Devotional

Tuesday Devotional: 1 Kings 6

Devotional

 

bibleRead 1 Kings 6

7In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.”

16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? (1 Corinthians 3:16)

A Christian’s purpose is not for independent growth and prosperity.  We are by nature designed for fellowship and to be incorporated into a design of life that replaces our attention on ourselves with attention on our relationship to others.  It is in the design of God’s body that we see our purpose in the the greater complexity of the design and structure that we are a part of.  A temple is built to evoke awe and admiration from those that look upon it.  Likewise, the strength of the body of Christ correlates with our understanding of the whole as opposed to the self.  If we claim Christ as our savior we will naturally be drawn to fellowship not merely for our personal satisfaction but because we can see the Father’s glory represented by our lives as the Church, just as the temple’s strength reflected Him.

7In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.” 

[F]or all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Galatians 3:27 )

The blocks of the temple arrived at the site of the temple dressed, carved, measured and ready to fit into the temple’s design.  Once at the temple, nothing was left to be done to the stones in order to make them fit in the structure.  The stones were prepared and so fit perfectly.   While Christians differ in appearance, background, nationality, age, and countless other characteristics, one uniting factor miraculously allows all of the blocks to fit together perfectly.  The unity of the body of Christ comes by the saving works of Jesus Christ.  If the unity of the body of Christ is anything other than Christ, only sections of the temple will fit, leaving the rest with no place or purpose in the overall structure.  In other words, a Christian is clothed in Christ and then is able to fit perfectly into the temple, revealing the strength of the stones in their unity, and the brilliance of the structure in its size and splendor.

7In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.” 

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.  Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:2-3)

Living in Christian community is not easy and it never will be.  The process of individuals breaking their addiction to themselves alongside others taking on the same challenge will always reveal pain and obstacles.  However, the hope in Christ is that although the challenge is real, with the power of the Holy Spirit, the process can be smooth and does not have to be violent.  Hammers, chisels and iron tools are powerful and can inflict enormous damage on a stone.  However, being made in the image of Christ, while painful to our sinful nature, is a process of peace, joy and love.  Being made in the image of Jesus Christ is a threat to Satan and the work of sin but in the name of Jesus Christ we can find peace, joy and love amidst and throughout the rebuilding process.

7In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.”

 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:4-5)

The awareness that we are made to be built into a structure with others, the foundational presence of Christ in us, and the Spirit of Christ guiding us through the building is an ongoing procedure the same way that the building of Solomon’s Temple was ongoing.  The Temple of Solomon was eventually finished, just as we will come to completion.  But our completion is not yet.  The building process is ongoing, and while we know that the end will come, we do not know when.  Until then, we build and we are being built, and the glory of an earthly building such as Solomon’s Temple will pale in comparison to the glory in the Temple of Christ in His Church, revealed in a world that has forgotten its Creator, its Designer, its Architect, its God.

 

Tuesday Devotional: 1 Samuel 21

Devotional

bibleRead 1 Samuel 21:1-9

 4But the priest answered David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread on hand; however, there is some consecrated bread here…”

Religion requires works that overlook a need for the sake of a score.  The Gospel requires personal sacrifice that creates a heart for the stranger for the sake of Jesus Christ.  In many ways, religion is easier.  We can understand scores.  We can understand a checklist.  What’s difficult for us to comprehend is an open-ended demand for love.  We respond with quantifying questions: “Love who?  How much love?  When should I love?”  This is because our sinful natures are not able to love naturally, increasingly, daily.  Trying to love that way is like holding our breath underwater until we can break the surface and breathe the oxygen we were made for.  But the love of God demands the love of God.  Period.  The first victory is the realization that we are totally incapable of that demand and therefore need God every step of the way.  As much as God wants us to turn to Jesus and rely on him for everything, sin also has a passion for redirecting our attention away from Jesus and back onto ourselves, leaving us more likely to seek our own righteousness through a list  we can follow as opposed to a task that we know we would fail at.

