“I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” Acts 26:17-18 (NIV)

For out third devotion this week, we are looking at stanza three of the poem:

FAST from apparent darkness; FEAST on the reality of God’s light.

(Click for the entire poem and for Monday and Tuesday’s devotion.)

In this stanza, we have the contrast between darkness and light, which stands for evil and good or Satan and God. As I was meditating on darkness and light and therefore good and evil, the question popped into my head, “There’s such an obvious difference between good and evil. Why do so many people get drawn into darkness?” But then God sent the thought back to me, “Is it really so obvious to others? Remember this verse in 2 Corinthians 11:14, ‘And no wonder, for Satan masquerades as an angel of light.'”

I had forgotten about that verse. So many times Satan makes sin or darkness look like fun. I can remember many times when I was a child and wanted to do something that my parents would not let me do; I thought they were being overprotective and just didn’t want me to have fun, when in reality they could see something I could not: the inherent danger or darkness in that situation that they wanted to protect me from. As a child, I did not have the wisdom or discernment to see that; as older, wiser parents, they did. Satan often makes sin appealing, so that we will yield to it. Then the next time, it’s easier to say yes to a more egregious sin. Before we know it, we are on a slippery slide to doing all kinds of things we never thought we would do. We can see now how someone can commit an obvious sin, like murder. Probably in most cases, a person who commits a terrible crime has a long history of saying yes to lesser offenses, which lulled their conscience to sleep and set the scene for greater sins.

So in this Holy Week, we can see much darkness involved in Jesus’ crucifixion. The forces of evil thought they had won the battle, but, praise God, they underestimated the power of God, of light, to win over the powers of darkness. The Greek word for light is phos, and some of its meanings include truth and knowledge. God’s light is always the truth, the whole truth, and nothin’ but the truth, as the old saying goes. Another interesting meaning regarding light, is that we should be sharing this light and wisdom with others. Matthew 5:15 tells us that we should not light a candle and hide it under a bushel basket; no, we are to set it out so that it lights up the whole house and everyone can see it. If you doubt the power of little old you shining your light to others, try the experiment of going into a dark room of your home and lighting one candle to see the power that light has to dispel darkness!

Application: Is there a sin you have been allowing to continue in your life because you think it’s not a big deal? Let’s work on rooting out the sin the Holy Spirit is convicting us about before we reap a harvest of pain in our lives or someone else’s. Let’s also share the light we have with other people as God gives us opportunities in His perfect timing.

Prayer: Jesus, thank you for breaking the power of darkness by your death on the cross. May we never take that sacrifice lightly or become oblivious to the sin in our own hearts and lives. Give us the courage and discernment to know when to share that light with others. Amen.

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“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Matthew 7:1-2

“To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Colossians 1:28

For our first devotion for Holy Week, we are looking at the beginning stanza of this poem: See here for the complete poem.

FAST from judging others: FEAST on Christ dwelling in me.

This is a good reminder for me. It’s all to easy to judge my family, friends, and people I see as I go about my day. Peoples’ appearances, language, lifestyle choices, and behavior can all have me rendering a split-second judgment when I have only a minuscule piece of the total picture of their lives. Would I want to be judged and found wanting in the same way that it is so easy for me to do to others?

The Bible tells us in 1 Samuel 16:7 that man looks at the outside of the person, but God looks at the heart. That’s exactly what Jesus did. Jesus often seemed to seek out the people who had been judged and found wanting in Jewish society.

One such person was Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus would not have won any popularity contests in his village. As a chief tax collector, he was despised by his neighbors. Jesus created quite a stir when He invited Himself to Zacchaeus’ house for dinner. Luke 19:7 tells us that the town was buzzing about Jesus’ choice of a dinner companion.

