daily bible verse

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Standing In The “SON”

23rdFebruary

“Jesus shouted to the crowds, “If you trust Me, you are trusting not only Me, but also God who sent Me. For when you see Me, you are seeing the One who sent Me. I have come as a light to sine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in Me will no longer remain in the dark.”

John 12:44-46

Have you ever stood outside on a cold winter’s day and actually felt the warmth of the sun’s rays shining down on you so strongly, that you have forgotten it was winter? In fact, the warmth of the sun’s rays was so strong that you couldn’t even feel the winter’s chill. It’s a strange feeling right? Yet there is some significance in this analogy for our own lives.

Jesus, time and time again, said of Himself, that He was and is the light of the world. He came so that we would no longer have to live in darkness. Moreover, His light exposes our sins, which leads us to repentance. When we are restored in Him, we too become beacons of His light and stand bringing glory to the Father.

Jesus’ light is much like the sun’s rays on a cold winter’s day. All around us might be calamity, darkness and we may feel deserted in a dark tunnel, but it is then that Jesus’ light shines around us and brings us direction and comfort. When we are filled with the light of God, we too can face darkness and prevail; not in our strength but because the light of world ‘JESUS CHRIST’ shines in us and through us. May we forever stand in the warmth and comfort of His light and may we too shine His light!

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Walking On Water

22nd February

“Then Peter called to Him, “Lord, if it‘s really you, tell me to come to You, walking on the water.”“Yes, come” Jesus said. So Peter went over the side of the boat and WALKED ON WATER towards Jesus. But as soon as he saw the strong winds and the waves, he was terrified and began to sink.”

Matthew 14:28-30

Isn’t it amazing to read that Peter actually walked on water. Yet why is it so significant in this text, beside it being humanly impossible to achieve such a feat?

Peter in particular, would have been used to storms. He was a fisherman after all. It is very likely that he battled many storms in his lifetime. Yet this storm was different. Mark in his account, tells us that the disciples were in serious trouble. However, when Jesus called Peter to come to Him, Peter ignored the perilous situation around him, climbed over the boat and supernaturally started to walk towards Jesus.

Notice that there are two significant things here. The first being, that Peter completely ignored the storm around him and stepped out in faith. He didn’t look at his circumstances but instead fixed His eyes on Jesus and walked towards Him. The fact that Jesus called Peter and he heard His voice, gave Peter enough faith to know that he could put His trust in the One calling him.

The second is the fact that Peter had to physically climb out of the boat. That is hard enough to do on a good day, let alone in the midst of violent storm. By stepping out the boat, his comfort zone, he further demonstrated his complete trust in Jesus, to make sure he didn’t drown.

When life gets stormy, we too can be assured that we have an anchor to keep us grounded and not sink. He will watch over us in the storm, call us through the storm and help us step out in faith in the midst of it. All we have to do is keep our eyes fixed on Him and not on the things that can make us drown. May we stand firm through the trials, fixing our eyes on Jesus.

 

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Beacons Of Christ

20th-21st February

Weekend Edition

“You are the light of the world – like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your Heavenly Father.”

Matthew 5:14-16

Have you ever noticed that you stand out sometimes? Well, if you are a Christian reading this, then most probably you really do stick out. Morals standards are at an all time low, people’s belief or acceptance of Jesus is running thin, and the line between sin and righteous living is ever being blurred by liberal churches. Those of us who do stand up for truth and for Christ-like living are often ridiculed, marginalised or even persecuted. Yet Jesus’ commands to us are to stand up for truth, Biblical living and to shine ever brighter in a world desperate for hope and direction.

Society needs light. It needs Jesus. We are, as Jesus described, a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. We are the light to direct people back to Him. The Apostle Paul also encouraged the church in Corinth with these words, which can equally be applied in our lives too, “So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making His appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Friends, let us not give up shining for Jesus, living for Him in all we do and bringing glory to His Name forever and ever. Even when it is hard to stand firm, evermore lean on God’s grace to hold you up and make you a beacon for Him. Be a burning light shining out Jesus. May your lifestyle, actions, and words lead people back to Jesus.

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Living In Christ

19thFebruary

“…since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive His new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.”

2 Corinthians 5:14b-15

Jesus’ death and resurrection, was and still is, so significant for our lives. When we commit to serving Jesus, following His ways, and giving Him our lives, we too die and are raised to life again spiritually. We die to our old lifestyles, habits, choices and desires that are contrary to Godly living and are raised to live for Christ in all we do. Moreover, sometimes it is not even a conscious decision that our former desires have faded away. It is part of a regenerative work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives, changing our desires for God’s desires. This is not to say we become puppets, but rather daily experiencing goodness and perfection from spending time with a good and perfect Father, eventually leads to His characteristics becoming ours, aided by the wondrous work of the Holy Spirit.

