January 24, 2013

Thursday: January 24, 2012

READ: 2 Samuel 6-7

THINK: Reread 2 Samuel 7:18-29 slowly and deliberately, considering every word. Listen for the line that resonates with you and read it again after you finish the passage. Pause. Consider any of the following issues, letting God nudge you.

  • In what ways has God changed you that you can be grateful for?
  • What has God brought you out of?
  • How has God been heroic regarding you (“performing great and awesome wonders”)?
  • What would you like to ask God regarding the future?

PRAY: Consider the line from the passage that caught your attention and pray through it. Reread the line. And let God know why that particular line struck you. Thank him for his grace in giving us his word to speak into our lives.

Adapted from Eugene Peterson in Solo

Posted by on January 24, 2013 in History.

Leave a comment

January 23, 2013

Wednesday: January 23, 2013

READ: Ezekiel 7-9

BACKGROUND: Again, for Ezekiel, I’d encourage you to ask questions in the comments section about anything you find confusing or would like more information about.

THINK: One of my favorite jokes was originally told to me by a friend in middle school. It goes something like this: A pirate captain was a bold and fearless leader who always wanted to fight alongside his men in battle. But he knew that they might lose heart if ever he was injured in the fighting and they saw him bleeding. So he came up with a plan. One day, a pirate crew member ran in to his cabin and said, “Captain, there be a ship upon the horizon flying the flag of Her Majesty’s Navy.” The captain replied, “Bring me my red shirt!” And he confidently proceeded to lead his crew into battle, knowing that even if he were stabbed it would not be evident to the crew due to the color of his shirt. A few weeks later a crew member ran into his cabin and said, “Captain, there be another pirate ship on the horizon.” And the captain replied, “Bring me my red shirt.” And again he led his crew in battle. This process repeated itself for months and months until one day a crew member ran in and said, “Captain, there be 20 ships bearing the flag of Her Majesty’s Navy on the horizon.” Stunned, the captain thought for a moment and said, “Bring me my brown pants!”

This section of Ezekiel doesn’t mince any words about God’s judgment and the wrath that he is going to pour out upon the wicked in Jerusalem. And Ezekiel 7:17 says that it will be so terrible and so frightening that, “every hand will be limp and every knee will be as weak as water.” In Hebrew though, the phrase ookal-birkim thalkne mim literally translates “every knee shall be water” an it is an idiomatic phrase that means, “everyone is gonna wet their pants.” If you have a new NIV, that’s how it translates it, “every leg will be wet with urine.” Take a second and wrap your mind around that. God doesn’t hold back. He is explicit here. He says very clearly that he will judge according to our wicked deeds and that his judgment is so terrifying that it will cause those who witness it to tremble so powerfully in fear that they cannot help but wet their pants!

As I look at my nation today, the practices that it has, and the many ways in which the church has embraced them – the zeal with which the church has chased the ‘American Dream’ to the neglect of God’s call – I cannot help but think that it might be prudent for me to go get some yellow pants. We are a society that has so much stock in our “silver and gold.” At the core of who we are, we believe that our security, our hope, and our future are held in our affluence and that the accumulation of material wealth will somehow save us. Israel made the same mistake. And while silver and gold may well be the keys to unlocking the treasures of this world, they are not the keys to God’s Kingdom. We have made idols out of our wealth and the things it procures. We have placed them on the throne of our lives and worshipped them instead of God. But he is a jealous God and he will not abide being cast aside. And when his wrath is poured out there is no number in a bank account or a retirement account that will be sufficient to satisfy or save.

It is easy to forget, sometimes, that we are destined for immortality. God has set it on our hearts and created us for it. And yet, we often find ourselves so caught up in the temporal things of this fleeting world. At the end of the day, all of our “gold and silver” are so useless and unimportant. They can buy bread but they cannot feed our real hunger. They can buy milk but they cannot quench our thirst. Only the Creator can satisfy the created. Let us head Ezekiel’s call to repentance. It is as relevant, or more so, to us as it was to ancient Israel. We must cast aside our idols and worship the only one who is worthy and the only one who endures!

ASK: One way to detect an idol is to ask, “What do I think I must have in order for life to be good?” For example: good grades, a great season in sports, a successful career, a stable family, a lot of money, or a nice home. Or consider a specific element of your life, and ask, “If this item were taken away would I still believe that abundant life was possible?”

PRAY: Now take your answers to the only One who can release us from idols–Jesus Christ! Confess your idolatry and repent. Ask God to help you keep him in his rightful place and ask him to help you bring the message of his truth and his judgment to a wicked culture that is certainly perishing.

Posted by on January 23, 2013 in Prophecy.

