"But you are a chosen people, a royal priest hood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."
TO PONDER:
Scripture indicates that with this verse we have a new identity based on grace, not society, background, merit, or origin, or the journey we’ve been through before. It encourages us to come out of darkness into light to live out and declare God’s praises. It’s the transition from ignorance and sin, into the knowledge and life of God. We all have a direct access to God.
Out of darkness into light! Well, we’ve all been through blackouts, I’m sure. Whilst overseas we had them regularly. The area I was in was normally quite well lit, but when the lights went out …. it was dark … totally dark, you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. I can relate these dark periods to the times before when I was walking through that time of ‘hard knocks and darkness’. Some days were just so totally “dark” that I didn’t think I would ever see that light at the end of the tunnel that was spoken of. But, just like when the power comes back on and the lights shine through after the blackout, we can see things in a different ‘light’. It takes a change of attitude and willingness to change, with a realisation that we have a purpose for living and giving.
Yes, you and I have a purpose. Just like Christ brought the Israelites out of Egypt, he has brought us out of sin and darkness also into a life of transformation. That purpose is to bring our praises to and worship before the Lord.
God chose you and I first.
PRAYER:
Dear Heavenly Father, on this daily walk with you Lord I pray that your purpose resonates in every step I take. Thank you, Lord, that you put someone in my path that first planted the seed and the many others who have come after and watered and nurtured my journey. Open my mouth Lord to encourage others, in a loving and giving way, to find their purpose in life.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LifeWay Online.
"And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit"
TO PONDER:
How many times have you called on the Holy Spirit for help?
Do you remember deciding to follow Christ, to accept Him into your life, to believe and trust in Him and finally coming to a place where things started to fall into place and being filled with the Holy Spirit. Have you ever experienced that peace and serenity, even in the hardest of times?
I’d been brought up in the Anglican church, and oft times I’d go off with my little prayer book to Sunday service, listen to the sermon, read the designated prayers, sing the hymns, do what I was expected too … but I never really felt at home or overly satisfied? Never, were we encouraged to give our life, or to depend on Christ or even get to know there was the Holy Spirit. I searched for years for what was missing.
Salvation comes through the hearing of the truth, believing and trusting in Christ and letting go and letting God, not trying to do it all on our own by human efforts. We don’t need to strive for approval or acceptance. Oh! If only someone had told me earlier in my searching, that I had already been specially chosen, spiritually blessed from Heavenly places, redeemed through His blood and forgiven, and adopted into His sonship/daughtership through Christ and believe I’d been sealed by the Holy Spirit.
PRAYER:
Dear Lord thank you that I heard and accepted the message in your timing. I pray that through every day your words will be instilled in my heart. That your love and acceptance shines through to those whom I encounter. Thank you that you sent the Holy Spirit to be our constant companion as we travel this earth.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LifeWay Online
"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace"
TO PONDER:
So, following on from yesterdays’ devotional, even though we are broken, Scripture shows we can still be used by God. We’re not only chosen, but adopted sons and daughters through Christ, and we’ve also been redeemed and forgiven through his blood.
Jesus redeemed us with his blood, through his sacrifice on the Cross. He has brought us out from under the burdens of sin and death.
While overseas, I volunteered at an orphanage in HCMC - Phu My Handicapped Children’s Orphanage in my spare time. During that time there was close to 390+ severely mentally and physically “broken” children. Each one of them had been abandoned, some at the front gates, physically maimed by their parents so they could beg and make money, then handed in by parents who couldn’t cope and were ashamed. None of these children were ever adopted into the outside world. They thrived on the little love and affection shown to them, and that little bit of attention. Even though many would never grow into adulthood, I believed they were “chosen” and that God loved and “adopted” these broken ones into his kingdom, where they would finally become “whole.” I always think of these children as specially chosen. I count it a privilege to think that He chose me to do the little I could, through Him, whilst visiting these children, to show them and their carers that they were special, accepted and loved.
My question is … what is your reaction when you come across someone who is ‘different’ from us? Just like those people that were chosen in the early days to do His work, remember, even though we are forgiven and cleansed by His blood, we are still all broken, but we are accepted and can be used by God. Everyone deserves a chance. Just remember He first chose you and me.
