Do you take the kindness of God for granted? Do you see His patience and tolerance as signs that He is a pushover when it comes to sin? How could you not know that His kindness is guiding our hearts to turn away from distractions and habitual sin to walk a new path? (The Voice)
TO PONDER
In Chapter 2 of his letter to the church in Rome, Paul really speaks some harsh words. He stresses to his readers that God is a Holy God and His holiness has zero room for all failures to live to his standards. This would be horrendous news if we left out the Love of God where His Son stepped in to rescue us through his life, death and resurrection on this earth. Having been rescued and adopted into God’s family as His dearly loved children, God’s plan is that we now live in such a way that we demonstrate the characteristics of our Father God in our attitudes, our priorities, in effect, in all aspects of our lives.
But Paul is also aware of the temptation to take all the benefits of being God’s child, but not the responsibilities. There is this subtle shifting away of our focus of caring about the needs of others and sharing God’s love to needing to spend more time on the things that bring enjoyment to ourselves (sometimes at the expense of others). There is even the temptation to believe that being a Christian takes all the fun out of life.
If we look at Jesus’s life as recorded in the New Testament, we never find Jesus being a party pooper. He enjoyed banquets and wedding celebrations. God designed our lives to be enjoyed. But the joy and satisfaction in life is to be found in serving one another. And God, in his love, has set the example of how to carry out that service to others. What greater joy can we receive than to see how others are blessed by our service to them. But we don’t do it to receive that joy, but because our loving God has set us an example by the way he has first served us.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you again for all Jesus did here on earth to restore us as your dearly loved children. Help us to never take your love for granted, but please guide us with you Spirit to love others as you love us. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
TO PONDER
My father was very typical of his generation. They had to be very sick or injured before they would go anywhere near a doctor or hospital. In the 17 years I lived at home, I cannot recall that he was ever in hospital. He had been though. He had quite a stint in hospital after being machine gunned in the second world war, and had quite a long recovery. And later in life, he had further surgery to relieve the pain of his war injuries. And, also, later in life he was in hospital for kidney stones (which people tell me are very painful). But otherwise, he was able to keep away from the medical profession. Then he died of a massive heart attack at the age of 68. The autopsy showed that his arteries were so bad that nothing could have been done to save him. I guess it wasn’t the thing to do 40 odd years ago to go to the doctor for regular check-ups. If he had, he may have been able to receive restorative treatment.
These days, we have probably swung to the opposite extreme with my GP wanting to see me every 6 months for regular check-ups. 18 months ago, the results of the check-up led me to being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Further checks showed it had been found early and it seemed to have not spread. After surgery to remove the cancerous organ, I am now back to essentially living the same as before the diagnosis. And now I am having even more regular medical tests.
Our spiritual health is very much the same – especially if we have been involved in the church for many years. Just as my father didn’t seek medical attention because he didn’t feel sick, so we can coast along in our Christian faith because we are not aware of our spiritual infirmities. As for our physical wellbeing, so for our spiritual wellbeing, we need regular check-ups, and not just every 6 or 12 months. We can get weekly spiritual check-ups at church services and we can get quick daily spiritual check-ups through daily reading the bible and/or devotionals. And God also speaks to us during our regular prayer times.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you that you know me intimately and that you know all about the things that are not right in my life. Thank you for all the ways to reach out to me to bring me the things I need to maintaining a healthy and intimate relationship with you. Amen.
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
But when he (John the Baptist) saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptising, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.
TO PONDER
For the first 11 years of my life, I was very much surrounded by a very Christian society: over 7 years as a Missionary Kid in New Guinea and then over 3 years on a farm in South East Queensland. Just about everyone we knew went to the same church as us. Although I knew that there were other religions, my only experience of a religion was Christianity.
However, many years later, living in a very multicultural society in Sydney, I was exposed to many different philosophical ideas of the meaning and purpose of life. Since I was still a member of a Christian church, I was now being challenged to share my faith with non-Christians. Although I felt completely out of my depth in being involved in this evangelism work, the challenge I really faced was the question, 'are all religions valid, and if not, which one (or ones) are the correct ones?' Just because I was brough up a Christian, did that automatically mean that Christianity was the right religion for me? Or for anyone else for that matter? I knew Muslims, Jews and Buddhists who were rusted-on adherents to their faith, as much as a cultural connection as a religious connection. As with Christianity, each was claiming an exclusive path to salvation, so all couldn’t be correct. This led me to have a closer look at my own beliefs to check the foundation of the Christian faith.