Living in Christ means that we are longer living for ourselves but living for Him. Our dreams are birthed from God’s desires, to see the best in our lives. Our hopes and plans are inter-twinned with God’s purposes for us. Our daily living is in pleasing Him, sharing His goodness with others and bringing Jesus’ light into this dark world. We are beacon’s and ambassadors to show the world the power of Jesus’ finished work on the cross and fullness of His love and grace.

“..Be my everything, be my everything, be my everything, Jesus, everything…!”

SONG: Tim Hughes, Everything

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Growing In Christ

18thFebruary

“The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.”

2 Peter 1:8-9

Yesterday we looked at the benefits of spiritual discipline and discussed why it is so important in a believers life, to not just ‘know of God’ but truly ‘get to know Him’ by spending time with Him, through prayer, worship and reading His word. Spending time with Jesus, has a two-fold benefit. Firstly, we learn more about God’s characteristics, His love for the world we live in, His goodness and kindness etc., and secondly we learn more about how God see us, His children.

As we grow in our walk with God, we discover that God really really loves us. We discover that His blessings are abundant, His grace is unlimited, and that He only wants the best for us. His desire is to mould and shape us into His own character. The more we grow in the knowledge of Him and in how He sees us, as Peter says, the more ‘productive’ and ‘useful’ we will be in making Jesus known to others.

If you do not view yourself as God sees you, then how can you be excited to tell others about Him. We become ‘shortsighted’ or even ‘blind’ to how God sees us, and live in the guilt and shame of our ‘old sins’ or previous lifestyles. We get so caught up there, that we never move forward as we continually re-live and are bound by past sins.

If we are to grow in Christ, we need to remember that our sins are forgiven once and for all by Jesus’ own sacrifice for us. It as a forgiven and innocent child, that God sees us. If we have confessed our sins, we are free. The more we spend time with Him, the more we realise this truth and the less we allow the enemy’s lies to deceive us and pull us back.

“…..who the Son sets free is free indeed!”

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More Of Jesus

17thFebruary

“…make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with Godliness, and Godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.”

2 Peter 1:5b-7

Spiritual exercise is just as, if not more important than physical exercise. Just as we need to exercise our physical body to keep fit, so it is the same spiritually. We cannot afford to get spiritually lazy or obese because we are not putting in the time to grow in God. Unlike physical exercise the benefits are Christ-like living, spiritual growth and closeness to Jesus. It is like any relationship; you need to make an effort otherwise the relationship will grow distant and stagnant. Yet again, unlike physical exercise, spiritual discipline is not burdensome, it is not hard work and it is not tiring. Yes it requires effort to make time to spend with your Creator, but the more time spent with Jesus, the more refreshed, invigorated and more prepared we are for life. Moreover, it is Jesus’ grace that allows us to have a relationship with Him in the first place.

By spending more time with God, in both conversation (that includes letting Him talk to us too) and through His word, the characteristics that Peter mentions in today’s verse will naturally become apparent in our lives as evidence of daily spiritual discipline and exercise, all to bring glory to the Father. Moreover, spending time with God and exercising spiritually, is our way to respond to God, which leads to Christ-like living. Just like a tree or a plant, the more you water it, care for it, and nurture it, the more it will grow into a beautiful tree/plant bearing good fruit. It you neglect it, it will wither away and die. Let us pursue Jesus with an insatiable thirst. Let us discipline our spiritual lives by spending time with our Lord and Saviour. Spending time with Jesus is time well spent.

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More Of Nothing

16thFebruary

“Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples, went to the leading priests to arrange to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted when they heard he had come, and they promised to give him money. So he began to look for an opportunity to betray Jesus… when Judas, who had betrayed Him, realised that Jesus had been condemned to die, he was filled with remorse.”

Mark 14:10-11, Matthew 27:3a

Sin sometimes seems so attractive. It lures us into it’s grasp, giving a false sense of satisfaction, then once you have fallen for it’s trap, it tosses you back out, leaving you completely empty, guilty and with a sense of remorse. Yet we allow ourselves to go again, to sin again and to once again fall into the trap of ‘nothingness’. Sin literally leaves us wanting more of nothing. When we try to compare the pleasures of sin with God’s goodness, it becomes completely un-comparable.

Throughout the Bible, there are countless stories of wonderful men and women of God, caught by the false entrapment of sin’s lures, yet all it did was leave them empty and full of remorse. We think of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit, David and his adulterous affair with Bathsheba and probably the most shocking of all, Judas’ betrayal of our Lord Jesus. In fact Judas’ remorse was so great, after He betrayed Jesus, that he ended up hanging himself due to his guilt and shame.

Friends, let us be united to stand firm against the enemy’s cheap tricks. Sin only offers emptiness. In fact sin only offers us ‘nothingness’. Let us rejoice that in Jesus, we have the fullness of life, the best of all that God has, love, joy and acceptance. We are filled daily with grace when we do fall. Furthermore, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to live in the opposite spirit of sin, to withstand temptation and live in all God has for us.

