kingdom of you. Christian, you give what you have with confidence that God knows your heart. He knows how much and how little you have. He knows how much is easy and how much hurts. He knows how much you promised to give and how much you are recalculating and reassessing not to give. Christian, remember that you are working with God. Not against him. You are working toward a beautiful investment and profit for you and the eternal kingdom of our living God and to the name of Jesus. Remember that when you pray in confidence that the sovereignty of God over your unpredictable future is good, so is His sovereign goodness over your finite and often limited amount of money and things.

Tuesday Devotional: Romans 6

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Read Romans 6:1-14

A new creation is not the same thing as a new chance. A new life is not an enhanced or slightly modified version of your old life. New is completely new. To be a new creation is to carry within you the spirit of Jesus Christ. His nature confronts and aggressively opposes the sinful nature of your old self. A new creation does not seek justification for sin nor does it seek to provide refuge for it. The new creation hates sin! Do you hate sin? Are you ready and willing to fight the recurring temptations of the sinful nature of your old self? Or, are you apathetic and quick to celebrate the benefits of Christ’s grace and forgiveness for you before lifting a finger to oppose what you naturally should, if indeed you are a new creation? The new creation is not subtle. The new creation is of Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit and therefore is one of power. Do you feel the power of the Holy Spirit warring with your old self? Do you feel the power of the Holy Spirit lifting your weak and feeble spiritual arms in order for the battle to carry on, allowing victory to be proclaimed for you and for Christ? Is there power in your faith? A new creation cannot be without it. The lack of power in your walk with Jesus Christ begs the question, “Do you know that your savior liveth?” To know that Jesus has saved is to know that your sinful nature has been uncovered and pronounced guilty, but by the grace of God has fallen on the head of the savior, Jesus Christ. To know that Jesus lives is to know that the nature of your old self has no more power over you. You no longer serve the flesh but Jesus. You are no longer mastered by sinful desires, for your Master has liberated you from the oppression of the old self, inaugurating the way of righteousness, truth and holiness in the name of Jesus Christ. Cry out to God for newness!

Tuesday Devotional: John 9

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Read John 9

John 9:31

“We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will.”

Why does God engage with us? When we are so are egregiously out of line in our defamation of His holy name. When we are so frustratingly obstinate in our refusal to obey his will. When we so easily dismiss the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ in order to justify our own self-righteousness and promote our own self-worship. Why does God continue to engage within us? What does a Holy God have to do with sinners?

Bacteria and a sterile environment cannot coexist. Darkness cannot mingle with the light. Sinfulness is a direct affront to holiness. Why does God engage with us? What the healed blind man spoke is true. God in his righteous majesty is not expected or required to listen sinners like us. Yet he does. Why? He listens to THE godly man who does his will. And who has ever done his will in a way that honors the holiness of the living God? None but Jesus. Without the sacrificial lamb you have no chance. There is no hope. It is finished resulting in your eternal separation from the Father. Yet, because of his wounds and by his blood it is finished resulting in an entirely different and far more miraculous way. The condemnation of your sins is finished. The punishment for your iniquities is finished. The fear of death is finished. Hallelujah! It is by Jesus you have been saved, transformed, healed, welcomed back. There is none but Jesus.

Tuesday Devotional: Luke 17

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Read Luke 17:4-10

The commands of Jesus are sweet but they must always bring us to cry out to God, “Increase our faith!” The commands of Jesus are beyond what we are capable of achieving. His ways are higher than our ways. The commands of Jesus are not comfortable and they do not fit nicely and neatly with our way of life. The way of Jesus is Holy and we are sinful. These two natures are incompatible and contradictory to one another. This is what we face when we read the words of Jesus and receive His proclamation over our lives. We are called to enter the narrow gate. We are called to count the cost. We are commanded to die to self. We are commanded to repent and submit our lives to the authority of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We are commanded to be reborn and to be transformed in the likeness of Jesus Christ. We are commanded to leave everything and to lose everything of this world in order to receive and possess the love of Jesus Christ in our lives. We are instructed to believe that with faith in Jesus even the most daunting and impassable obstacle in your life can be moved. Believing that we can live the life Jesus commands us to live requires a faith that can only be revealed through faith in Jesus and by receiving the power of the Holy Spirit. Beware of living a life following Jesus where you never utter the words, “Increase our faith.” We cannot follow Jesus without pleading every day for God to increase our faith in Jesus Christ. Christians who are loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled require faith and more of it that in Jesus all things are possible. Heavenly Father, increase our faith!