Two factors led me to remain a Christian. The first was the fact the God himself entered his creation, took on our humanity and rescued us from the disaster we were headed for. No other religion offered that. This was the intellectual reason for remaining a Christian. The second reason was that God kept intervening in my life to show me he was real and that I was precious to him. This was the experiential reason for remaining a Christian.
Let’s now look at our reading for today. The Pharisees and Sadducees were the most committed people in keeping the religious rules of the day. They were also born into religious families (claiming Abraham as both their religious and genetic ancestor). But John the Baptism challenged them that this was not going to get them into God’s family. He called them to give up on relying on rule keeping and family inheritance for acceptance by God (this is the repenting part) and start living as true children of God (producing the fruit associated with this repentance).
From Galatians 5:22-23 we learn that the fruit God is looking for is love, joy, peace, patience, kindheartedness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. You might notice that these are all relational, and have nothing to do with rule keeping.
Keeping a set of rules may be difficult, but not impossible. The Pharisees and Sadducees felt quite snug in their ability to keep the rules. However, producing the fruit to the level of God’s standards is impossible for us, especially if we try with our own ability in an effort to look good to God. It is only as we acknowledge and repent of our utter failures to live to God’s standards and ask for His help through the Holy Spirit can the fruit be produced in us.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, I admit there is no way I can live up to the standards you require of me. I accept you love, mercy and grace to me and ask your help in surrendering my life into your plans and purpose for me. Through your Holy Spirit please produce in me the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindheartedness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control so that other may see your transforming power in my life. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Return, Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall!
TO PONDER
How do you react when you become aware that you have offended a friend by what you said or did? Some of the methods I have tried are:
- Deny I did anything wrong and suggest that they are too sensitive for taking offence;
- Give a half-hearted apology and then stay away from them until they calm down and get over it;
- Ignore the situation by keeping very busy with something else (social media, hobby, alcohol or drugs) so that I don’t have to think about the pain of the situation.
- Sincerely apologise and spend time with them to understand more deeply how I have hurt them;
With our relationship with God, do we react any differently? One difference maybe our fear of punishment by God.
An incident in the bible I find very encouraging in dealing with failures to live to God’s standards is David and his infidelity with Bathsheba. If you want to make a list of which of the Ten Commandments he broke, they are at least coveting, adultery, lying and murder. When David was finally exposed by the prophet Nathan, he did not run away from God, but ran back to Him. (If you want to learn more about this episode in David’s life, read 2 Samuel: 11 & 12. You may also like to read Psalm 51.)
And that is just what another prophet, Hosea, is doing many centuries later in calling the Israelites to come back to the life God wants to give them. He loves them deeply, but they are committed to living a lifestyle that ignores God’s purpose for them. God sends prophet after prophet to them with a message of how to find meaning and purpose in their lives, but instead they went looking for excitement and fun that unfortunately caused deep pain and hurt to others, and to God.
When David admitted his failures, God restored him to that intimate and secure friendship that he had with God. God offers the same to us. No matter how much we have hurt Him and others, He has provided a way back to a close relationship with Him – by what Jesus did through his perfect life and sacrificial death.
PRAYER: (Psalm 51:10-12 (The Voice))
Create in me a clean heart, O God; restore within me a sense of being brand new.
Do not throw me far away from Your presence, and do not remove Your Holy Spirit from me.
Give back to me the deep delight of being saved by You; let Your willing Spirit sustain me.
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.
TO PONDER
I don’t know about you, but when I face a disruption in my life that threatens my peace and security, my instinct is to immediately begin to work on finding solutions. It could be the failure of some important appliance in the home; it could be a large bill that wasn’t expected; it could be the diagnosis of a serious illness such as cancer; it could be being made redundant at work; it could even include a court summons accusing me of doing something that I was not aware I had done. Often, we have little time to come up with a proposed course of action to deal with the situation. The level of stress and insecurity can be quite intense.
Many of the Israelites of Isaiah’s day were living their lives as if they were completely in charge and could do whatever they liked – without any consequences. Then when problems occurred in their lives, they believed that they could perform some religious ceremonies and the gods (possibly even their god, Yahweh) would come to their aid to solve their problems. But, if the gods could not solve their problems, they could always offer their savings to some neighbouring nation and buy solutions from them (for example armies or mercenaries).