The Gospel always sees a specific need over a specific rule.  Is someone naked?  Give them clothes.  Is someone hungry?  Give them food.  Is someone homeless?  Give them a home.  Is someone sad?  Give them a hug.  These are the standards of Jesus and His Gospel and therefore must be the instinct of a person claiming identity in Christ and calling themselves a Christian.  A Christian does not ask for papers first and then serves second.  A Christian professes faith in the Suffering Servant and is remade in His image.  Not as a leader.  Not as a King.  Not as anything but a servant.  When we realize that our sensitivity to the needs of our fellow brothers and sisters is being overshadowed by our status, our system or our score we must pray that the Holy Spirit convict us of our religiosity and reclaim us in the name of Jesus for the sake of Jesus as a disciple of Jesus.  Actions always speak louder than words, and when our actions glorify ourselves we are no longer servants, no longer disciples and no longer Christians.

 

 

Tuesday Devotional: Ruth 3

Devotional

Read Ruth 3bible

12Although it is true that I am near of kin, there is a kinsman-redeemer nearer than I.  13Stay here for the night, and in the morning if he wants to redeem, good; let him redeem.  But if he is not willing, as surely as the Lord lives I will do it…”

Sin is not a fun or comfortable word.  It conjures up a collage of negative imagery that most of us would rather not think about.  However, while the consequences of sin or separation from God are terrible, perhaps we can approach the word through another word that most of us are comfortable with.  The word is hunger.

Sin capitalizes on our appetites.  Throughout the day we have a physiological appetite that nourishes our bodies, and a variety of appetites related to our emotions and our personalities.  Sin within us finds a good thin, something we all have a healthy appetite for, and makes it into an ultimate thing that we are starving for.  Over time, left unaddressed, sin creates in us a famished appetite that hunts for satisfaction and pleasure, an unhealthy need for a particular thing.  Appetite does not consider right from wrong, consequences or righteousness.  Sin creates in us an addiction that relates the thing we hunt for to the source of our emptiness and our need to fill it in order to survive.  Sin creates a spirit in us that ignores right and wrong, and ultimately opposes God altogether.

On our own we are not able to control this appetite.  This is not to say that everyone who is not following God is a rabid animal wreaking havoc on villages of innocent people.  However, sin unaddressed creates in a person appetites that have the power to kill or take away the good things in our life.  Sin can destroy a marriage.  A job.  Friendships.  Families.  Sin creates self-righteousness and destroys mercy and grace.  Step by step, sin divides rather than creating harmony.  Submitting our lives, including our appetites, to Jesus as our King and Savior, we are suddenly given the power to not only resist our prior feelings of starvation but we begin to lose our appetite in our old addictions and instead hunger for new things, pure things, Holy things, Godly things.  While sin creates a tolerance for theft, the righteousness of Christ creates a hunger to give away what we have.  While sin feeds a tolerance for dishonesty, the righteousness of Christ creates a hunger to tell the truth.  It is beyond us to always do the right thing, especially when doing the right thing stands in the way of us feeding our appetites.  But as Christ said, “With man this is impossible.  But with God, all things are possible.”

Tuesday Devotional: Judges 17

Devotional

bible

Read Judges 17

6In those days Israel had no King; everyone did as he saw fit.

What do you do when there is no King?  At first, the absence of a King seems like a gift, a sigh of relief.  No King means no rules.  No King means freedom to do as you please, as you see fit.  However, as the rush of excitement in the face of total freedom to have our own way wears off we’re faced with the reality that we are unprepared, ill-equipped to lead ourselves, and we begin to scramble and guess our way toward what we view as success.

Micah’s mother wanted an object.