‘…And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil’

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Because Of Jesus….

15thFebruary

“He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins……Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”

Ephesians 1:7, Hebrews 7:25

Did you know that it is only because of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit in glorifying the Son through our lives, that we can enter into God’s presence and live for Him in all we do. We do not enter out of merit but out of surrender; Surrender to Jesus’ finished work on the cross. We surrender to the fact that we are forgiven and made clean before the Father, and have accepted that Jesus has purchased our freedom with His own blood. Moreover, it is Jesus who intercedes for us saying, ‘Don’t punish them, I paid the price.’

Bryan Chapell, in his book called “Praying Backwards” talks of how important it is to pray in Jesus’ Name as the foundation of your prayer, not the conclusion of it, because it is in Jesus’ Name, that the Father is glorified in our petitions and in Jesus’ Name that we can even approach God’s throne. He suggests that this, is in essence why and how we can pray in Jesus’ Name….

“Lord, there is not enough goodness in my best works to warrant Your listening to me or answering my prayer. But, Lord, I am not appealing to You on the basis of my merit. I ask You to listen to me as one who trusts in the blood of Jesus to wash away my sin. By the work of Your Holy Spirit, I am united to Jesus, and it is only on the basis of His righteousness that I can approach Your holy throne in this prayer.”1

Chapell’s prayer is an acknowledgement, that as forgiven sons and daughters of Almighty God, we can enter into God’s presence, not based on merit, but as people who have accepted the finished work of the cross. Today, when you pray in Jesus’ Name, know that He is listening, sitting next to the Father and interceding on your behalf.

1Praying Backwards: Transform you prayer life by beginning in Jesus’ Name, Bryan Chapell

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What The Lord Desires

13th-14th February

Weekend Edition

“What can we bring to the Lord? Should we bring Him burnt offerings? Should we bow down before God Most High with offerings of yearling calves? . . . . No, O people, The Lord has told you what is good, and that is what He requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Micah 6:6,8

What does God really want from you? Does He want your religious acts of worship that mean nothing more than to check your daily list of duties off, so that you can feel good about your ‘Christian’ life? Or does He want you to give up everything you enjoy and love, and be filled with sorrow and sadness at your un-worthiness before His Holy throne? The answer, an emphatic NO! What God wants is YOU… He wants to have a relationship with YOU. So much so, that He did give His only Son, Jesus Christ, to make that possible when Jesus died for our sins (see Micah 6:7b).

Religious acts of worship and sacrifices do nothing more than to appease our man made list of rules and regulations. When Jesus was alive on this earth, He fought tirelessly to correct the Pharisees’ way of thinking, to change their thinking from doing to done, from religion to relationship. Yet we too so easily fall into the same trap. Our intentions may be right, yet we feel by doing, we can earn God’s favour and love, just like the Israelites in Micah’s time and the Pharisees in Jesus’ time. Yet we don’t have to do things for God’s love. He already loves us. We just need to accept it. It is from that knowledge that we can walk in humility before God in JOY; we love what God loves, which is mercy and justice, and we do what is right, not out of duty but out of relationship.

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The Fool Says There Is No God

12th February

“Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”.”

Psalm 14:1a

The Psalms are known for their beautiful poetic writings expressing how wonderful and faithful God is, written mostly by a man who knew first hand how great the God he served was. Yet there are plenty of Psalms that are ‘hard to read’ for their strong and explicit vocabulary and content. Today’s short verse is just one of them.

Imagine you have just discovered the greatest treasure in the world. You are so excited, that you want to share it with everyone you meet right? And you would probably think that those who reject that truth or who simply don’t believe are crazy? Much is the same with David’s statement in today’s verse. He knew that people needed a Saviour. Yet instead of looking to the Lord, the One true God, people put their trust in bows and arrows, in gods unknown and in human power and might. Yet all those things will fail, and David knew that. He knew that hope was only found in God Almighty, who created the Heavens and the earth and all that is in it. David’s treasure was in knowing that God was real and with him always. To others it was foolishness.

Much is the same today. We have great news. God is real. Look around you and see the wonders of creation. Look closer at your own body, how intricately God has made you. How much detail and care He has taken to design the physical body. God is the creator of the world and the sustainer of it. He holds the planets in His hands and controls the universe with the power of His words. Moreover, that same God sent His Son, Jesus Christ to earth in the form of a human, to suffer at the hands of His own creation, to restore us to our true identity and restore a right relationship between God and man. That is our treasure. Yet for those who don’t believe, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:18a ‘the message of the cross is foolish.’

We have such wonderful good news. The creator of the world loves you. He laid down His life and rose again for you. He can set you free from sins, burdens, pains and sorrows. All you need to do is accept it. That is Great news. Don’t be a fool and reject it.