Or how about the Samaritan woman Jesus met at the local well in John 4 at the sixth hour (about 12 p.m.) of the day? The very fact that the woman was getting her water at that time was unusual. Women were usually at the well when it was coolest outside–in the early morning and evening. She was there at a time when not many other people would be there. She was living an immoral lifestyle and was most likely rejected because of that, so she probably didn’t want to risk seeing the stares and hearing the whispers behind her back. Besides that fact, she was a Samaritan, and Jews would not associate with Samaritans.

Jesus knew that both this woman and Zacchaeus needed an encounter with forgiveness, and He freely offered it to both of them. Jesus didn’t reject a person based on their standing in the community; neither did He overlook the sin in a person’s life. He always dealt with it.

That’s a good distinction for us to make too. We need to address the difference between judging someone and speaking the truth in love. The one God may call us to do, the other He doesn’t. When we judge someone, we are making a decision that only God can make about a person–the personal state of their heart. That’s different than speaking the truth in love when a person that we know is living in a sinful situation. God may give us the go-ahead to address that sin with the person–especially a family member or close friend that we know well. Always approach that talk with prayer, a humble spirit, and in God’s timing. If God has laid it on your heart to have that difficult conversation about a person’s situation/behavior, that’s different than a quick pass of judgment that we can be prone to doing based on outward circumstances.

So, today, we want to put the focus on Christ dwelling in us. That means we take our eyes off of others and ourselves and put them on Jesus. The very fact that the Holy Spirit dwells in us (see John 16:12-15) is what makes Christianity different from all other religions. As Christ-followers, we have the amazing reality of Christ living in us as the Holy Sprit.We can change because we have God’s power at work in us. In John 16:12-15, Jesus introduces this cataclysmic coming change to his followers. The Holy Spirit guides us into all truth, teaches us, and changes us. Because of Him, we can lead an abundant life of serving the Lord.

Application: What is it in your life that would benefit from remembering you have “Christ in you, the hope of glory” in your life? What situation do you need a fresh dose of Christ’s transforming power in? Pray for a transformation of a situation, a heart, an attitude today.

Prayer: Lord, we pray that we would not take upon ourselves the job of judging others. Instead, may our focus and our eyes be on You. Fill us up and transform our lives to Your glory. Amen.

If you’d like to study more about judging and how that affects people, here’s a link to an Outcast Bible study Mary wrote dealing with this topic.

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Welcome to podcast #2 in our Walking In Truth series on the book of Colossians. Today Mary and I discuss Colossians 1:9-12. We’ll discover that God wants us to increase our relationship with Him, and that far from being alone, God  is very present with us in all our circumstances of life. We can count on Him to give us the grace and strength we need for each situation we are in and for every work He gives us to do.

Just click on the above arrow to listen. We’ve also included a listener guide for you to fill in as you listen to the podcast to help you glean the most information as possible from this teaching.

We pray you are blessed by this series. Feel free to leave your comments and questions below.

Here is the link to the page for the entire series. I will be updating the page with new recordings over the next few weeks. Walking In Truth

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Piles of books. Stacks of magazines. Untried recipes. Unfinished projects. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Truth be told, I have way more plans I want to accomplish and things I want to do then time to finish them all in. I often feel frustrated when I see around me the evidence of my yet-to-be completed projects.

Lately, well actually over the last year, I’ve felt the pull from God to get this under control, to learn how to hone my ability to truly focus on a task from start to finish. It’s not that I never complete anything. I’ve even hit a milestone this past year with one of my finished projects. It’s more that I’m not the best at planning and prioritizing. So, before I look at ways to improve this area of my life, I need to understand what throws me off track. Maybe this honest look will help you too.