PRAYER:
Oh! Jesus, I thank you that you put in my heart that searching of something deeper and more meaningful to fill my time. I thank you that you opened the doors and I praise you for the opportunity to spend that time and be part of those ‘broken’ children’s lives. I praise you for the times you showed me the brokenness in that whole country. I thank you for those who never have had the chance of being adopted into a normal family, but Lord I am so grateful that you loved and wrapped them in your arms, and you’ve taken them home to be part of your family, I give my heartfelt thanks. Dear Lord, thank you for the privilege of being chosen, accepted and adopted into your family.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LifeWay Online
"For he chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight."
TO PONDER:
What a huge hurdle to get our heads around … He chose us before the foundation of the world! Why you, why me?
Some other words for ‘chose/chosen’ are – selected, picked, desired, wanted, preferred and special.
When the doors started to open for me to go overseas to work alongside those in the underground church to help set up and teach in our English Learning Centres, I used to ask, “Why Me”? I don’t have the qualifications, experience, I’m shy, I’m not good enough, I’m not perfect, I’m broken and I need lots of mending and the list just went on and on. At that time, I was blessed to be working alongside my Pastor and Boss, who would walk through the office and fire a question at me, encouraging me to look deeper … finally, realising I was chosen for a reason.
Remembering, that God specifically chose Moses, David, Rehab, Paul, Peter, Gideon, Elijah, Jonah, Samson, Jacob, Noah and Sarah … none of them were perfect, and just like you and me, they were all broken. On reading through the Scriptures, we see that He chose those people who weren’t perfect. The people He chose were broken – and through choosing these people who had willing hearts, filled with His Spiritual blessings, His grace and strength shone through.
The answer to my questions came when I realised, that even though I was broken, I did have a willing heart to go, and I had the spiritual/heavenly blessings in Christ, and I had been chosen.
PRAYER:
Dear heavenly Father thank you for choosing me to do your work through me, to show that broken can be mended and that through that brokenness your strength and grace can shine through. I ask Lord that you heal the broken and show them that they too, can be used for your glory.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LIfeWay Online
"Praise be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ"
TO PONDER
Have you ever wondered what a spiritual blessing is? I know, I have, quite often. I’ve asked what sort of blessing could it be? I’ve even had the audacity to question God as to why I deserve these blessings. Have I earned them? Is it something we can see, touch, feel? Is it an answered prayer for something material, something we can see and show to others. Maybe we oft times think that a windfall of money would be a great blessing, we’d be rich in worldly blessings.
No, it is not material blessings, BUT divine blessings, which come from heavenly places, meaning that it is not from here on earth. These are the spiritual blessings believers possess in Christ. If we only realised how rich we are …. in His spiritual blessings. He first chose us; we didn’t choose Him.
There’s a difference between physical and material blessings, which lose every ounce of their value to us the moment our heart stops. With spiritual blessings given by the Father, He has given us our relationship with Christ which we will continue to enjoy, and to praise God throughout eternity.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of these spiritual blessings bestowed upon us freely. I pray Lord that we learn to share these blessings as they are meant. Open our eyes Lord and teach us how to reach out to those less fortunate and show them that they don’t have to strive or work for these blessings, show then that material blessings only last a short time, but your spiritual blessings are for eternity.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LifeWay Online
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.
TO PONDER
Bible passages like this can be a bit hard for us to claim as our own, and probably even harder for those who don’t yet know Jesus, God’s Son, to see these verses as attracting them to become followers of Jesus. But Paul was writing to people who were already committed followers of Jesus. Now, to help us understand what Paul is writing about to the church at Phillipi, we need to go back to verse 7 where Paul is so overcome by what he has already received from his relationship with the Heavenly Family, that anything that he treasured from the life he had before is as attractive to him now as animal dung.
Even though, at this stage in his life, Paul has experienced an awesome time through the work that God has called him to do, he appreciates that there is so much more that he has to learn and experience and he doesn’t want to miss out of any of it, even if it means that there may be difficult times ahead.
When I compare my life with that of Saint Paul, I have to admit I am nowhere near experiencing the life that Paul experienced following his conversion on the road to Damascus. In a way, I sometimes feel that I am only a toddler in terms of the maturity that Paul lived. Yes, I have had some awesome experiences of seeing God at work in my life, but I have to admit that I am nowhere near where Paul was in saying goodbye to his old way of life. Yet I am convinced that God is working in my life towards reaching that goal.
If someone came to this septuagenarian with the proposal of turning me into an athlete such as Ian Thorpe or Cathy Freeman, I would say they are dreaming. With the state of my body and the amount of time I am expected to live, it would have to be a miracle of Abrahamic proportions for that to happen. We could possibly feel the same about achieving the level of faith that Saint Paul had.
