READ: James 4

THINK: In 1919 the Chicago White Sox were the overwhelming favorites to beat the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. But before the Series began, some gamblers approached eight key players on the team and offered them money to intentionally lose. The White Sox were notoriously underpaid by their tight-fisted owner, Charlie Comiskey, so seven of the players including superstars “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte agreed. The White Sox went on to lose the series five games to three.

The shocking win by the Reds coupled with all of the money that was bet on them caused deep suspicion and before long the conspiracy was revealed. The scandal rocked the nation and the White Sox became known as the Black Sox because of their dishonor. Major League Baseball appointed Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the new commissioner of the sport and gave him complete power to make rulings as he saw fit. Though none of the Black Sox were ever convicted in a court of law, Landis banned all eight key players from baseball for life.

You might well have read that sentence and thought to yourself, “Why eight? Is that a typo? The last paragraph said that only seven of them took the bribes and threw the Series.” Both are true. Third Baseman Buck Weaver vehemently denied that he had taken any money. After being approached, he declined. And he played to win every single game. His statistics fully supported that claim. But Judge Landis was unmoved by his testimony. Why? Because Buck Weaver knew what was going on and he did not speak out and stop it. Buck Weaver was banned from baseball for life not because he did anything wrong, but because he failed to do what was right.

James 4:17 says,”If anyone knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.” We live in a world that is filled with evil and darkness. In the midst of that, Christians have a call to be bold and to bring healing and to speak truth and to shine God’s light. But it is incredibly easy – and tempting – to do nothing instead. Being passive in the face of the brokenness that surrounds us seems like the simpler and easier option. We are too often content to simply not follow the Devil instead of actively resisting him. We are too often consumed with doing nothing wrong instead of submitting ourselves to do what is right. God is calling us to courageous action. Our world is desperate for us to answer that call!

ASK: The 18^th –century Irish philosopher, Edmund Burke, once wrote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” What is my natural instinct when I see evil? To resist it or to turn away and avoid action? What are some evils in my world that require courageous action on my part so that people can be healed and set free in Christ?

PRAY: Ask that God would help you shine like a light in this dark world. Submit your fears to him and pray that he would give you the wisdom to know where he is calling you to take action and the courage to follow through with it.

READ: 1 John 4

 

THINK: Sometimes it’s funny to see the things that get little kids really excited. My 18-month old daughter loves to climb everything that she possibly can and has recently grown tall enough to climb up on the end table in her room. This allows her to reach the light switch, which appears to be a never-ending source of entertainment for her. (Side note: people who make kids toys should all be fired. I have a house that is crammed full of them – too full – and my daughter would rather play with a stinking light switch!) Emma stands there flipping the switch back and forth, watching the light turn off and on and off and on with a big dumb smile on her face and an occasional giggle. And her brother, strangely, likes to talk me through it as though this incredible experience needed a play-by-play announcer to be complete. “Dad! Dad, now she turned it off. Now it’s on. Now it’s off again. See Dad?”

 

Something in the play-by-play announcing struck me the other day when he said, “Dad, now the dark is gone because the light is on.” On one hand it is an inane “duh!” statement, but on the other it’s quite profound. When the light is on, the dark(ness) is gone. Because darkness isn’t a real, quantifiable thing. Light is. Darkness is simply the absence of light. I think that in this chapter John is making the same observation about fear as it relates to love. Fear is not a real thing. It is simply a phenomenon experienced in the absence of perfect love.

 

What is this perfect love? John says it is the love that God has for us, the love that is so recklessly extravagant that God sent his Son into the world as an atoning sacrifice for our sins so that we could be reconciled to him for eternity. That love! It’s huge, it’s unshakable, and it changes everything about our world.

 

And we have a burden to share that perfect love with those around us. That’s what God calls us to. The way that he asks us to respond to the love we have received from him is to love him by showing his love to those around us. That’s not easy. It requires vulnerability on our part. C.S. Lewis wrote, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness…The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers…of love is hell.”

 

This danger might cause us to be afraid. Afraid to step out, afraid to show love, afraid to be vulnerable and open ourselves up. But we must remember that this fear is not real. It is simply the absence of an understanding of just how deeply God loves us, and how his perfect love completely redefines our identity and our future. When we understand that fully then we are able to look with his eyes of love upon the broken world around us and boldly sing along with one of my favorite worship songs, The Church, “We’re not afraid. We will abandon all, to hear your name on lips across the world.”