 We all have a thing, an object that we either believe will give us peace once we’ve obtained it or gives us peace as long as we retain it.  To some it’s money.  To some it’s education.  To some it’s clothes.  To some it’s a house.  The list goes on and on. Take a second and find yours.  We all have one.  Most of us have many.  Due to our human natures and more importantly our sinful natures we rely on our physical eyes to see and not the spiritual eyes that God, the true King, has promised us.  The promises of God are amazing but, like Jesus, they are in this world, not of this world.  The true gifts that Christ has lavished on us are intangible.  They are not necessarily around us, but are found within us, waiting for us, guaranteed to us in Heaven.  Unfortunately, if we see nothing, most of us believe in nothing.  So as great as those intangible gifts are, we’d simply rather have a thing that we know will make us feel good, no matter how temporary the satisfaction, even if we know full well that our emptiness will soon return and we’ll need a new thing to bring us back our peace.

The Levite wanted a place.

In each of our minds there is a vision of a place that is perfectly made for us.  It’s a place that needs us where we are important and highly valued.  Throughout life we often move from place to place searching for this picture, our place.  In some places we get close, but it’s not quite what we were looking for.  Without a King leading us into our purpose or position in a specific place, we are left to the process of trial and error and are ultimately disappointed in the outcome.  In the same way that our eyes deceive us, our imagination leads us astray.  We strive year after year investing time, money and energy along our vision quest to arrive and we never do.  Somehow, some of us manage to arrive, and soon realize that what we found looked different than what we had imagined. We regret.  Some of us have announced our purpose and destination over and over to the people we know that to admit that we are misplaced is to admit defeat, or look stupid or be wrong, so we fake it until we make it.  Sometimes we force ourselves into a place or a purpose that not only isn’t good for us but could be a detriment to the people around us.  Without the wisdom and guidance of a true King, we evaluate and determine far more than we are made to.

We do our best. God is greater than our disobedience and by His grace there is mercy for our mistakes, but the fact remains that determining our own purpose and place for ourselves always leaves the door open for sin to spread and our distance from God to increase.  While we may feel like we’ve arrived, until the King declares us found, we are still lost.

Micah wanted righteousness.

Why do you go to church?  Why do you read your Bible?  Why are you reading this devotional?  Is it helping you to understand the greatness of the living God?  Is it helping you to understand our sin nature or our need for Christ?  I truly hope so.  Unfortunately, for many people, including myself for many years, the answer to the previous questions would most likely be, “It makes me feel good.”  It makes me feel good because it means that I’m doing what I’m supposed to.  It makes me feel good because it means that I’m doing extra.  It makes me feel good because it makes me feel superior to the people I know that don’t.  As much as we desire an object and a purpose or place to give us value, we also desire to “be good”.  But in the words of Jesus, “…what is good?”  The word “good” is relative. Without a King to define the word for us we are left to define “good” for ourselves.  For many people our goodness is goodness by way of osmosis or by association.  In other words, even though we know that we’re not always doing the right thing, as long as we surround ourselves with things or people that do more good than we do, in turn our goodness increases.  This spirit is rampant in religion.  This IS religion.  Religion is, “I do and therefore I am.”  The gospel and the central message of the Bible is, “God is and therefore I do.”  No matter how many things we do and where we position ourselves we will always fall short of pure goodness or righteousness.  Falling short either makes us feel useless or makes us feel self-righteous.  Neither of these outcomes is the desire of the true King.  God pleads with us to admit that we do not know what we need, where to go, who we are and how to be good.  His response to our helplessness is mercy and truth.  Jesus says, “Come and see.”  Jesus says, “Follow me.”  When we turn to the true King we find what we’ve been looking for. We discover what the living God is willing and able to do and what he deems possible.

Tuesday Devotional: Hebrews 2

Devotional

Read Hebrews 2:5-18bible

Man was not created to be alone.  There are far reaching implications of this truth, both for good and bad.  Even times of joy may be followed by emptiness when what is being enjoyed or experienced cannot be shared with someone else.  Similarly, in times of trouble make us desperate when what we suffer cannot be shared with another person who can understand or empathize.  God has not given us the luxury to look him in the face and tell him, “You don’t understand.  You don’t know!”  In times of suffering, our desire to be rescued from our pain is sometimes matched by our desire to be isolated in our suffering, to feel an odd sense of superiority in being the only one who can understand what is happening and what we are feeling.  When we indulge in our suffering, knowing that no one can understand our suffering allows us to avoid healing and rescue, leaving us self-obsessed in our pain, which belongs only to us, and self-satisfied in knowing that only we can understand ourselves.

