Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord. “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?"
TO PONDER
Around 722 BC, the ten northern tribes of Israel were deported by the Assyrians and dispersed into other countries that the Assyrians defeated. The Bible describes this as punishment on these people because they had rejected Him as their God and worshiped the gods of the surrounding countries. At the time, God miraculously protected the southern two tribes of Israel, Judah and Benjamin, from the Assyrians. In the following years, these two tribes eventually followed the northern tribes in adopting the horrible practices of the surrounding countries, such as child sacrifice and religious prostitution.
Jeremiah was sent by God to bring warnings to the people that if they didn’t return back to living as He had instructed them, they would suffer the same fate as their northern cousins, but this time at the hands of the Babylonians. But while Jeremiah was speaking the messages that he had specifically received from God himself, there were other people claiming to be prophets and bringing different messages from God, sometimes received via dreams. Generally, the messages provided by these false prophets was that everything was OK and the people could keep living their disgusting lives without any fear of retribution.
The outcome of all this was that in 586 BC, Jerusalem, and the temple, were destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, and the surviving people deported to Babylon.
This raises the challenge for us, where do we get our spiritual truth from. Social media is full of advice on how to lead a full and fulfilling life, whereas the Bible is treated as suspect, especially when science is used as a weapon against its reliability. As Christians, we are followers of Jesus Christ who demonstrated by His life that He was God’s son and truly God. He put His stamp of approval on the Old Testament as fully God’s word while the New Testament contains a record of Jesus’s words to us.
We can therefore trust God’s word to us in the Bible. And to protect ourselves from being led away from God’s truths, we really do need to immerse ourselves in it, not only to gain truth, but to meet the author of this truth, our Loving Heavenly Family.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for revealing yourself through the life of your Son. Please help us to make the time to spend with You and your Word so that we get to know you personally and receive Your guidance in living our lives. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
TO PONDER
I spent 5 years at university to gain two degrees (Science and Engineering). When I got my first job, the first task given to me was to design a small sub-system of a communications system to be used for interconnecting telephone exchanges. A wonderful opportunity for applying my 5 years of study to a real problem. After a couple of days of effort and not really getting anywhere, one of the more senior engineers came to see how I was going. After reviewing my pathetic efforts, he shared with me the standard design they had been using successfully for many years. Yes, it had to be customised for each specific application, but it gave me a big boost in developing a design. As I progressed in my career, I realised that developing successful solutions always came from using a combination of theoretical knowledge, practical experience and ideas contributed by others.
When looking at my life as a child of our Heavenly Father, I see that there are parallels with my experience as an engineer. The theoretical knowledge I had acquired at university is like learning theology. The Bible is full of theology, or knowledge about God, and I did acquire quite a bit of this while growing up. But I must confess, that the biggest impact on me was a sense of guilt and failure in not living up to what I thought a Christian had to be. In an effort to become a better Christian, I joined a group of Christians street-witnessing in King Cross, the red-light district of Sydney at the time. This came to an abrupt end one night when I was having a discussion with a bikie and I realised I had absolutely nothing to offer him as a Christian.
What I was missing, was the practical experience of living as a Christian. This is the day by day living in a relationship with the Heavenly Family, having the security of knowing my life was safely in God’s hands, and having Holy Spirit guiding me in living out God’s purpose for me.
As with my engineering experience, this is an ongoing process of learning to hear God’s voice and responding to it. Again, the Bible is full of advice on how to hear God speaking to us and how to respond, and we have so many examples in the Bible of how other people went through this learning experiences.
Which brings us to ideas contributed by others. As we read in the Bible of how God worked in the lives of people, it opens our minds to possibilities of how God may want to work in our lives. (It doesn’t mean that God will work in our lives in the same way He has worked in the lives of others, since God treats us all individually according to our specific situations.)
What a treasure we have in our Bibles, with all the resources in it to help us live in the relationship our loving God wants to have with us.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for revealing yourself to us through Your word, and for also revealing how you want us to live in our relationship with you. We want to grow in the security of our relationship with you so that we joyfully follow where you want to take us. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping.
So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
TO PONDER
In the creation account in Genesis 1, God speaks all of creation into existence. The power associated with God’s voice and the words that come out of His mouth have the power to bring about a universe so large our human minds struggle to grasp its extent and majesty. And at the other extreme, the word of God created life in all its intricate complexity. In the book of Daniel, we meet a God who can protect three men thrown into a blazing inferno and then come out without any sign or smell of where they have been. We are not talking about a weak, impotent god here.
For most of human history, humans have acknowledged the existence of higher powers who we usually refer to as their gods. So, for the true God to distinguish Himself from the gods made in human likeness, the true God would demonstrate His unique power by impressive displays of that power – think of the plagues in Egypt for example.
Today, in the western world, human beings, and the knowledge they have acquired, have taken the place of God in many people’s lives. Humans can solve all the problems in this world and we don’t need the crutch of a God to solve our problems for us. You may have various views on how well we are doing with that.