 

ASK: What fears keep me from being bold in my faith, from sharing God’s love with others? Why is fear so powerful? How does understanding God’s perfect love drive out fear in my life?

 

PRAY: Today, I’d encourage you to pray a prayer written by Saint Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me show love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I might not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

READ: Deuteronomy 6

BACKGROUND: This little passage in Deuteronomy is one of the most powerful passages in the entire Bible. It’s a section known as the Shema. And in Old Testament times, all of God’s people had the Shema memorized by heart, and they would recite it every morning and every night. Also, many of them would wear the words of the Shema in a bracelet or a headband, and many of them very literally painted the words above the doors to their houses so that they would be reminded to recite them every single time they entered or exited their house.

THINK: This is the passage that most succinctly sums up the entire Bible. The entire point of our existence as human beings. It’s the most important commandment that God gives us in the entire book, and it gives us a picture of why he created us in the first place, why he stepped into human history to save us after we sinned, and what the world is meant to look like! That’s a lot to get out of a few short verses, but let me explain:

Shema – the name for this passage – is the Hebrew word for “hear” or “listen” and it’s the 1st word of verse 4. Shema Israel! Hear this! Listen Up! What’s coming next is important! And so the reason it’s called the Shema is not just cause that’s the 1st word but also because it’s a constant reminder of the importance of the words that follow. Listen up…cause this is big! And what is so big? “The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

There are 2 major things here that we need to understand:
The LORD is one.
We were created to love Him with everything we’ve got.

This passage is probably better translated “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” but it’s the same idea either way. That God is the only God. And that was kind of an earth-shattering idea to a lot of people in in Old Testament times. Most of the cultures had an entire pantheon of gods – a sun god, a moon god, a rain god, a fertility god, a war god, a love god, and the list goes on and on and on – and so when they heard about the God of Israel it really didn’t even bother them. They just added him right on to their big long list of gods, but in the Shema, the nation of Israel is reminded that God is God alone – that he is one – that there are no other Gods.

So, it was important – in the context of the polytheistic ancient world – for Israel to be reminded of this. But it’s not as important for us today, right? Cause we believe there’s only one deity, we don’t buy into all that mumbo-jumbo about a sun god and a rain god and all kinds of little gods. He’s the only God in our world…or is he? Is he the only God in your world, the only thing to which you’ve devoted yourself and sought fulfillment in, the only thing you’ve loved and pursued with your whole heart, soul, & strength? If we’re honest, most of us have to answer that question “no.” I think it’s pretty easy for every single one of us to take at the things we devote our time and our lives to and see that it’s really easy to let other things take God’s rightful place. But if we do that, we’re settling for something less than what God created us for. He created human beings, in his image, to have a deep, intimate, loving relationship with Him. It’s why he made us, and it’s the only way that we’ll ever find true satisfaction!

And God follows up the most important command in the Bible with the instructions to impress his commandments on our hearts and to our kids, to talk about them on the road and when we lie down and get up and to tie them to our hands and foreheads and to write them on our door-frames and on our gates. So, it’s pretty obvious that this is a big deal to God, right! He doesn’t say, “Make a Post-It note about these and keep in a drawer somewhere” – like I do with a lot of the things my wife tells me – but he says, “Hey, write this stuff everywhere!”

The idea that God is communicating here is actually pretty cool – and it isn’t that we need to literally do all of that stuff. This is what God is saying:
Write it on you heart, your hands, & your head: Your heart. Your hands. Your head. This should be the lens – the thing that defines – your emotions, your thoughts, & your actions. Your feelings and your thoughts and your actions should be influenced by God!
Talk about them when you sit at home & when you go out: Wherever you go, everywhere you are, you should be defined by the love of God. That’s your identity everywhere! Don’t compartmentalize church & house groups & McAllen as the God-places and then school & work & home as the non-God-places. You are defined by who he is and who he created you to be everywhere you go!
Write them on your doorframes and on your gates: You ought to be loving God with all you’ve got – and showing that love to others – at home and in your close intimate relationships (within your doorframe) but also to everybody else out there – to the world that exists outside your gates!