Tuesday Devotional: Mark 13

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Read Mark 13

Watch! We are commanded to watch. But what are we to watch? Are we to watch and predict the timing of the end? Are we to evaluate current events to gain insight into the timing of the end? Are we to erect fortifications meant to protect the things we treasure in this world from the coming wrath and destruction associated with the end times?

No. We are commanded to watch for other things. We are commanded to be on our guard for those that make predictions and proclaim the end before it has been revealed by the living God. We are commanded not to rely on our own strength and words to defend ourselves from the inevitable persecution we will encounter and endure as disciples of Jesus. We are commanded to watch how we are trusting in the love of Jesus as we are cast out and abandoned by those closest to us, including our family. We are commanded to guard against those coming in the name of Jesus who promote and glorify the miraculous works of their own hands and not the Christ. We are commanded to watch out for the inevitable corruption and desolation of the House of God as the message of Jesus is replaced with a message of self-glorification. Most importantly, we are to watch and pray that when the Son of Man comes like a thief in the night we are prepared to stand before the throne of the living God with sincerity of heart to declare our complete devotion to Jesus Christ and his commands to which we have submitted our entire lives. Watch!

Tuesday Devotional: Matthew 11

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Read Matthew 11:1-18

If we cry out for the living God we must be prepared to receive the living God as He is, not as we want him to be. If our desperation leads us to cry out for a savior we must be prepared to receive the savior as He is. A starving person will not pass on food because it has not been cooked to their liking. A drowning person will not refuse assistance because of a person’s hair color. Be careful when you cry out to God. To cry out to God is to be heard by the living God and the living God desires to answer you back. However, it is the living God that desires to respond and not our idea of the living God. The living God comes with mercy for all people, conviction of sin for all people and true life offered in the name of the one and only Messiah, Jesus Christ. Count the cost. When you cry out to God from your grief, suffering and desperation be prepared to be met by a God that has loved you longer than you know and desires to love you for eternity. This is good news. However, be prepared to be met by a God that places a demand on your life to be Holy because He is Holy. The living God demands that you die to yourself and take up your cross and follow His son step after step. When you cry out to God you will be heard. He hears you. He also desires to dwell within you, talk to you and guide you into His presence. The living God knows your cry before you cry it. This is good news. However, the living God knows that you need saving from yourself more than you need anything else. And he offers you the only savior powerful enough to defend and rescue you from yourself and his name is Jesus. God knows more about you than you ever can. He also is more aware of your suffering than you will ever know. But to be saved by Jesus is to give up your life for Him. To be saved is to for once quit in the most gloriously liberating way possible. Stop resisting how God desires to save you and have ears to hear and eyes to see that He is saving you!

Tuesday Devotional: Malachi 2

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Read Malachi 2

Malachi 2:16 (NKJV, emphasis added)

¹⁶“For the Lord God of Israel says
That He hates divorce,
For it covers one’s garment with violence,”
Says the Lord of hosts.
“Therefore take heed to your spirit,
That you do not deal treacherously.”

Malachi 2:16 (NIV)

¹⁶“The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty.

So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.

Malachi 2:9

“…you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.”

Teachers, Pastors, Priests, Christians: you are to follow the commands and words of our Lord without partiality. The words of God are being changed, being softened and manipulated to speak to us in a way we feel we ought to be spoken to. Both versions of Malachi 2:16 proclaim that divorce is wrong. If we are to place our hopes in the words of our Lord and Savior promising everlasting life and peace from our strife in this world we are to hear the words of our Lord and God as He has said them without partiality. The nature of sin is to question God’s words, contemplate His motives and intentions and conclude that God could never be that strict and that uptight about how we ought to live. We are merely human, right? But He means what He says. His words are strict to our sinful ears because His ways are higher than our ways. He is Holy and we are not. His words are as uptight as they sound because the way of Jesus is a narrow gate that few enter because of the costly sacrifice and complete denial of self that following Jesus into eternal fellowship with the Father requires.