I am not sure God is calling us to that level of faith – remembering that Jesus said that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could move mountains. But what God is calling us to do is give Him full reign in our lives to achieve His purposes.
Also, remember, that Paul had reached this maturity of his relationship with the Heavenly Family through what he had already experienced. It was a growing process of learning, experiencing God at work and growing in his understanding and faith. It is the same with us. God is taking us from where we are at this moment and asking us to go with Him to experience Him at work. Through this process we will learn to trust Him more and to let go of some of our old securities. We will then trust Him more in His leading and follow to see Him do even more in our lives. This trust that grows in us also helps us to not be afraid of difficulties or challenges we find along the way. We have the promise of both Jesus and His Father that they will always be with us where ever they take us.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, I want to grow in my relationship with You and grow in trusting You where ever You take me. Even though I am sometimes reluctant to fully surrender my life to You, I do so now so that You can grow me in living that full trust in You and enabling You to use me to achieve Your purposes in me. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
TO PONDER
Have you ever been in a group discussion where people are discussing the way they would prefer to die. If you have had a close friend or member of your family die a slow, possibly painful, death, you most likely would not like that to be something that you would have to go through. On the other hand, if you had a close friend or member of your family die very suddenly without warning (for example from an accident or a medical incident such as a heart attack, stroke or diabetic coma), you may feel cheated in that you were unable to say good bye or to resolve some important issue with them.
Lots of people have suggested that the best way to die is in your sleep, so that you feel nothing and just wake up in heaven. This is good for you, but it again leaves your loved ones wishing that they had had more precious time with you before you died.
Based on our own experiences of seeing loved ones and other people dying, we may all have different preferences of how we would like to die. But few of us look forward to dying, unless, of course, our living here on earth has become unbearable.
But our dying is also something we don’t like to think about, because we may not have a clear view of what happens to us after our death. (Just think of the number of people who cannot or don’t make a will because the idea of their dying brings unpleasant feelings.) The general view of our society is that we hope we have been good enough that God will accept us into heaven when we die. But that raises the question of whether we have been good enough. What is the pass mark?
Then Jesus comes along and says He has some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that no matter how good you are, even if you were a better person than Saint Mother Teresa, you could not achieve God’s pass mark for getting into heaven. The good news is that Jesus sat the exam for us all and He did achieve God’s pass mark. He is now handing out graduation certificates at no cost to all who request one.
However, there is one little catch; you also have to accept Jesus’s death for you. Just as Jesus passed the exam for you, He also died for you. You now have effectively died, with Him, to the life you lived by your own abilities, and you now live by the power of Holy Spirit living in you to live the new resurrected life Jesus won for you.
Your physical death is no longer something fearful, but just the doorway into a new life forever in the presence of the Heavenly Family.
As we live our new resurrected life on this earth, we grow in learning to trust God’s love for us and live by His promise to be always with us. So that means that we can then be sure that our loving God will be right beside us in our dying with His full support and encouragement. Just as we entrust each moment of each day into the care of our loving God, so we should be able to entrust our dying into His care also. This takes away the fear of how God is going to orchestrate our transferal from this life to life forever with Him. And we can trust God that He will using our dying to fulfil His purposes in touching the lives of others who are there to share in the first part of this Journey.
Can we make a decision to not fear our dying, but every time this fear raises its head, we hand it over to our loving God to deal with it?
Prayer: Heavenly Family, Thank You that Jesus died as a human being for all of humanity and then rose again with a new resurrected human body as a guarantee that all who accept this fee gift will also live with Jesus in eternity as His brothers and sisters. Thank You that we no longer need fear our death, but when we do succumb to fear, please remind us again of all Your promises that You have already accepted us into Your family forever. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.
TO PONDER
What a clear, unambiguous statement of our status as children of our Heavenly Father – being able to come into the presence of an awesome holy God, ourselves holy, blameless, and totally free of all imperfections. And we are able to do this because His Son, Jesus is there right beside us, confirming that He has fulfilled all requirements for us to achieve that holy, blameless and imperfection‑free state.
I must admit that I struggle to live out this reality in my daily life. For example, when I come to the end of each day and come to God to say goodnight and thank Him for His guidance through the day, I am regularly thinking over the day, looking for episodes in my life where I did good and can be proud of what I achieved as a child of God. It’s always nice, but unfortunately rare, that I had an exciting experience of my involvement with God during the day. I know that this focus is wrong, because it is about what I have done. The reality is that God has been active in my life through the whole day, achieving His purpose through everything I do or say, even when I am being selfish and self‑centred.