Love God, Love People. Jesus said in Matthew that the whole Law & Prophets depend on this. It’s a radical statement, but he was making something clear here that is reiterated time and time again in the Bible: This is what we were created for! God created human beings for relationship. He created us to have this incredible, complete, sold-out love relationship with him and with one another. That’s why Jesus says that the most important command in the entire Bible is to love God and the 2nd most important command is to love people – and not just love them a little, or be kinda nice to them, but to love them like we love ourselves. Jesus is saying, “Hey, I know you love yourselves. You’re created like that. Love others as much as you love yourself!” That’s huge!

It’s also difficult. But because God loves us – so much that he came & died for us – Because He loves us, we can love him with everything we’ve got, and we can go confidently out into our world and love the people around us, even the ones who are hard to love. Loving God is invisible. It happens in our hearts. It becomes visible when you love others. So loving others is the outward manifestation, the visible expression, the practical demonstration, and therefore the fulfillment of what the Bible is all about – God’s great love for us. It is an opportunity that God is inviting us into to bring Heaven to a broken Earth.

ASK: Do I love God with all my heart and soul and strength, or are there other things in my life that are in his rightful place? What do I need to do to get rid of those? Do I love the people around me the way that God loves them, with the same kind of love he has shown to me?

PRAY: Worship God for his incredible love and grace. Surrender yourself to him today and ask him to help you get rid of anything in your heart that competes for your affections. Ask him to help you love him and love everyone around you with everything you’ve got.

READ: Daniel 1

THINK: By all historical accounts, the Bible included, Nebuchadnezzar was an ingenious king and leader. One of his brilliant idea, bucking the trend that so many had set before him, was to not wipe out the royal family and the noble class of the peoples that he conquered. See, he realized that the nobility in any culture in the ancient world was likely to be comprised of the best educated, best fed, best looking, and smartest individuals in the society. And he thought, “Hey, if I bring the best and brightest and most beautiful people from all around the world to my capital then I can meld them together with our society and create an even greater Babylon for the future.” So, he did just that. And in 605 BC, he conquered Jerusalem, ransacked the temple, and took the best and brightest of Israel home with him. This is where the book of Daniel begins.

Daniel and the others were put into an intense training program where they were given Babylonian names (Belteshazzar means “Bel (a Babylonian god) will look after me,” given Babylonian haircuts, given a Babylonian education, and given some delicious Babylonian food. The idea? To indoctrinate them into the culture for the benefit of the nation. But there was a catch. Daniel saw right through the plan. He was wise enough and close enough to God that he realized if he wasn’t careful he would begin to blend in with his world so much that he’d stop holding on to the truth and start living like everyone else.

It would have been easy to compromise. It would have definitely been safer! But Daniel saw something that most of us completely miss when it comes to the flow of culture: that compromising truth doesn’t erase the tension we feel, it only weakens our resolve. We tend to think that if we just give in and blur the lines of truth a bit that we’ll feel less tension and won’t have pressure anymore. Daniel knew better. He knew that compromise is a slippery slope. If you do it once it only becomes easier and easier to do it again. If you don’t believe that’s true, ask me about my attendance record in college sometime. The tension never goes away, only the resolve to stand.

So Daniel took a stand. He said, you can put weird clothes on me and cut my hair and call me whatever you want, but I will not eat your food. God has laws about what is clean and unclean and I simply refuse to compromise those. I think, thousands of years later, we can’t even comprehend how bold this was. It was literally crazy. The people in charge had every right to put him and his companions to death – and without Divine intervention probably would have.

And here’s the crazy thing that I want us to see because I think it’s the challenge for all of us: Daniel made that declaration before he knew how it would play out! We have the benefit of hindsight. We know that it worked out awesome for him. But he didn’t know that would happen going in. Here he is, a teenager surrounded by the most powerful people in the world with every right to expect that he’d be put to death for his stand. He didn’t know what would happen if he did it God’s way, but he knew what would happen if he didn’t. He knew that everything would slip away if he compromised God’s truth. So he told them he wouldn’t defile his body.

This uncompromising decision set the course for the rest of Daniel’s life. Had he not made it, rest assured that we’d have one less book of the Bible. We would not be reading about Daniel because he’d have blended into the culture – one small compromise after another – just like everybody else. So, I challenge you today to refuse be uncompromising when it comes to who God is and who he has called you to be in this world. That may be scary and you may not know exactly how it will play out, but you can guess how it will end if you compromise truth. It’s not easy as a teenager in America. But it certainly wasn’t easy for Daniel. Let’s allow his courageous example to inspire us today.

