devotions

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The Lord Is With YOU

14th October

“Tomorrow, march out against them. . . . . But you will not even need to fight. Take your positions; then stand still and watch the Lord’s victory. He is with you, O people of Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid or discouraged. Go out against them tomorrow, for the Lord is with you!”

2 Chronicles 20:16a, 17

The three most common words heard among Christians in times of crisis are: “Lord, do something!” It is totally against our nature as human beings to stand still and do nothing when we face perplexing trials. In fact, waiting patiently for God to act is probably the most difficult thing about the Christian walk. Even devoted believers panic when the Lord doesn’t move according to their timetable. We constantly give God deadlines and time limits. We cry, “Lord, when are you going to do something about this? How long will it take? If you don’t act now, it will be too late!” But God is never too late. He always acts – and not according to our schedule, but His.1

Yet again God proved that victory is in Him and in His time when He again protected the Nation of Israel from their foes. With enemies quickly approaching King Jehoshaphat and the Israelites, the only thing the helpless King could do was to cry out to God to once again save His people. “We do not know what to do but we are looking to You for help” (Verse 12b). Yet again God showed how much He loved His people but giving them victory over their enemies without the Israelites even having to fight. He proved that in His time, in His way and His order, He will give His people victory; All they needed to do was to stand still and see God’s victory.

Friends that is the God we serve. Victory is already won in Him. All we need to do is receive it, walk in it and live it out in our lives. Yet above all we must remember that God always acts in His time, because He is always fully in control. Our role is to be patient in prayer, steadfast in our faith and bold in our trust. Watch and see God’s victory!

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Just Stay Calm, Watch And See

13th October

“But Moses told the people, “Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. The Lord Himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.”

Exodus 14:13-14

God lovingly and graciously saved the Israelites from the hand of the Egyptians in one of the most amazing and faith building miracles in the whole of the Bible. God miraculously parted the Red Sea and allowed more than 1,000,000 Israelites to walk through safely and un-harmed. Doesn’t that just blow your mind? A few moments before they were moaning, complaining and full of despair. But God, yet again, showed how much He loved His chosen people and spared their lives. This wonderful miracle is remembered both in the writings in the Bible, but also across the whole world more than 2000 years later.

Yet something that stands out above all is Moses’ encouraging words to the Israelites; Be calm, stand still and watch the Lord rescue you. What powerful words of faith and complete and utter trust in God Almighty. Did God deliver? Was Moses’ trust in the right place? Absolutely, 100%. Moses’ words where confirmed when the people of Israel just stood and watched God part the seas to make a safe path for them.

Today, whatever you are faced with, just stand still, be calm and watch God part your Red Sea. Put your trust wholly in God and watch Him pull through. He is gracious, kind and powerful and He is fighting for YOU!!!!

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The Lord Has Got Your Back

12th October

“Then the angel of God, who had been leading the people of Israel, moved to the rear of the camp. The pillar of cloud also moved from the front and stood behind them.”

Exodus 14:19

The Israelites were trapped. Before them stood the great Red Sea and behind them and almost overtaking them was the Egyptian army led by Pharaoh himself. There was no way out. Panic set in and so did the ‘why’ questions. “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Weren’t there enough graves for us in Egypt? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt?” (v11).

Let’s just stop there for a moment. The Israelites had witnessed a marvellous miracle when they were allowed to walk out, un-challenged, from Egyptian slavery. They had witnessed God demonstrate His power through the Ten Plagues. And now, when faced with another hurdle (or better still, another opportunity to trust God), they crumbled in fear, complaint and desperation. Yet before we harshly judge the Israelites, aren’t we like that too? When faced with impossible situations, we too can crumble and forget all the times that God has been there for us in the past. So what happened?

Well, yet again God showed His power and might and stood behind the camp of Israel to protect them from an Egyptian onslaught. Today’s key verse tells us, that both the angel of the Lord and the pillar of cloud, moved from the front of the camp to the back of the camp to protect the Israelites. What does this tell us about God? Well, firstly, that He is incredibly merciful and powerful, and secondly, He has always got our back. Just as with the Israelites, in their time of need, He never left them, and neither does He leave us. God had their back covered, just as He has ours covered. God demonstrated to the Israelites that even in their most desperate time of need, He was behind them, protecting them and sheltering them from danger. Today, be encouraged, that whatever you face, God has got your back!!