Ways to Derail Your Projects

1. Not having a long-term plan. It seems to me that the people who get the most done are the ones who plan  ahead of time. They sit down with a calendar and plot out what each of their major projects will be for the entire year and roughly when they will work on each one. They then further break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
2. Not allowing enough time. I’m learning that most projects–whether they be writing books or reorganizing closets–take  longer than I think they will.
3. Not planning for the urgent. Emergencies and last-minute changes to my schedule happen more often than I realize. So that means I need to add even more time to point #2.
4. Procrastination. Perhaps a beautiful day is beckoning me outside, or someone calls with an invitation that’s hard to resist, and I put off my priority for the new thing that’s come along.
5. Being overwhelmed by the size of the project. Sometimes I just don’t know where to start, so I don’t.
6. Not having God’s perspective on a project. On the other hand, I also have a tendency to jump right in with an exciting idea before I’ve really hashed it out with God to see if this is something I should be pursuing.
7. Being overcommitted. Impulsively saying yes to too many things. This follows closely on the heels of #6.
8. Not taking my goals seriously. So often, I will stop what I’m doing to help someone else. This can actually be a good thing, but not when it becomes a regular occurrence. As my husband says, “Sometimes you have to learn how to say ‘no.'”

Does God Want Me to Be Productive?

You don’t have to read too far in the Bible to see the importance God placed on doing things in order. God created our world in an orderly fashion, and the universe functions in an orderly manner. Consider the following facts: *We know that every year we cyclically move through four seasons. *We can see an order to how animals live. *God gave Moses detailed directions on how to build the ark and finish the mammoth project of rounding up all the animals.*Look at all the precise detail that went into building the tabernacle. *In the book of 1 Corinthians, God makes it very clear that He wants our worship services to have a sense of order to them when He says in verse 40 “But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.” *The human body is a masterpiece of design.

It just makes sense that God wants us to have a semblance of order, balance, and thought in our daily lives too.

In the next blog post, I’m going to address ways to overcome some of the obstacles of finishing what we start. In the meantime, I’d like to hear your thoughts on what keeps you from being productive in your days. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks and pray on!

As I woke up the morning after the election, admittedly feeling despondent about the results, my Bible opened up to Psalm 133, and these were the words that greeted me:

 How good and pleasant it is

when brothers live together in unity!

It is like precious oil poured on the head,

running down on the beard, 

running down on Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of his robes.

It is as if the dew of Hermon

were falling on  Mount Zion.

For there the LORD bestows his blessing,

even life forevermore. NIV

One thing we are not right now in America, is unified. With just slightly more than half of our country voting one way, and the rest another, we are a fractious, quarreling, divisive group, who have re-elected a President who must somehow put all of us Humpty-Dumpty people back together again.

Whether you are happy or sad about the election results, a few thoughts stand out to me in the midst of it all.

1.  God is not calling us to capitulate on our values and beliefs. He is calling us to pray. I am even more convinced of the need for prayer in America. We can follow Nehemiah’s example of prayer in Nehemiah 1:1-9 as he confessed and prayed for forgiveness for Israel before he began his task of rebuilding the wall. We have many problems facing us and much rebuilding that needs to be done on our country’s “walls.” We are facing trillions of dollars in debt, a “fiscal cliff” in January, illegal immigration, new health care, attacks on our embassies, continuing job losses, and social issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, just to name a few things.  God reminds us in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that if we humble ourselves and pray and seek Him that He will hear us and heal our land. Let’s pray for God’s intervention in these areas.
2.  We can pray that our witness for Christ will shine brightly during these times. We need to each be growing our relationship with our Savior, being conformed to His likeness, and then praying for the boldness and the leading of the Holy Spirit to reach out to others as God opens up the opportunities. God’s plan does not necessarily include a comfy, safe life for each of us. We need to be courageous in our faith–as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.
3. Pray specifically for President Obama and Congress. As we intercede for godly wisdom, courage, bi-partisanship, biblical morals, honesty, protection, and God’s blessing on our nation, God can move to bring down the barriers that divide us. He is powerful and can do immeasurably more than we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).
4. Pray that God will raise up godly leaders for our nation. It’s not too early to begin praying for 2016!

Getting Practical

Let’s join together in a powerful prayer effort for our country. I’ve put together a few suggestions on ways to incorporate this.

