Category Archives: Devotions

Liked by God–Brennan Manning

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Song: David Crowder*Band – How He Loves (Official Music Video) – YouTube

Isaiah 49:15-16a–“Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child?

Can she feel no love for the child she has borne?

But even if that were possible,

I would not forget you!

See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.”

Several years ago, Edward Farrell, a priest from Detroit, went on a two-week summer vacation to Ireland to visit relatives. His one living uncle was about to celebrate his eightieth birthday. On the great day, Ed and his uncle got up early. It was before dawn. They took a walk along the shores of Lake Killarney and stopped to watch the sunrise. They stood side by side for a full twenty minutes and then resumed walking. Ed glanced at his uncle and saw that his face had broken into a broad smile. Ed said, “Uncle Seamus, you look very happy.” “I am.” Ed asked, “How come?” And his uncle replied, “The Father of Jesus is very fond of me.”

If the question were put to you, “Do you honestly believe that God likes you?”—not loves you, because theologically he must—how would you answer? God loves by necessity of his nature; without the eternal, interior generation of love, he would cease to be God. But if you could answer, “The Father is very fond of me,” there would come a relaxedness, a serenity and a compassionate attitude toward yourself that is a reflection of God’s own tenderness. In Isaiah 49:15, God says: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”

As you go today, ask yourself that question: “Do you honestly believe that God likes you?”

And if the answer is “No”, why do you think that is?  Are you beating yourself up?  Remember, we are no longer slaves but children of the Most High God!!

Let that sink in, and remember, He Likes You!!

Romans 8:15-16–So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.  Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”  For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.

Trust What You’ve Received–Brennan Manning

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Psalm 9:10–Those who know your name trust in you,
    for you, O Lord, do not abandon those who search for you.

“Brennan, you don’t need any more insights into the faith,” he observed. “You’ve got enough insights to last you three hundred years. The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have received.”

This remark from my spiritual director sounded simple enough. But it sparked a searing reexamination of my life, my ministry and the authenticity of my relationship with God … The challenge to actually trust God forced me to deconstruct what I had spent my life constructing, to stop clutching what I was so afraid of losing, to question my personal investment in every word I had ever written or spoken about Jesus Christ and fearlessly to ask myself if I trusted him.

Through countless hours of silence, solitude, soul-searching, and prayer, I learned that the act of trust is an utterly ruthless act …

Trust is that rare and priceless treasure that wins us the affection of our heavenly Father. For him, it has both charm and fascination. Among his countless children, who he so greatly loves and on whom he heaps tenderness and favors, there are few indeed, who truly entrusting themselves to him, live as veritable children of God. There are as few who respond to his goodness by a trust at once filial and unshaken. And so it is that he welcomes with a love of predilection those souls, all too few in number, who in adversity as in joy, in tribulation and consolation, unfalteringly trust in God’s paternal love.

 

Home Blessings – Charles Spurgeon

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Song: Hidden

Artist: United Pursuit

“He blesses the home of the upright” (Proverbs 3:33).

He who fears the LORD comes under divine protection–even his roof which covers him and his family. His home is a place of love, a school of holy training, and a place of heavenly light. In it there is a family altar where the name of the LORD is daily held in reverence. As a result, the LORD blesses his home. It may be a humble cottage or a lordly mansion; but the LORD’s blessing comes because of the character of the inhabitant and not because of the size of the dwelling.

That house is most blessed in which the master and mistress are God fearing people, but a son or daughter or even a servant may bring a blessing on a whole household.

The LORD often preserves, prospers, and provides for a family for the sake of one or two in it, who are “just” persons in His esteem, because His grace has made them so.

Beloved, let us have Jesus for our constant guest even as the sisters of Bethany had, and then we shall be blessed indeed.

Let us look to it that in all things we are just — in our trade, in our judgment of others, in our treatment of neighbors, and in our own personal character.

A just God cannot bless unjust transactions.