So, the way God demonstrates His superiority over today’s man-made gods, especially in our western society, is to use broken, humble people to achieve His purposes. He takes people like us with our insecurities, hurts, fears and failures and changes and heals us by the power of that same very powerful word of His, and then takes our hand to lead us in doing some generally very ordinary things with Him, but achieving powerful results in the lives of others.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, please take away my fear of allowing you free range in my life, to let you release your awesome power in me to change me so you can use me to share the joy of knowing you with those who don’t yet know you. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
TO PONDER
Not only do our pastors and religious teachers encourage us to actively engage with the words written in our Bibles, the Bible itself encourages us to delve into its contents. The psalm our devotion was based on last Sunday has the psalmist waxing lyrical (through all 176 verses) on the benefits and blessings of being immersed in God’s word to us.
Today, I would just like to pick up on the part of our text for today where God’s word to us “divides soul and spirit”. Although our souls and spirits are not distinct entities within us, our soul generally refers to that part of us which expresses thoughts, reasoning and emotions, while our spirits are that part of us which connects us to Holy Spirit.
The things we read and hear, the input of information into our beings, has an impact on our souls – our emotions and our thought patterns. These can easily direct us to be thinking about ourselves and what we “need” to do to improve the quality and enjoyment of our lives. When we engage with God’s word to us, we get a different focus. Just as Jesus lived His life trusting His Father to care for Him while He lived selflessly for the healing of humanity, we are instructed by God’s word to let go of all of our securities and let Him become our security, and then we can let ourselves live the lives God wants us to live.
In a sense, the sword of the word of God cuts through the link between our souls and spirits – this link that allows the negativeness in our souls (from God’s point of view) to drag our spirits away from our union with Holy Spirit. Of course, this wonderful sword does not cut the link which goes in the other direction, allowing the healing of Holy Spirit to refresh and redirect our souls in living the vibrant life God wants us to have.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you again for your word and the way it draws us closer to You and the enjoyment of the life you have planned for us. Please help us not to forget to consistently immerse ourselves in your word so that we are drawn closer into our relationship with you. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
TO PONDER
I detect some level of frustration in Jesus’s words to the religious leaders in our verses for today. Chapter 5 of the gospel of John begins with Jesus performing a healing on the Sabbath, the Jewish Holy Day. This initiates a long discussion with the Jewish religious leaders about who Jesus is and his authority to do the things He does, like not keeping all the religious rules. And this discussion takes up the rest of the chapter in John’s gospel.
Understanding the back story may help us understand better what is happening here. During the history of the Israelites from the exodus from Egypt to the time of Jesus, the people had regularly ignored the relationship God had wanted to have with them. And they suffered as a consequence – through the 70-year Babylonian exile and the subsequent Greek and Roman oppression. The religious leaders wanted the people to remain faithful to God so that He would free them from their oppression. But as with all good intentions, their knowledge of the Bible and obeying its rules became an end in itself, leading to their prestige, rather than to a deeper relationship with their God.
So when Jesus turns up, doesn’t grovel before their prestige nor obeys all their rules and regulations, they are so blinded by their distorted version of Judaism that they had developed, that there was no way Jesus could be the promised Messiah.
This raises the question for us: when we do read our bibles, what are we trying to achieve by our reading? If I have to be honest with myself, and with you, some of the reasons I have had for reading my Bible over the years are:
The challenge of reading the whole Bible from beginning to end, tick;
Gaining knowledge so that others can be impressed with my knowledge, tick;
Pastor telling us it is something we should be doing if we call ourselves a Christian, tick;
Searching for Bible passages that support a view I hold so that I can use the passages to refute someone with a different view, tick.
But even when we have the wrong motives, our loving God can still patiently work in our lives and break down our defences. For me, that meant learning that if I approach the Bible as God’s revelation to us, it becomes the means of learning how our Heavenly Family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit wants us to grow in our relationship with them. And it no longer becomes a matter of reading words, but becoming engaged in a conversation with a God right alongside us.
Prayer: Heavenly Family, thank you for revealing to us who you are through your word, as well as through other means. Please helps to always approach your word with the aim of growing to know you personally and your purpose for our lives. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws. I have suffered much; preserve my life, Lord, according to your word.
TO PONDER
As a child (from ages 8 to 11) I lived on a farm without electricity and running water. We had a wooden stove, carried water from the tank outside up the steps into the house, used kerosene lamps for light at night and used a thunder box (dunny) about 30 metres from the house. If we needed to go to the toilet at night time it was a matter of taking a hurricane lamp and heading by ourselves out to the thunder box in the dark.
For those familiar with a hurricane lamp, it gives light in all directions, not like a torch which you can direct in a particular direction. So, to see where you were going in the dark, you had to hold the lamp close to the path. Without the lamp, there was no way we would be going outside to the toilet and we would end up having a very uncomfortable night. So, when the psalmist says that God’s word to us enlightens where we walk along the path of life, I can really relate to that. We usually understand this verse in terms of God’s word (Bible) giving us the guidance we need to live each day in a way that is in accordance with God’s will and purpose for us.