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The Lord Is Always With Me

11th October

“I know the Lord is always with me. I will not be shaken, for He is right beside me. No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice. My body rests in safety.”

Psalm 16:8-9

David knew that wherever he was, God was always with him. God never left him. This truth also led David to write the wonderful passage of Psalm 23, ‘Even though I walk through the valleys and in the shadows of death, You never leave me.’ David knew that whatever he faced, God was walking beside him. If you too knew that God was always with you in your life, would that change the outlook of how you see the problems you are faced with? Would it change the way you see yourself? David’s statement of faith was something that God Himself promised. God spoke through Moses to encourage Joshua with these words, ‘He will never leave you or forsake you’, and with the same words God also made a promise to the people of Israel and to us too. When God promises something, it is for eternity and never changes.

Today as you go about your day, know that God is with you, He is ‘right beside’ you. Let your heart be glad and rejoice in the Lord. God is with you. He is walking with you. He is your safety, your peace, and He is your God. Do not fear, He is with you.

 

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Give Without Expecting A Return

10th October

“Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full – pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.”

Luke 6:38

True generosity gives without expecting a return. In fact, in the previous verses, Jesus says the following, ‘ Love your enemies. Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid‘. The Kingdom principle is to give to others without expecting to receive back. However, there is good news. Jesus promised that when we do give, our Heavenly Father who sees all, will bless us and in return, what we give, will be given back to us, even more than we gave in the first place. Yet, what we receive in return should never be the motivation of our giving. There is no formula. We give, because all we have is God’s anyway. We give from God’s storehouse, not our own. We give back to Him, what He has already given to us. It is by the grace of God that He blesses us when we give.

Moreover, when we give, especially to those who we feel might not deserve our gifts, we replicate the actions of the our Heavenly Father, ‘…you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for He is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked’ (v35). Our Heavenly Father is compassionate, and likewise, we are commanded to be the same. Let us not withhold the blessings we have freely and generously received. May we freely give our time, our love, our money and our compassion.

We love because we have first been love by God. We give because we first have received from God.

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Something Out Of Nothing:

The ImPossible Miracle

8th-9th October

Weekend Edition

“Ever since the world began, no one has been able to open the eyes of someone born blind. If this Man were not from God, He couldn’t have done it.”

John 9:32-33

Only our God can defy the laws of physics and make something from nothing. Think about the story of creation. There was nothing but an empty void and God created this world. There were no animals and God created them. No plants or trees yet God created them. He is our creator. In today’s story we read of a man Jesus healed that was blind from birth. Some commentators go as far to say that this man was actually born without eye balls (although not specifically stated in the text). Yet whatever the situation was, this man could not see, he was blind from birth. Yet as we have mentioned before, nothing is too big for God. Nothing is impossible for God. Sure enough Jesus healed the man born blind and restored his sight. What is interesting is that in Jesus, we see the fullness of God and the very characteristics of a Creator God. Jesus didn’t just heal the man, He gave new eyes. He gave him the ability to see.

Today God also continues to create new things. We were once spiritually blind but have had our sight healed by the power of God’s salvation giving grace. We too have had new eyes created to see things with God’s perspective and how God see things. Let us rejoice that we serve a God who doesn’t just heal broken things but creates new things too….! We are living witness’ as new creations.

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Raising The Dead:

 

The ImPossible Miracle

7th October

“When the Lord saw her, His heart overflowed with compassion. “Don’t cry!” He said. Then He walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearers stopped. “Young man,” He said, “I tell you, get up.” Then the dead boy sat up and began to talk! And Jesus gave him back to his mother.”

Luke 7:13-15

There is nothing that is too big for our God. As well as healing Lazarus from the dead, as we discussed a few weeks ago, Jesus also healed this widow’s only son by raising him from the dead. What is impossible with man is possible with God. Of course the healing of the widow’s son is an absolutely incredible story, yet Jesus’ reasoning for healing him is also worth noting. Luke tells us in verse 13, that it was because of Jesus’ compassion for the widow that He healed her son. Maybe Jesus could relate to being an ‘Only Son’, or maybe it was because this woman had already lost a husband and now her only son? Yet whatever it was, it moved Jesus to heal the boy and raise him from the dead.