But, through the prophet Isaiah, God reminds the people that this will not work. He loves his people too much to let them get away with this way of responding to life’s challenges. God’s purpose for us is to live in relationship with Him, to be secure in His love for us, and to be actively living as his dearly loved children. But, our natural inclination, like the Israelites of Isaiah’s day, is to want complete freedom on how we live our lives. Unfortunately, this will eventually lead us to be living without any protection or care or love from God – a living hell, if you like. This is not God’s plan or purpose for us, and he works hard to draw us back into his life fulfilling plan and purpose for us.
The process God gives to us is one of life-long repentance. Firstly, acknowledging that our independent living is not giving us the rewards we are seeking we decide to see if God’s way works. We learn that through Jesus’s life and death, we have been given a new birth certificate that says we are now fully God’s children and we have the Holy Spirit to guide us in living as His children. There is absolutely nothing we could do to earn or buy this new birth certificate; it is a free gift.
But we do need to learn how to live as members of God’s family. We come into our new family with all our old habits and lots of baggage. Some of this baggage we have used for our security. Our repentance is an ongoing process of giving up our old habits, letting go of our baggage, learning new habits and finding our security in God’s love and commitment to us. But we are not doing this on our own. We have all the resources of God and of his other children at our disposal to help and support us.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you for my new birth into your family. I want to grow and mature as your child. I entrust my life into your hands for you to keep growing and maturing me into the person you want me to become. Thank you for being there every time I mess up and try to take back control of my life. Thank you for your awesome love. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Therefore this is what the Lord says: “If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me; if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them.
TO PONDER
Jeremiah was called by God to be a prophet to the people of Judah at a time when the people, from the King down, didn’t want to hear God’s message to them. So Jeremiah had a hard time which included being ignored, ridiculed and even physically abused. He is very disillusioned and ends up having a whinge session to God, even suggesting that God had tricked him into taking on this prophet gig. Today’s verse is part of God’s reply, which may seem to be a bit blunt. God wants Jeremiah to take the focus off himself and to rather focus on the people of Judah who had lost their way in following God’s plan for them. God still dearly loved these people, but their rebellion against God’s purpose for them would mean the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple they so treasured. So the task is urgent. Jeremiah needs to stop feeling sorry for himself and concentrate on getting God’s message out to the people.
I wonder how similar our society today is to that of Jeremiah’s time. It may be that people today are not so much deliberately rejecting God’s message to them, but more that they have never heard it. So it is just as urgent to get God’s message out to people. And you may be thinking, Charles is now going to try to motivate (guilt me) to get involved in spreading the message. For most of my life I would get very defensive at this point and respond that God had not given me the gifts to do evangelism. So I couldn’t get involved. But God had me worked out. He got me to be at the right places and to say and do things that impacted other people’s lives in very positive ways – without me even realising what he was doing until much later. Slowly I came to realise that God had plans and a purpose for me. And I also learned an important message from Jeremiah and the book of the Bible named Lamentations. In this book, Jeremiah records his conversations with God (we might call it praying), but Jeremiah is very open and honest with God about how he feels – including his bitch sessions. Slowly I learned to talk to God about my fears of talking to others about my relationship with Him. His answers to me were: keep talking to my heavenly father about all my feelings, and GO to where he calls me to go. Once there, be relaxed and natural. Listen to people and listen to the Holy Spirit at the same time. And then just let the Holy Spirit do His thing.
So often we feel God is calling us to do things and then leaving us to do it on our own. How wrong we are. Wherever God calls us to go, His Holy Spirit goes with us and His Holy Spirit will guide us in what to say to people. And if we don’t believe that, then we need to openly tell God how we feel and open ourselves for him to change us. Of course, the Holy Spirit may use a whole lot of other people to be the channel of his transforming work in our lives.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, we want to be more willing to answer your call. Please help us with our fears and insecurities. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been rebellious against the Lord while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die!
TO PONDER:
She was a sweet, faithful lady, in her nineties and nearing the end of her life. She had asked me to come over as she was troubled. As we sat in her lounge room, enjoying a "big tea' on her best Wedgwood china, she said, "Pastor, can we plan my funeral service. I'm afraid that my girls who haven't spoken to each other in years, will fight over what to do...so I would just rather work it out with you now." So we did just that...and we prayed together...and she prayed for her girls...as she did every day...that they could put their difference aside. All she wanted was to have a family gathering together, mum and her girls...that hadn't happened for over 20 years.
When this lady passed away six months later, it was even worse than what this gracious lady had predicted. But it wasn't a fight over the funeral service...when I met them the day after mum's death, they were fighting over the share left to them in her will. The fight continued before the funeral service and I had to pull them both into a side room for a chat about their disgraceful behaviour.