But I would like to pick up on the point that without the light that God provides, we won’t start at all on our journey with God, but stay in the comfort and security of where we currently are – just like us kids in our farmhouse all those years ago. The though of following where God is calling us to go and do what He is calling us to do can be scary, just like children (and even adults) are scared to go out into the dark at night. If a parent comes with us with a powerful light, we can feel secure enough to go out in the dark. For us, that parent is our Heavenly Father, and that powerful light is God’s promise to go with us and guide us along the way. We then have the security to go where God is calling us, not being afraid because we are safely in God’s care with His Spirit to guide us.
The other thing I love about the Bible is all the stories about ordinary people being called by God to go with Him, but pulling back because of their fears. And God so tenderly and patiently working with them to overcome their fears and they ending up doing wonderfully powerful things with God.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for all the promises you have given us in Your Word, the Bible, that you will always be with us. Thank you for the ways you work in our lives to overcome our fears and take our hand to lead us in doing exciting things with you. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. (NLT)
TO PONDER:
I recently read the simplest definition of faith I have ever heard, triggering an explosion of neurons within my mind as I excitedly, audibly exclaimed “YES!” at an inanimate book.
The explosive revelation I received from this book was “faith is trusting in God!”… It literally blew my mind, yes “literally”, the neurons exploded within my brain as I discovered something so simple, faith IS trusting in God, pure and simple.
In today’s verses Paul is encouraging the church in Philippi not to worry about anything and to pray about everything, simple advice to live in God’s peace!
Don’t worry and trust God, so simple, and it comes with a promise of God’s peace, so simple yet so difficult.
Why is something that is so simple so difficult, so hard to do? I can’t answer that for you but I can for myself and the main reason would be that I would have to give up control, give up control over everything, give up control over the things I can’t control anyway. Prayer hands those things over to God.
So, instead of handing those things over to my imagination, allowing it to create the worst things that can happen, I give the worry to God.
PRAYER: Father God, forgive me for not trusting you, for trying to control those things that are beyond my control. In the words of the father in Mark 9, “help my unbelief”. In Jesus name, Amen.
Today's devotion written by Danny Brock, LifeWay Westside
“This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
TO PONDER:
Some 30 years ago, I got to go backstage at an AC/DC concert in Los Angeles, I got to meet the band and talk to them, even though I was not really a fan conversation was difficult due to their rock-superstar status and my being freshly graduated, from a Christian Bible College, young person. I’d like to say that I was cool, calm and collected but I was not (one day I’ll tell the story of having pizza with Tiffany, the 80’s pop star).
In yesterday’s post I talked about the Lord’s Prayer, today’s verses, not being a template on how to pray to get our prayers answered and how its not a magical formula. The Lord’s Prayer is a starting point on how to pray, how to speak to the creator of everything, the original superstar.
I understand when people tell me they don’t know how to pray, what to say, and how to say it. If I was overcome and a tad flustered trying to a talk to one of the worlds Greatest Rock Bands, who really were down to earth “regular” guys, how do I even approach God who is so much beyond me, so far beyond my measly understanding?
While the Lord’s Prayer is not a magical formula, or even a template on getting God to listen, the Lord’s Prayer can be used as a starting point, a springboard into talking to God. We can start praying it word for for word and add to it, adding our own words to each sentence, telling God what it means to us to be his child, adding our own specific needs to “our daily bread”, etc..
When you are unsure of what to say, how to say it, or how to ask the Master of the Universe for something start repeating the Lord’s Prayer to God and launch into your own prayer.
PRAYER:Almighty God, I thank you for taking an interest in me while you are so much higher than me, so far above, yet you still walk with me daily, you listen to my prayers and talk with me as a loving Father. Amen.
Todays devotion written by Danny Brock, LifeWay Westside
And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
TO PONDER:
When I was a kid I was a champion swimmer. My mean parents (the same ones I talked about yesterday who wouldn’t buy me a Swiss Army Knife) would drag me out to train every morning before the crack of dawn for 2 hours before school. If you were wanting to prove you were the best or to be a winner, 2nd place is still a loser. Getting faster was always the goal to strive for.
I have heard today’s verses used against saying the Lord’s Prayer weekly in church and then using the same prayer as a template on the “right way to pray to get answers to your prayers”.
That is not what Jesus was saying when he was preaching the Sermon on the Mount, in my opinion, that is the opposite to what He was saying.
The whole section of the sermon here is about not competing, not trying to prove yourself. It's about happily taking 2ndplace, and relaxing in God’s grace.
Prayer is not a competition, not a magical formula to get what we want if we say the right words in the right order, it's not a destination to graduate to.
Prayer is between you and God, a real conversation between a loving Father and child. We as God’s children do not have to prove our worthiness to Him before we can pray (Jesus has already done that). Prayer is coming to our loving father, sitting on his lap and talking to him.
PRAYER: Loving Father, I thank you for loving me even before I loved you, for calling me into a loving relationship with you where I don’t have to compete for your love and attention, where I can simply come as I am and pray. Amen.
Today's devotion written by Danny Brock, LifeWay Westside