But God has not allowed us the luxury of wallowing in our misery and claiming exclusive right to our suffering.  The beauty and glory of God being truly Emmanuel is that, despite his majesty and authority, in order to bridge the gap between his creation and himself, he lowered himself so that man would never have be able to claim a sense of advantage or authority over him.  It was in his submission to man’s authority, the authority of the life and death of man, that he sought to firmly establish his everlasting authority over it.  It was in his submission, in lowering himself physically to wash the feet of sinful man, that he ultimately brought all of his creation under his own feet.  Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ there is absolutely nothing that we can claim to possess that Christ has not already possessed.  There is nothing that we can claim to have experienced that he has not already experienced to a much higher degree than we have.  There remains nothing that can separate us from the life and love of Jesus Christ. 

This truth was not established to remove our excuses.  This truth was established so that in times of joy and in times of suffering we would always know that the God that presides and reigns over all of creation is a God who is with us, in everything. He gives us permanent and everlasting fellowship in both our joy and suffering.  He suffered, not so that we would never have to, but so that we could come to the realization that this world we live in has been overcome by his suffering and salvation, and we can live in this world being slowly transformed into a new creation, with hope in the life to come.  God does not demand that we come to him and exemplify his perfection.  God came to us.  He came to us taking the form of man, bearing man’s sin and imperfections, so that we could need nothing else except for the truth of himself and his Gospel.

Tuesday Devotional: 2 Timothy 2

Devotional

bibleRead 2 Timothy 2:1-13

God does not need man.  God desires man.  In order to accomplish his objectives in this world, God does not need us, but he wants our involvement so that we can witness him at work.  The involvement is not assistance, but participation.

We have a distorted perspective of our role in the works of God in this world.  We often bear witness to the works of God in our immediate surroundings and like to inflate our roles in the process.  We reason ourselves into believing that without our openness, or obedience, or righteousness, the outcome would not have been possible.  This is a lie.  The truth is that the healing or change to which we were made privy was prepared and put into effect long before God called us into the picture.  The truth is that God did not need us so much as he included us. The healing or change that we witnessed was as much for our benefit as witness-participants as for the person or situation being healed or changed.  God’s desire to include us ultimately had little to do with the person whose change we witnessed. It has everything to do with us seeing a powerful presentation of the Father and his majesty.  This was a moment we were meant to see, but not so that we could stake any claim in what we saw.  We were brought in to see what we saw so that we could tell the world about it.  Our involvement in the works of God in this world is for us, but is never by us.  God involves us in his work so that we can build our faith with the truth that God is for us and nothing can stand against us.  God desires for us to be involved in his work, and be about his business.  He does not desire to work in private or keep us at a distance.  He provides us every opportunity to see him work, though it would be easy for him to work alone and accomplish his goals in private. From the beginning he walked with us and invited us to work alongside him.  This is because he loves us. He knows that we can only be made complete when we know him to the point of knowing what he is capable of, and are completely overwhelmed by how efficiently and powerfully he works while still making time for his children.  He daily calls us into his work, not for us to help him finish, but merely for us to be with him while he works.

Tuesday Devotional: 1 Timothy 6

Devotional

Read 1 Timothy 6:11-21bible

The life of a Christian is a fight.