1 Comment

January 22, 2013

Tuesday: January 22, 2013

READ: John 13

THINK: Maggie Gobran grew up in a wealthy family in Cairo, Egypt. She received a private education and rose up the ranks as an academic to become a college professor. She lived her entire life in socioeconomic privilege until one day, as she walked the streets of Cairo, a child called out to her from atop a garbage dump saying, “Please don’t leave me.” Maggie’s heart was shattered for the starving child, and the countless others living in the surrounding slums. She felt, in that moment, a clarity of what and who God wanted her to be to the least and the lost. So, she gave up everything she had and started a ministry to reach the impoverished in her city, some of the poorest in the poor in our entire world. She has spent the last quarter-century as Mama Maggie, the woman who humbled herself to serve the least because she wanted to be like Jesus and that’s what he did. If you have 2 minutes to spare – hear her share a bit of her heart in her own words.

Jesus set an incredibly powerful example for all of us in John 13 by washing the feet of his disciples. The custom in that day was simply to provide water so that people could wash their own feet, or, if they were particularly worthy and honored guests to have the lowest servant wash their feet for him. In embodying this position – that of the lowest servant – Christ sent a powerful message. At first glance, it was so counter-cultural and shocking that Peter and the other disciples couldn’t even accept it. But Jesus explained that he was living out what he wanted them to do. He made it clear that the call for his disciples is to be like him, and to be like him is to humble yourself and give yourself up for the least and the lost. Christ did it, and so we must!

PRAY: Admit to God that it is challenging and difficult for you to humble yourself. Admit that sometimes you don’t want to serve the poor and the broken. Ask him to break your heart for what breaks his – just like he did for Mama Maggie – and line up your heart with his. Ask him to show you how he wants you to serve, and pray for the courage and humility to do it.

Posted by on January 22, 2013 in Gospels.

Leave a comment

January 21, 2013

Monday: January 21, 2013

READ: 2 Samuel 3:6-5:25

THINK: One of the most amazing things about David’s life and faith is his willingness to always acknowledge that what he accomplishes is due to God’s power and not his own. As an aspiring king, we naturally assume that David would want to show his strength and assert his power and dominance. Yet, we find him time and again defying his culture and confessing his weakness and inability. In 2 Samuel 3:39 he very plainly states, “even though I am anointed king, I am weak and these [enemies] are too strong for me.” Making a statement like that was counter-cultural in David’s day. I think it is no less counter-cultural today. The narrative of strength, power, self-reliance, and independence is a very powerful one in 21st century America. We value strength and minimize weakness.

But this is a dangerous narrative for us to buy into – just as it would have been a dangerous one for David to buy into. It may have cost David his life, relying on himself instead of waiting and depending on God. It will certainly cost us ours. Maybe not physically, but certainly spiritually. Why do I say that? Because the cold hard truth is this: we are not strong and we cannot do it on our own!

When we participate in the cultural myth that weakness is not an option then we end up trying to earn our salvation through our own strength. And so we reduce Christianity and faith to a set of rules to be followed because we want to believe that if we just try hard enough and follow the rules well enough and check off all the right boxes we can earn our way into heaven without anybody else’s help. But that’s simply not the case.

David knew that in his weakness, God was strong. In 2 Samuel 3 he says it bluntly. In 2 Samuel 5 he not once but twice asks God what he should do about fighting the Philistines and trusts God to go before him. He didn’t trust his own ability and his own might. He trusted in God’s. See, David grasped a core truth – one that has given God’s people hope and strength for centuries and continues to do so today. That truth is: we are not strong enough to do it on our own, but in our weakness God is strong. The apostle Paul went so far as to say, “I boast in my weakness…for when I am weak then I am strong.”

We live in a dark and broken world that we cannot overcome on our own. We don’t have the strength to avoid the death and eternal separation from God that we all deserve. But God invites us to confess our weakness and allow him to be strong. He invites us to meet him at the cross – once the ultimate symbol of weakness and death – transformed by God’s power and Christ’s death and resurrection into the greatest symbol of victory and life and hope the world has ever known. We are destined for death, but he is mighty to save!

I encourage you to follow the example of David today. I encourage you to reject the cultural myth that weakness is not an option. Be weak, because your weakness is precisely the place where God is strong!

PRAY: Simply admit your weakness to God today. Then thank him for being strong, and thank him for the cross.

Posted by on January 21, 2013 in History.