2 Timothy 4:3-4

³For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. ⁴They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

Be shrewd as a serpent and gentle as a dove, Christian. Our Heavenly Father demands that we be Holy as He is Holy. The sin within us will always seek partiality concerning God’s Holy words. It will always endeavor to weaken the sting of His rebuke in order to massage our weary soul from its burdensome struggle for Holy perfection and encourage us to seek the desires of our heart. God is love, right? And the gospel of Jesus is forgiveness and grace, right? Yes on both counts. But Jesus is still the narrow gate that came preaching repentance of sin and complete transformation in his image. Holiness. Righteousness. Obedience to the Father. Let the words of God sting you. Let them stab you. Let them cut you to the heart as a double-edged sword. Protect and cultivate a relationship with our Lord that welcomes the sting of Holiness and the demands of it on our life. The sting of God’s Holy words and the self-sacrifice of our sinfulness for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus is nothing compared to the sting of eternal separation from God that Jesus came to save us from.

Tuesday Devotional: Haggai 1

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Read Haggai 1

²This is what the Lord Almighty says: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’”

³Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: ⁴“Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?”

The time is now to follow the Lord. The time is now to give to the Lord. Take stock of what you have, what you own, what you possess. What is yours? What is God’s?

The truth of Jesus proclaims that everything you see belongs to God. Everything you own is being loaned to you with one purpose: to honor, worship and glorify the living God in Jesus’ name. Want to take a vacation? Go ahead. But honor God first. Is your house in order before you buy your ticket? Is your community in order before you buy your ticket? Will your trip honor the spirit of Jesus that lives within you and will ultimately be on the trip alongside you? Does your luxury glorify the selfless and sacrificial spirit of Jesus in your life, or will it stray from the path of Jesus in order to glorify yourself and celebrate your own status?

God gives us good things, but He gives us good things after we have given Him ALL things. Giving to God cannot be separated from following Jesus. To follow Jesus means to give God everything you have and everything you are. The house of the Lord is not a house we can visit. WE are the House of the Lord. To leave the House of the Lord in ruins while we build palaces for ourselves has so much more to do with the spirit of Jesus within us in contrast to the spirit of Sin.

Are you feeding your sin or are you feeding the spirit of Jesus in your life? The palace you build in your own name will fall and will leave you worse off than before you built it. We were created to live in luxury, but in a luxury that is righteous and holy. When we build we shall build for the Lord. Where we live we shall live there for the Lord. What we own we shall own under the rightful ownership of the Lord. A palace that neglects and ignores the dwelling place of the Lord is a palace that, although beautiful from the outside, will be a haven for darkness and will collapse when the rains fall and the wind roars. We cannot own anything before the Lord has rightfully written His name upon every last possession of ours.

This is not unfair, this is not unjust, this is not mean. This is truth, and the truth, although challenging and illogical to the sin in our hearts, will always and forever set us free. Minimalist living has proven to be a source of freedom to many people, but the Gospel is far more than that. The Gospel says that to live without is not only about clarity in mind and spirit, it is about submission to a King who lavishes us with all we have ever wanted and who desires to do so for eternity.

Tuesday Devotional: Zephaniah 2

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This is the city of revelry
that lived in safety.
She said to herself,
“I am the one! And there is none besides me.”
What a ruin she has become,
a lair for wild beasts!
All who pass by her scoff
and shake their fists.

The lie of sin is that we not only have the right to take the throne as King but that we will never be overtaken, deposed or removed. What Kingdom has ever outlasted time? What King has ever sat on a throne for eternity? None. All people pass. All kingdoms collapse. The most foolish thing we could possibly do is to ignore the words of the living God.

The second most foolish thing we could possibly do is to deny the historical record that proves God’s point. What you see today will not last. What you do today will last for eternity. Seek truth and find it, or pursue a lie and believe it. In God’s great grace and mercy He has not hidden the truth from us. He has revealed clearly and for all eyes to see where we’ve been and where we are going.

But sin runs deep and in sin is a king who has stolen the crown and will fight at all costs to retain control. Don’t let it. The fight to take the throne cannot be won, not should it ever be fought. Fighting for control of the throne WILL precede a downfall and will destroy the kingdom and the king at the same time. The throne and the power you think it gives you is a lie, and it can never give you what you hope it can. The throne belongs to Christ. Only under His lordship can you find what you are truly looking for. Look hard at Christ and turn your eyes upon Jesus. His Lordship does not take anything from you other than the delusion that is slowly taking your life away one day at a time. God has always intended for us to live and to live forever. A life hidden in Christ will last forever and it will outlast all else. Choose to live. Choose life!