This is neither hyperbole nor exaggeration.  The life of a Christian is a fight.  It is a continual and never-ending fight to defend not only against outside influence and attack, but also against the enemy within.  In many ways, the most potent opposition to the spirit of Christ being revealed in us is the sinful nature, which, firmly rooted, we have nurtured day after day, year after year.  While many Christians spend a disproportionate amount of time keeping watch for external attacks and influence, it is often not these external attacks that produce the most devastating results.  For a Christian, the external attack is ineffective, unless it replaces a once firmly held truth; that is, unless it switches places with something that preceded it.  To allow an external influence to carry us into disobedience or unfaithfulness we must allow it to occupy the position of the truth of the righteousness of God that at one point or another was rooted, deeply or superficially, in our hearts and minds.  The messages and temptations of this world are so contradictory to the messages of the Gospel that to follow this world requires that something be lost and forgotten.  Protecting oneself from the external influences of this world has as much to do with preventing oneself from forgetting, as it does preventing oneself from believing.  Belief in the lies of the enemy demands room in the human heart that cannot be occupied so long as the truth of the Gospel remains present.  In the presence of Gospel truth the ploys of Satan are of no significance.  In the presence of the Gospel truth the temptations of this world are utterly laughable.  They are an infomercial that cannot deliver on what it promises.  The gift of the Holy Spirit enables us to view the realities of this world with uncompromising clarity.  It gives us a clear view of God’s reality: what is hidden, what is false, and what is real. In the presence of the Holy Spirit the promises of this world cannot be believed.  In order to believe them one must remove the involvement of the Holy Spirit entirely.  In the same way one must lose one’s life to gain it back again, one must also discard those blessed truths in order to rediscover the life that revolves around oneself.  The life lived daily trying to please self cannot exist alongside the life lived for Christ.  The life of a Christian is consistently under attack and must consistently be protected and fought for.  However, while this fight requires relentless attention and steadfast alertness against attacks inside and out, Christ has come to fight on our behalf, and has won.  This fight is not easy but with Christ victory is guaranteed, so long as his truth occupies the throne of our hearts and the center of our minds.  We must fight forgetfulness before we fight temptation.

Tuesday Devotional: 2 Thessalonians 2

Devotional

bibleRead 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17

When we are experiencing suffering or trials, the suffering itself is often not the cause of our pain.  The cause of our pain may be more related to our perspective of that suffering.  It is a question of size.  When we experience a setback or tragedy it becomes far too easy for our problem to balloon to an irrational size, overwhelming everything else in our lives.  As our problem grows in size, we shrink, and feel overpowered by it.  In this state, the comforting words of a friend to “stand firm” are typically received with thanks, but are of little practical use.  In this state of despair what we need is not necessarily a power to remove the suffering, but something powerful enough to restructure our perspective.  What we need in these moments is something bigger than our suffering.

For many, the primary purpose of the Bible is comfort in times of suffering and helpful hints in times of confusion.  This approach to the word of God is not only mistaken, but is a travesty when one understands the why we were given the Bible.  This misuse of the word of God is the equivalent of using a brand-new Porsche to haul firewood.  The purpose of the word of God is not to comfort us or instruct us.  The purpose of the word of God is to define us.  The word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, is that very thing that can restructure our perspective, providing us the hope and strength we require in order to persevere through and over our suffering.  The word of God is big.  It is not only big in the sense that God is big and if he is in control then we can have nothing to fear.  It is big in that from the beginning God has included us, along with billions of others, in his family, the family he has protected with his life.  The word of God not only gives us a starting point that validates the desires of our heart and the longings of our souls, it gives us the way that so many have walked before us— and prevailed.  The word of God is not stories and lessons to learn from.  The word of God is our story. It is our story because it is his, and he made us.  The word of God gives us hope in standing firm that goes beyond good advice.  It grants us the perspective of creation and transformation, which began with God and is continually brought about by God.  In the face of the suffering of this world, the magnitude of God and our place alongside him has the ability to reduce any and all trials we face.  If God is for us, then who can be against us?  If God is with us, what problem can ever overwhelm us?