Leave a comment

January 20, 2013

Sunday: January 20, 2013

READ: Exodus 23-24

BACKGROUND: By Verse –
23:15 – The Feast of Unleavened Bread was celebrated from the 15th-21st days of the 1st month in the Hebrew calendar (mid-March). It commemorated the exodus from Egypt.
16 – The Feast of Harvest is also referred to in the Bible as the Feast of Weeks (because it came 7 weeks after the Feast of Unleavened Bread). It marked the time of the wheat harvest. The Feast of Ingathering is also referred to as the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths in reference to the temporary housing structures that the Israelite people lived in after God brought them out of Egypt. It was held in the fall (mid-September to mid-October) when the produce of orchards and vineyards was harvested and it commemorated the desert journey of the nation of Israel.
19 – Firstfruits is an important concept in the Bible, but the idea is that by bringing the first and best as an offering to God the people would remember that the entire harvest is a blessing from God and belonged to him. Don’t cook a young goat in it’s mother’s milk is a specific prohibition that had to do with pagan rituals of doing just that and sprinkling it over the crops to ensure a good harvest. God wasn’t talking about keeping meat and dairy separate (as some modern Jews take it to mean). He was reminding the people just who was in charge of the harvest – him and not superstitious magic.
20-22 – This may be Jesus, it may be an angel who is tasked with representing God. Either way, this angel is a representative of the presence of God.
28 – The Hebrew meaning for the word hornet is not certain. Some ancient manuscripts translated it wasp. It’s pretty ambiguous what this really is, but the point is not in the specifics of what God sends, it is that God is going to make sure the people of Canaan can’t resist the invasion.
24:2 – Moses is the mediator of the Old Covenant between God and the people. Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant.
6 – The blood on the altar symbolizes God’s forgiveness, the blood on the people symbolizes their oath to obey.
8 – Agreeing to obey and submit was a precondition of participation in the covenant.

THINK: “I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.” – Exodus 23:28

What [precisely] the hornets were we need not consider. They were God’s own army, which He sent before His people to sting their enemies and render Israel’s conquest easy. Our God, by His own chosen means, will fight for His people and gall their foes before they come into the actual battle. Often He confounds the adversaries of truth by methods in which reformers themselves have no hand. The air is full of mysterious influences which harass Israel’s foes. We read in [Revelation] that “the earth helped the woman.”

Let us never fear. The stars in their courses fight against the enemies of our souls. Oftentimes when we march to the conflict, we find no host to contend with. ”The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” God’s hornets can do more than our weapons. We could never dream of the victory being won by such means as Jehovah will use. We must obey our marching orders and go forth to the conquest of the nations for Jesus, and we shall find that the Lord has gone before us and prepared the way, so that in the end we shall joyfully confess: “His own right hand and his holy arm, have gotten him the victory.” – Charles Spurgeon

PRAY: Thank God that his hornets can do more than our weapons. Praise him for the victory he has already achieved over sin and death in this world. And commit yourself to obedience – tell God that you will follow your marching orders today.

 

Posted by on January 20, 2013 in Uncategorized.

Leave a comment

January 19, 2013

Saturday: January 19, 2013

READ: 2 Corinthians 11

THINK: I recently read a pretty ridiculous story on ABC News. In mid-December a Maine woman was driving along the highway late one night when her car struck what she thought was a large pet cat. She felt awful and decided to put the cat in her car to try to get it some medical attention. As she was loading the cat into her backseat she thought it was a particularly heavy cat but She then drove on for a few more miles before reaching the city of Bangor. Then something happened. The cat woke up. And the woman looked in her rearview mirror. And she realized that there was a living, adult bobcat sitting in her backseat. And then she freaked out a little. She immediately pulled over and ran from the car, leaving the door open behind her. The cat ripped the car upholstery to shreds and then chased after the woman…just kidding – though that would have been an awesome Tommy Boy-esque scene. Actually, it climbed out of the car and hid underneath. Wildlife officers were called and they removed the cat from underneath the car.

It struck me that this woman was driving along the road for miles, perilously close to serious danger without even knowing it. So many people in our world are in the same position. They aren’t driving with bobcats in their backseats, but they are buying into the lies of those whom Paul refers to as false apostles and deceitful workman. He cautions that they disguise themselves as servants of righteousness and then teach a different gospel than the one we know to be true. By listening to them and allowing their message to penetrate their lives and hearts, people are in a danger that is far greater and longer-lasting than a bobcat attack.

Guard your hearts against false teachers. Guard your mind against those who tell you what you want to hear (Christianity is really easy, following God means being blessed with all of your materialistic earthly desires, it doesn’t matter how much you sin – Jesus loves you just the way you are and would never ask you to change…the list goes on). How can you guard your heart? In three words: Fellowship. Prayer. Scripture. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11, Satan and his servants masquerade as angels of light. Don’t let them into your car!