Monthly themes

We can take a theme and pray it for an entire month.

• January–Debt, budget,
• February–Bi-partisanship
• March–Health care
• April–Jobs
• May–Biblical morals, revival, same-sex marriage
• June–Foreign policy
• July–Protection of life and the unborn
• August–Immigration
• September–Schools and teachers
• October–Religious freedom
• November–Godly leaders
• December–Military

Weekly Themes

If you prefer to pray for all of these every week, you could split them up the following way:

• Monday–Pray for debt, budget, and bi-partisanship
• Tuesday–Pray for health care and jobs
• Wednesday–Pray for biblical morals, revival, salvation, same-sex marriage and foreign policy
• Thursday–Pray for protection of life and the unborn and immigration
• Friday–Pray for schools and teachers and religious freedom
• Saturday–Pray for godly leaders and our military
• Sunday–Pray for President Obama

What are your feelings about praying for our nation? Please share any ways that you like to pray for America in the comments section.

Pray on!

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Fish and Loaves Faith

“Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barely loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?” John 6:8

Read John 6:1-15

Miracle Story

Of all the miracle stories in the Bible, this is one of my favorites–for many reasons. First of all, I love the fact that the lunch of five small barley loaves and two small fish belonged to a child.

Understand, the Bible leaves some of the details of this exchange to our imaginations, so I don’t know that this is exactly how the story unfolded, but I imagine it playing out in the following way:

The Bible tells us that Jesus asks Philip where they should go to buy bread for the five thousand people to eat. Philip replies that eight months of salary wouldn’t be nearly enough to feed the crowd of people.

Here is where things get interesting. I think that perhaps a young boy who is sitting close to where Jesus is teaching hears the conversation between Jesus and his friends and eagerly offers his lunch that his mom packed for him that morning. It would be just like a child not to see the futility of his meager lunch feeding such a crowd, but to instead faithfully hand over his bread and fish to Andrew to give to Jesus. And it would be just the typical adult thing to then bring it to Jesus—with the caveat of “but how far will they go among so many?”

Spark of Faith

Jesus was just waiting for that spark of faith. He takes the lunch, has everyone sit down, gives thanks for the fish and bread, and passes it around–and everyone took as much as they wanted (v. 11). After they had all eaten, Jesus wants nothing wasted, so the disciples gather up 12 baskets of leftovers!

Doesn’t it seem that we could learn a lot about faith from children? In most cases, their minds have not yet been clouded by the harsh realities of life. It’s not hard for them to believe in the improbable, or the impossible.Their eyes can easily see the thin space between the reality of this world and the unseen heavenlies where angels, miracles, and God all live. Jesus took the little boy’s lunch and multiplied it into a buffet for 5000.

That’s the kind of faith that Jesus is watching for, that we need to cultivate. A faith that causes us to unflinchingly step forward and offer up our bread and fish to Jesus to multiply beyond our wildest expectations.

When we feel that nudge of the Spirit to take our offering to God, we need to stamp out the adult voice that rises up with a “But, …” and just give it. Or just do it.

What does this look like in our lives?

• The nudge to give that $20 to a charity, even though it’s just a drop in the bucket of what’s needed.
• The nudge to teach a Bible class, even though you’re not a “real” teacher.
• The nudge to keep praying for your wayward child, even though you haven’t seen any change in three years.
• The nudge to start a Moms-In-Touch prayer group at your child’s school, even though you’ve never led anything in the past.

A vibrant faith requires that I present to God what I have. Jesus is waiting for people with a fish-and-loaves faith to take Him up on His promises so He can to equip us (2 Timothy 3:17) and set us loose in His kingdom. The results are up to Him.

What do you have to offer Him today? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Fish-and-Loaves Faith is the second post in our  faith series. Please leave a comment below on your thoughts, feelings, or experiences in growing your faith.

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