ASK: Proverbs 11:3 says, “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their betrayal.” Where am I tempted to compromise my integrity? In what areas of my life have I betrayed truth because I thought it would be easier?

PRAY: Confess to God the times you’ve compromised truth and the areas of your life where you’ve blended in to culture. Ask God to give you the courage to stand for what is right, and trust that he will work through you to change the world – in big ways or small – just as he did with Daniel.

READ:  Jeremiah 1-2

BACKGROUND: Welcome to the longest book in the entire Bible! Not the most chapters, but the most words of any book. Jeremiah is often known as “The Weeping Prophet” because his writings give us a deeper insight into his own faith and struggles and frustrations than any other prophetic writer. He was a priest whose lived and prophecied through a number of different kings, some faithful to God but most not. The main themes of his book are the ultimate supremacy of the God who is the creator of all things and maintains all power. However, even though God is all-powerful he is intimately concerned with individual people and their lives. He is calling all people to himself and there are serious destructive consequences for those who reject him – like the nation of Judah was doing. But the good news is that God’s severe judgment is not the final movement of history. God’s mercy and covenant faithfulness will bring renewal and redemption.

THINK: There are a couple powerful thoughts from these chapters that Oswald Chambers expresses powerfully and I want to throw them out there in reverse order:

“Thus says the Lord: ‘I remember…the kindness of your youth” – Jeremiah 2:2

“Am I as spontaneously kind to God as I used to be, or am I only expecting God to be kind to me? Does everything in my life fill His heart with gladness, or do I constantly complain because things don’t seem to be going my way? A person who has forgotten what God treasures will not be filled with joy. It is wonderful to remember that Jesus Christ has needs which we can meet— “Give Me a drink” (John 4:7). How much kindness have I shown Him in the past week? Has my life been a good reflection on His reputation?

God is saying to His people, “You are not in love with Me now, but I remember a time when you were.” He says, “I remember . . . the love of your betrothal . . .” (Jeremiah 2:2). Am I as filled to overflowing with love for Jesus Christ as I was in the beginning, when I went out of my way to prove my devotion to Him? Does He ever find me pondering the time when I cared only for Him? Is that where I am now, or have I chosen man’s wisdom over true love for Him? Am I so in love with Him that I take no thought for where He might lead me? Or am I watching to see how much respect I get as I measure how much service I should give Him?

As I recall what God remembers about me, I may also begin to realize that He is not what He used to be to me. When this happens, I should allow the shame and humiliation it creates in my life, because it will bring godly sorrow, and “godly sorrow produces repentance…” (2 Corinthians 7:10).”

Once you remember God’s goodness and repent of your own turning from him, it’s time to remember that he has called you to the mission of sharing him with the world around you. Sometimes this makes us nervous and scared because we’re afraid of what the world will do to us or say. In those moments we need to remember God’s promises.

 

“I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.” – Jeremiah 1:8

“God promised Jeremiah that He would deliver him personally – “Thy life will I give unto thee for a prey.” That is all God promises His children. Wherever God sends us, He will guard our lives. Our personal property and possessions are a matter of indifference, we have to sit loosely to all those things; if we do not, there will be panic and heartbreak and distress. That is the inwardness of the overshadowing of personal deliverance.

The Sermon on the Mount indicates that when we are on Jesus Christ’s errands, there is no time to stand up for ourselves. Jesus says, in effect, Do not be bothered with whether you are being justly dealt with or not. To look for justice is a sign of deflection from devotion to Him. Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it. If we look for justice, we will begin to grouse and to indulge in the discontent of self-pity – Why should I be treated like this? If we are devoted to Jesus Christ we have nothing to do with what we meet, whether it is just or unjust. Jesus says – Go steadily on with what I have told you to do and I will guard your life. If you try to guard it yourself, you remove yourself from My deliverance. The most devout among us become atheistic in this connection; we do not believe God, we enthrone common sense and tack the name of God on to it. We do lean to our own understanding, instead of trusting God with all our hearts.”

PRAY: Take some time today to repent for the ways in which you have turned your back on God and forgotten him. And then commit your life to boldly going and telling others about him.