PRAY: Ask God to give you a discerning heart. Thank him for the opportunity he has given you to plug into a church community where believers can encourage one another, to read his Word, and to communicate with him.

Posted by on January 19, 2013 in Uncategorized.

Leave a comment

January 18, 2013

Friday: January 18, 2013

LIVE: “We thank you God, we thank you – your Name is our favorite word; your mighty works are all we talk about.” – Psalm 75:1 (The Message)
Start today by taking a clean sheet of paper and filling the page with all the things you are thankful for, big and small. Include items like names of people, elements of creation, God-orchestrates events and timing, and small things you often overlook.

READ/THINK: Read Psalm 75 & 76. Notice all of the reasons the Psalmist gives for thanking God. Make a list of those reasons on the back of your sheet of paper. These psalms highlight the fact that God is in complete and total control of the entire earth. Stop and ponder: In what ways are you thankful for that? How does it give you peace?

PRAY: Spend some time thanking God for all of the things on your sheet of paper – both front and back. Thank him for the blessings he’s given you today as well as the ones he gave you weeks, months, or even years ago.

Posted by on January 18, 2013 in Psalms.

Leave a comment

January 17, 2013

Thursday: January 17, 2013

READ: Exodus 21-22

THINK: People who lack feeling for others are like cold fronts on the weather map in winter – you’d rather see them going than coming. An example is the homeowner who treats the paperboy like the neighborhood pest. He acts as if the youngster were behind the bad news that lands on his porch day after day. I’m not saying that sometimes there isn’t cause for frustration. There may be legitimate reasons for dissatisfaction with his service. But being unkind to those who are weaker or in a lower socioeconomic position is never right.

God made this very clear to ancient Israel when He told them to treat those of lesser social rank as they themselves would want to be treated. He reminded His chosen people that because they had once been strangers in a foreign land, they should know how it feels to work under those who show no sympathy (Exodus 22:21).

Christians have the same responsibility to the poor and downtrodden as Israel had. We may argue that if we don’t look out for ourselves no one else will. But God has told us to love our neighbors. He also reminds us that if we forget what it’s like to be on the bottom we are no longer fit to be on top.

When Jesus changes your heart, He gives you a heart for others.

By: Mart De Haan in Our Daily Bread

PRAY: Ask God to line your heart up with his when it comes to the poor, needy, and broken people in your world.

Posted by on January 17, 2013 in Law.

Leave a comment

January 16, 2013

Wednesday: January 15, 2013

READ: Ezekiel 4-6

BACKGROUND: This is pretty thick and I could write pages on it. So, for today, post questions you have in the “Comments” and I’ll reply to you.

THINK: This is an incredible section of Scripture where Ezekiel is instructed to act out the judgment that is coming upon the nation of Israel. God has him build a replica of the city and then spend over a year (430 days total, 390 for Israel and 40 for Judah) laying on his side while prophesying about how Jerusalem will be put under siege and destroyed. He even has to act this out further by rationing his water to about 1 quart per day and only eating about 8 ounces of bread per day, bread that was defiled because it had been baked over a pile of cow dung.

As I think about Ezekiel’s call in this passage there are a few things that jump out to me. The first is: A part of me really wouldn’t mind God calling me to a job where my main task when I went to work every day was to lie down. But I wouldn’t be nearly as excited about it if it meant the only thing I’d get to eat was bread that had a nice flavor of smoky poop. I like meats with some smoked hickory, maple, or mesquite. I cannot imagine eating smoky cow pie bread. But on top of this, I have 3 other more serious thoughts from the passage:

1. God’s call on our lives is sometimes radical! We are living in a world that is broken and lost among a people who have rejected God and turned their backs on him. But God is not content to leave them where they are and see them condemned to an eternity without him. So his call upon his people is to bring them the message. And that isn’t easy. Ever! And it will always require courage and boldness on our part. But God will never ask us to do something we can’t handle. One of the most encouraging parts of this somber section of Ezekiel is the fact that when Ezekiel recoiled at the idea of eating bread cooked over human poop (because of the ceremonial cleanliness laws of Israel) God backed off and let him use cow poop. Notice, God didn’t let him off the hook entirely or make it easy for him. He still had to lay there every day and eat that nasty bread! But God also didn’t give him a task beyond what he could handle. In our lives of faith, God’s call will be radical. It will require self-sacrifice.

2. People who are truly convinced of the glory and the holiness of God will do anything! Look at Ezekiel’s example. This is a guy who was totally sold on the idea that the God of the Universe is holy and mighty and worthy of complete obedience. He didn’t minimize God at all. So, when he was called to do something radical, he did it! Would we do the same? Would we follow at all costs? Or is our God so small and so compartmentalized and so far down on our priority list that we are unwilling to be bold and courageous in the way we obey him?