 

Tuesday Devotional: 1 Thessalonians 4

Devotional

bibleRead 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12

The process of sanctification is ongoing, and once begun, cannot stop.  The basis of sanctification is the radical departure from our sinful nature into the complete and holy nature of God the Father.  This process does not happen overnight nor does it happen without challenge and suffering.  This process is often slow and often arduous.  However, although each step is a painful tear from the world with which we have until this point been so comfortable and satisfied, each step also reveals more and more validation that the process is not only necessary but is ultimately liberating.  As we move closer and closer into a union with the spirit of Christ himself in our daily lives, we likewise move closer to the realization of the hope towards which we ultimately strive.  That hope is the realignment of this world as it is with how it was intended to be.  That hope is also the realignment of our spirit from its current state back to its created purpose.  This original creation was intended to be one with the Father in every aspect.

The process of sanctification cannot be rationed; it is always more.  To be merely content with where God has brought us “so far” is a loss.  Resigning to the fact that he can do little more with us is absolute failure.  The spirit born anew in Christ always strives to go farther and search deeper than before.  This desire for more does not arise out of a desire for mere activity.  It arises out of the realization that the more we align ourselves with the spirit of Christ the closer we will be to him.  This closeness is what produces the “wings of eagles and feet of deer” in us that allow us to soar above and beyond, or run gracefully through, the suffering of this world.  This closeness has the power to calm every storm.  The desire to do more and more with Christ is not just busywork.  The desire to do more and more is proximity.  The more we strive to be like him, the more will be one with him.

Tuesday Devotional: Colossians 1

Devotional

Read Colossians 1:1-15bible

We live in a world of abundant and overpowering distractions.  Take a moment to count how many different voices are calling out to you to do, to see, to go, to buy, etc.  Sadly, the God of all creation has a tendency to blend too easily into this crowd of voices.  We are busy beings, trying to do as many things as we possibly can every day, week, month and year.  Found within this busyness is, for many, a Sunday morning church service.  Within this service is a language so grand and powerful that for an hour we forget the limitations of this world and our spirits are infused with a hopeful confidence that seems strong enough to do just about anything.  Within that church we speak of God as the creator of the heavens and the earth.  Within that church we speak of God as the first and the last and the beginning and the end.  Within that church we speak of Jesus Christ as the redeemer who pays our debts and gives us rebirth.

This tone and these words are not normal.  We often don’t use them outside of the church walls.  In our daily lives we display an insultingly lackadaisical approach to the presence of that tone or the meaning of those words.  Do we really understand what it means to say that he was the beginning and will be the end?  Do we really understand what it means to profess faith and submit to the creator of the heavens and the earth? Do we really understand what it means when we bear the name of Christ? Are we truly identifying ourselves with the cross where Christ became the ransom for our sins?  The truth of the Gospel is extreme. It is unreasonable and illogical to react to it in any other way.  The reaction to the Gospel has to be extreme. Hearing its claims must move us to fall to our knees in complete submission.  If we profess faith in the Gospel yet live in a way not far removed from the life that preceded the encounter with the Gospel, we have misunderstood that Gospel.  If we profess faith in the God of the Bible and are yet convinced of our own power, or yet in control of the direction and course of our lives, we have misunderstood the Gospel.  If we profess faith in the cross of Christ and continue to strive for perfection, to attain salvation through our personal record, we do not understand the Gospel. 

The Gospel of Christ is extreme in its claims concerning the nature of the living God.  This God does not need us for anything, nor does he have to listen to our opinions at all.  However, he continues to use us, bless us, and listen to us because he loves us.  The Gospel of Christ is extreme in its claims about the life and sacrifice of Christ.  The message of the Cross does not give us new guidelines to improve our lives or free passes to find peace with the daily sins that plague us.  The message of the Cross is that faith in the sacrifice of Jesus creates a being different from the old, that can never go back.  There is always movement with the cross of Christ, but just as Christ carried his cross forward and never back, forward motion into deeper union with Christ is the only acceptable outcome of our faith.  The Gospel is not just another idea, voice or message amongst the thousands of messages we receive on a daily basis.  It is THE message.  It is THE good news.  To understand it for exactly what it claims requires us to broaden our scale of measurement to a point so big that at a certain point we disappear, and only Christ remains