Moses is nearing the end of his life, a life where he has led God's people through some amazing times like crossing the Red Sea, and some difficult times, as they wandered in the desert for 40 years. He has seen the people of God proclaim, "God everything you have said, we will do" to seeing them form all their jewellery into a golden calf. And as he nears the end, he knows that despite all he has done, that for some, nothing will change. In fact that their rebellion will get worse So does he give up? No. He faithfully finishes what God calls him to do.
That's a tremendous encouragement to all of us. There will always be rebellion, this side of the Jesus' coming again. There will always be those who refuse to hear and believe and live the way of Jesus. Things may even get worse. But what God calls us to is faithful obedience to his ways, to living fully by grace in our relationship with him, to continue to speak the truth of his life, which alone brings fullness of joy and eternal blessing, to complete what he has called us to do. What happens next, we leave to God.
PRAYER:
God, keep me faithful to you all my days, for all I want, all I need, is to dwell in your house forever. Amen.
For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
TO PONDER:
On the tool board in my garage, I have a range of tools. From ring spanners to wrenches, punches to pliers, screwdrivers to hammers. Each of the tools are designed to be used in a certain way for a certain purpose. The devil also has a tool board full of hand tools that he uses to do his destructive work in the world. James mentions two in our reading today that are the go to tools for destroying relationships that God has designed to bring blessing to our life.
Those tools that Satan uses to drive a wedge in our relationships in the Church especially...envy and selfish ambition (or strife as some translations use). The words for envy 'zelos', from which we get the word zealot denotes a fierce desire to promote one's own ideas and convictions to the exclusion of everyone else. Art times we can be so fixated or obsessed with trying to get our opinion across, that we cannot listen to others or even entertain a different view. The word for selfish ambition belongs in the political realm and it refers to those who share similar views and values and so align themselves together. They form sides or parties to fiercely fight for what is on their agenda, pushing their views, promoting their views until they are accepted as the norm. There is little tolerance for those who hold a different view. As a result those who once stood together as friends, colleagues, united, become enemies, opponents and divided; the relationships once shared are in tatters and hurt is high.
When Satan can drive that wedge in relationships in the Church, the power of the Gospel is diminished and the work of the Gospel is forgotten. James says that envy and selfish ambition will result in confusion (disorder) and leave a vile aroma in the community (result in every evil practice). Sadly, I can see these tools of Satan at work in our denomination as a whole at this time. I grieve the hurt that is being felt as people who should be united in Christ, for the cause of Christ in our homes, families and communities are separated, and at odds with one another. Paul said in Ephesians 4, Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bonds of peace. May God give each of us, his spirit of humility that places a higher priority on the relationships he has given to be a blessing in our life, over the personal agendas that we might fiercely fight for. If Satan has used envy or selfish ambition as a wedge in any of your relationships, will you take steps today to pull it out with the help of the Spirit and throw it in the bin? It's never a tool that is needed in any community.
PRAYER
Lord, forgive me when I have become so fixated on issues that are important to me, that I have allowed them to take priority over the relationships that you have given me. Fill me with a spirit of humility that I may always be open to others, even if they hold differing views, knowing that in you, we find unity and oneness. Amen.
They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them...
TO PONDER:
Who is that person you are ready to give up on? The person, that for whatever reason, refuses to listen or change, and continues to self-destruct with sabotaging choices and decisions? Who is that person who has repeatedly hurt, disappointed you and stubbornly refused to see the error of their ways? Who is that person that you given chance after chance to change but you have got to the point where enough is enough? For most of us, it probably doesn't take us too long to identify or name that person in our life.
If you have a chance, read the whole of Nehemiah 9, as Nehemiah goes through a catalogue of things that God's people have done, the stubborn refusal to live in a covenant relationship with the God of life, the sabotaging and self-destructive behaviours, the defiance....the list is comprehensive. When is enough enough. When is it time to walk away, the cast off, to give up on people who will not change? If I was God...
But as Nehemiah reminds us, the God who longs to be in relationship with us, is forgiving, gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love...and because that is who he is we have the most beautiful comment...Therefore you did not desert them. God will not give up on you. God will not give up on the person that you named in your mind either. God is for you. He is for them. Always. That makes all the difference to how I live and how I love....when I am ready to give up on someone.
PRAYER:
Gracious God, thank you that you have never given up on me, even when my destructive behaviours and choices have hurt you and those around me. Forgive me when I am tempted to give up on others. Fill me with your grace, that I may continue to reflect your love to those I want to turn my back on. Amen.