The Church of Thyatira

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Song: This I Believe

Artist: Hillsong

18 “Write this letter to the angel of the church in Thyatira…19 “I know all the things you do. I have seen your love, your faith, your service, and your patient endurance. And I can see your constant improvement in all these things. 20 “But I have this complaint against you.You are permitting that woman—that Jezebel who calls herself a prophet—to lead my servants astray…”

from Revelation 2:18-29

In a world…

Trade guilds were a major feature of life in Thyatira, an economic hub. And every guild had a patron deity. Christians who were in this world of commerce would be expected to pay homage to these gods – festive occasions characterized by all sorts of immoral activities. To abstain could lead to economic persecution and hardship. To participate fully was to compromise Christian conviction and witness.

No surprise, then, that the teaching of ‘Jezebel’ was so appealing (v 20). This group of false teachers were preaching a Christianity that allowed for a bit of compromise with the idolatrous aspects of pagan society.

They claimed a kind of insider knowledge that allowed them to juggle their pagan practices with their Christian convictions. They called it “deeper truths;” Jesus called it the “depths of Satan” (v 24).

Compromise is slippery like that. In this case it masquerades as a bit of Christian liberty.

These letters – and the book of Revelation as a whole – are a vivid picture of our lives as Christians. We’re like whales in the ocean – there’s water all around us, but we breathe a different air.

Maybe we’ve forgotten. Maybe we’ve grown comfortable with the systems and priorities of the world around us. After all, it’s the water we live in. But these letters in Revelation invite us to reexamine our lives and our Christian community. Water may be the world we live in, but it’s not the air we breathe. We breathe Jesus (v 25-26).

The Church of Sardis

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Look Can Be Deceiving

“Write this letter to the angel of the church in Sardis. This is the message from the one who has the sevenfold Spirit of God and the seven stars:

“I know all the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive—but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is almost dead. I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God.  Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.  Yet there are some in the church in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes with evil. They will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. All who are victorious will be clothed in white. I will never erase their names from the Book of Life, but I will announce before my Father and his angels that they are mine.  “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.

 

Sardis was a very loose-living and immoral society.

William Barclay calls Sardis  “…a city of the decadence”.

He also says this in describing the church at Sardis: “The church of Sardis was at peace – but it was the peace of the dead.”

What is interesting about Sardis is that it was built high on a hill and was very difficult to overtake by force.  The reason it was overtaken by attacking armies was not by overwhelming force but by overconfidence.  This “overconfidence” caused those in Sardis to stop being watchful.

I came across this devotional from Rick Renner, and here is a little of what he had to say:

“Unfortunately, the city of Sardis is like so many of us. We become so busy with life, so tossed about by everyday cares, or perhaps so confident of our own abilities, that we become unaware of our own spiritual need. We go on in life as though we have no need to deal with the foundations of our lives, not realizing that tiny cracks are starting to form.

This kind of negligent thinking is usually accompanied by prayerlessness and insensitivity to the Spirit of God. A Christian who is too busy to get into the Presence of God is a Christian who will soon find himself in trouble, just like the city of Sardis.”

Similar to what Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 10:12—

Therefore let the one who thinks he stands firm [immune to temptation, being overconfident and self-righteous], take care that he does not fall [into sin and condemnation].

We need to be watchful and tend to our hearts.

Notice the phrase I highlighted from Revelation….Wake Up!!

This is what Jesus tells us to do:  Awaken from our slumber.  Quit putting our Christianity on cruise control.  Quit looking and judging ourselves by what we are doing, but make sure what we do is an overflow of a close relationship with Jesus.

Let’s not forget whose we are.  Let us not get too busy with our lives, even our church lives, that we don’t rest in the knowledge of who God is and what He has done for us.

Sometimes it does us well to get back to the basics:

God loves you.  The first truth we taught our kids about God.  And in the busyness of life, we sometimes forget the basics.

GOD…..LOVES…..YOU.

As we go today and this weekend, let’s wake up to the fact that God loves us.  That God yearns for a true, genuine relationship with YOU!!  What a comforting thought.

At VBS this week, the first night the kids were taught the simple fact that Jesus Knows Who I Really Am.

And guess what?  He loves you!!

So let’s wake up and not take our relationship with God for granted!