Jesus shows us that miracles are not just reserved for special ‘miracle’ meetings or ‘prayer nights’ although these can be effective, they were part of Jesus’ everyday life and so should be in our lives too. We too can have overwhelming compassion for people and ask Jesus for healing in their lives; whether that be physical, spiritual or mental, we can have the same compassion for people as Jesus did. In fact, maybe that is something we should pray for in our own lives; to have the same compassion Jesus had for people and act on it in the same way Jesus did, knowing that nothing is impossible for our God!

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The Parting Of The Red Sea:

6th October

The ImPossible Miracle

“Then Moses raised his hand over the sea, and the Lord opened up a path through the water with a strong east wind. The wind blew all that night, turning the seabed into dry land. So the people of Israel walked through the middle of the sea on dry ground, with walls of water on each side!”

Exodus 14:21-22

Be honest with yourself, when you read the above verse, did it fill you with wonder and praise or did you just read it as a familiar Biblical story? The truth is, we can have that tendency, to take for granted the wondrous miracles of the Bible that changed history forever. This is why the ‘Passover’ festival is celebrated every year by the Jewish people. It is to remind them of how God freed them from slavery from the Egyptians and liberated them as a free nation, when they walked through the Red Sea and into the promised land God had given them.

Throughout the Bible we read of hundreds of miracles, both in the Old and New Testament. Yet we should not let the familiarity of those stories, take away the significance of them, as both evidence of who our God is and what they meant in their original context. If we constantly remind ourselves that God parted the Red Sea for the Israelites, then when we are faced with a ‘Red Sea’ of our own, we will be assured that God too, can part our seas and cause us to walk through unscathed. Our God is the God of miracles, both then, now and forever more. Do you trust Him?

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Salvation:

The ImPossible Miracle

5th October

“Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.””

Matthew 19:26

If you were asked, ‘what is the greatest miracle of all’, what would you say? Jesus’ calming of the storm, being raised from the dead, the Red Sea parting or perhaps a breakthrough in your own life? Yet the biggest miracle of all, one which the angels of Heaven rejoice in1, is the miracle of salvation; when a person is saved from their sins, confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Why? Because this is God’s work alone.

Jesus, in Matthew 19, is approached by a very rich man who asks what is needed to gain eternal life. Jesus begins to list some of the 10 commandments to the rich man to which his reply was, ‘I’ve obeyed all these commandments…. what else must I do?’ Jesus then said to to the rich man, ‘go and sell all your possessions and then follow Me’. The man left very despondent as he had many possessions and this teaching was hard to accept. See what Jesus was really saying, is not you have to obey this law and this law to get to Heaven. He was implying that salvation is a heart issue not a ‘works’ issue. The man clearly had his priorities in the wrong place. His assurance, his security and his ‘guarantee’ was not in God’s grace but in his wealth and in his ‘good works’.

Jesus clearly says that, actually, salvation is not something we can achieve by buying or earning our way into Heaven. It is a gift of God. Jesus adds that ‘it is impossible’ to even try to get into Heaven by doing good. The only way, is to surrender our hearts to Him; to make Him number One priority in our life and to accept His free gift of grace and mercy. With man gaining salvation is impossible but with God, everything is possible!!

1In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents. Luke 15:10

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Jesus, The Miracle Worker

4th October

“Then the leading priests and the Pharisees called the high council together. “What are we going to do?” they asked each other. “This Man certainly performs many miraculous signs. If we allow Him to go on like this this, soon everyone will believe in Him….””

John 11:47-48a

Did you know that the Pharisees knew that Jesus was a miracle worker? Just read today’s verse as one of the pieces of evidence that prove that statement. Jesus was no ordinary man, and they knew that. A few verses earlier we learn that Jesus miraculously raised Lazarus from the dead, showing His power over death and sin. Yet instead of rejoicing in such a wonderful miracle, the Pharisees plotted to have Jesus killed because they feared that if everyone started to believe in who Jesus said He was, the Roman army would feel threatened and would need to take action by overthrowing the nation of Israel. Yet what is particularly interesting is the Pharisees own confession that Jesus did perform miracles and that His miracles led people to a belief in Him as the Son of God.

Jesus’ miracles today have the same power. Firstly, they prove who Jesus said He was and is and secondly, they lead people to Him. The question or challenge we need to ask ourselves is the same question the Pharisees asked each other, “What are we going to do?” Do we join the bandwagon of doubters and proclaim that miracles are just coincidences or do we confess that indeed “This Man”, this Jesus we serve, does perform miracles and is who He says He is?!!