3. God’s heart is broken over our rejection of him! The verse that just jumps off the page to me – if I had to pick any one verse from these 3 chapters – is 6:9. The literal, wooden translation of part of what God says in the Hebrew here is basically, “I am broken over their whoring heart.” I think about the things that I’ve prostituted my heart to. The many temptations of this world that I have given myself too instead of keeping myself pure and dedicated to God. Whoring is a pretty graphic term, but it is very intentionally the one that God uses here. Do you have a whoring heart? Put simply, we all do. And so do the many lost people around us. It literally breaks the heart of God when we live for something other than the relationship that he created us for.

So, God’s heart is broken over humanity’s rejection of him. And he calls us to bring the good news (and to live the good news kind of like Ezekiel lived his prophecy) in our world. The call is not easy, but when we truly acknowledge the debt we owe and the greatness of our God, how can we refuse it?

PRAY: Thank God for his incredible love. Thank him that you’ve never been called to eat bread baked over cow dung. Then ask him what radical call he has for your life – here and now. Commit to following it, and to brining the message of the gospel to a world that has broken God’s heart by rejecting him.

Posted by on January 16, 2013 in Prophecy.

3 Comments

January 15, 2013

Tuesday: January 15, 2013

READ: John 12

THINK: Between 1892 and 1954 over 12 million immigrants entered the United States through the processing center on Ellis Island. Many of them came tattered and broken, desperate for the hope that a new life in America provided. And as they sailed through New York Harbor on the way to their new lives they passed directly by the Statue of Liberty, boldly holding her torch aloft in all of her copper glory with a broken chain lying at her feet. The statue was a symbol, towering above the ships below, of the freedom, once denied, that those aboard could now taste. It didn’t matter where they came from or who their parents were. It didn’t matter what language they spoke or what level of education they had. This freedom was for everyone, and that fact was made clear by the words inscribed beneath the statue on her pedestal, a poem by Emma Lazarus entitled The New Colossus, which includes the lines:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

There is another monument to human freedom that looms large across the specter of human history, standing tall above the oppression of sin and the brokenness of this world. The cross of Jesus Christ is rather less triumphant in appearance than the Statue of Liberty. It is a splintered and blood stained piece of wood, marked with holes from the nails that were driven through the hands and feet of the Savior. But, as Jesus very clearly said in John 12 he came to save the world and doing so meant that he had to die. He had to die in our place. We were sinners, enslaved and beaten down by our own wickedness, shattered by our rejection of God, and Jesus stepped in and bore the weight so that we could be forgiven and set free. And it doesn’t matter where a person comes from or who their parents are. It doesn’t matter what language they speak or what level of education they have. This freedom is for everyone!

Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The extraordinary, unbelievable, undeserved, indescribable freedom that we have received through Christ is something he wants to offer to every single person in our world. The cross is the great symbol, towering over humanity across time and space, of the ultimate freedom from sin and death that are available in relationship with God. Time and again, God reveals his heart that all people in all places would grab hold of that freedom. And his plan to invite them into it is you and me. He calls his people to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, to carry the gory yet glorious cross to our world and invite them to experience its liberation. The question is: are we doing it?

Too often, the answer is “no.” We aren’t doing it because we are afraid of how people might respond. We’re afraid of being rejected. We’re afraid of what they might think. And so we privately claim Christ for our own but publicly live in a way that is not markedly different than everyone else around us. Why? Because, like the religious leaders in John 12, we crave praise and applause and approval from other people more than we do from God. We deny Him so that they wont deny us. But our world is perishing. People around us are living in darkness, brokenness, and oppression. And we hold the very key to the freedom that they need.

My prayer for all of us, as Christians, is this: that we would not take Jesus’ sacrifice for granted. That we would be so overwhelmed by the gift that we have received that we would respond by proclaiming it to everyone around us. That because we are truly free, we would liberate ourselves from worrying about the approval of others and, because of his great love and through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us, seek to be all that God has called us to be. My prayer is that we – the church – would be so passionate about the shattered and lost people around us that we would invade their world with the gospel. That our hearts would beat to bring the good news about Jesus to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse upon teeming shores, the homeless, and the tempest-tossed.

PRAY: Confess the times where you have ignored the lost and chosen not to share the gospel because you were more concerned with the approval of other people than you were with the approval of God. Ask God to break your heart for the things that break his. Pray for God to open doors for you to share the good news with people this week and ask him to give you the courage to walk through them.

Posted by on January 15, 2013 in Gospels.

1 Comment