So when I come to God to say goodnight at the end of the day, I really come with nothing that I have achieved. My relationship with my Heavenly Father is wholly dependent on what Jesus has done, and anything I achieved during the day was because of Holy Spirit living in me and working out God’s purpose in me.
I would like to share a thought about our access to our Heavenly Family that come out of our Easter reflections. The temple which existed in Jerusalem during Jesus life here on earth was the place people went to be close to God. In the temple was the Most Holy Place (Holy of Holies in some bible translations) which represented God’s presence. It was separated from the rest of the temple by a curtain. It could only be entered once a year by the Jewish high priest. When Jesus died on the cross, this curtain was torn in two from top to bottom, thus enabling all people to have direct access to God through Jesus’s death and resurrection. Jesus is the new High Priest which provides us this access to the Heavenly Family.
It is interesting that the Jews in Israel would love to rebuild the temple on its original site, but God has allowed that this is not presently possible. God no longer wants to be confined to a temple, but be accessible to all people – through His Son, Jesus.
With such an accessible God, wouldn’t we want to get to know Him more intimately and learn how to live out His plans and purposes for us?
Prayer: Heavenly Family, thank You all again for all you are doing in growing me as a member of Your family. I want to be a fully committed member of this family and so I give myself to You to keep changing me to become more like my new brother, Jesus. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
TO PONDER
What do we understand by baptism in the Christian Church? For some it is an initiation ceremony for becoming a member of the Christian Church – a public ceremony where people sort of sign up (mostly verbally) to the articles of the Christian faith, usually expressed through the Apostles creed. They also usually reject any previous allegiance to the Devil that they might have had, either consciously or unconsciously. By the way, when we commit ourselves to act in a way that is in contravention with Jesus’s commandment to love others as he has loved us, we are in a way acting in a way that the Devil wants us to act. So, when we renounce allegiance to the Devil and his ways, we are also renouncing our commitment to live in selfish, self‑centred ways.
But there is a much deeper meaning, and that is dying, sharing with Jesus in His death on the cross. We understand that Jesus died for every single person on this earth who has ever lived or will ever live. Since Jesus lived a perfect relationship with His Heavenly Father while here on earth and then took on Himself all the consequences of each of us not getting anywhere near living that same perfect relationship, Jesus has attributed to each of us all that He achieved on our behalf. His death on the cross then becomes our death. This is symbolised by our “drowning” when immersed in the waters of baptism. Our old selfish, self‑centred selves and ways of life die in the waters of baptism.
But Jesus didn’t stay dead. He came back to life, and this new life is also given to us as a gift. We are reborn as children of the Heavenly Family. This is symbolised in us coming up out of the waters of baptism. Now I know that most of us were not baptised by full immersion and also many of us were baptised as children. So, we may not have had have the experience of (and/or don’t remember) this act of new birth granted to us in our baptism. But that doesn’t make it invalid, for baptism is an act of God in His love for us, not something we do to gain God’s acceptance.
So, we now live in this sort of dual existence, one part of us the perfect sinless children of the Heavenly Family, living out the commandment to love others in the same way God loves us, and the other part where we still inhabit our sin‑infected bodies with our selfish and self‑centred desires.
Our baptism is not the magic once‑off act that changes us from our old selfish and self‑centred selves into a Christian saint, but the beginning of a new life where we daily surrender all we are and have into God’s plans and purposes for us and let Him make our baptismal death of our old selves more real, and teach us how to live our new lives with Him.
Sometimes we become discouraged when our old self keeps raising its head and we find ourselves saying and doing things we know are not reflections of God’s love. It is not a matter of trying harder to live God’s purposes for us, but spending time with our Heavenly Family so that the characteristics of the Heavenly Family rub off on us and we gain insights from Holy Spirit in living our new life. In a sense, as we spend more time with the Heavenly Family, we starve the old self of attention, causing it to wither and die.
By the way, the reason we are baptised into the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is because we become children of our Heavenly Father, through what His Son as achieved for us and we are given Holy Spirit to live in us to teach us how to live our new resurrected life.
Prayer: Heavenly Family, thank You to You all for all you are daily doing in my life to grow me in living this new resurrected life, graciously given to me as a gift. I surrender to You all that I am and have for You to feed and nourish my new resurrected self so that it grows and keeps me so focused on You that my old selfish, self‑centred self gets starved of its influence on me. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping