Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?
Matthew 6:26
For God so loved the world (You) that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16
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1. You must worship no other gods, for the LORD, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you. (Exodus 34:14 NLT)
2. There are seven things that the Lord hates and cannot tolerate: A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that kill innocent people, a mind that thinks up wicked plans, feet that hurry off to do evil, a witness who tells one lie after another, and someone who stirs up trouble among friends. (Proverbs 6:16-19 GNT)
3. O GOD, You have rejected us and cast us off, broken down [our defenses], and scattered us; You have been angry–O restore us and turn Yourself to us again! (Psalm 60:1 AMP)
4. But God was merciful to his people. He forgave their sin and did not destroy them. Many times he held back his anger and restrained his fury. He remembered that they were only mortal beings, like a wind that blows by and is gone. How often they rebelled against him in the desert; how many times they made him sad! (Psalm 78:38-40 GNT)
5. Don’t be afraid. Dear Zion, don’t despair. Your GOD is present among you, a strong Warrior there to save you. Happy to have you back, he’ll calm you with his love and delight you with his songs. (Zephaniah 3:16-17 MSG)
6. He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. (Isaiah 53:3 NLT)
7. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God [do not offend or vex or sadden Him], by Whom you were sealed (marked, branded as God’s own, secured) for the day of redemption (of final deliverance through Christ from evil and the consequences of sin). (Ephesians 4:30 AMP)
8. When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36 NLT)
9. I will find joy doing good for them and will faithfully and wholeheartedly replant them in this land. (Jeremiah 32:41 NLT)
10. For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life. (John 3:16 GNT)
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I once had a boss whose favorite question to ask in an interview was, “Tell me a time when you took a risk. Did it pay off or not?” I asked him about it one time and he said, “I don’t want people working for me who are afraid to take risks. I’d rather have someone on my team who has taken a risk and failed miserably than someone who was too scared to even take a risk in the first place. At least the person who took a risk learned something. The one who has never taken a risk will never change his results because he’s too scared to try something new.”
He helped me to understand that taking risks is a Godly trait. Each time you or I step out in faith, it’s a risk. Will God step out and move on my behalf or will I fall on my face? We don’t know, but God asks us to do it anyway. I’ve seen God ask someone to take a huge risk and then allow them to fail. It sounds weird at first, but God needed them in a place of failure to be able to grow them beyond what the risk could have ever offered. His reward for their risk was delayed.
When you risk it all for God’s sake, you put yourself in a place that is totally dependent on God. Your risk speaks volumes to God. It says, “I’m not satisfied with what I’m producing for you. I want to do more for the Kingdom and I’m willing to risk what I have for a chance to offer you more.” It’s in those moments that your faith grows and produces more than it ever has. If you fall on your face, you let God know you’re not going to play it safe. If He catches you, the rewards are eternal.
There’s a difference in taking a risk and making a calculated move. If you’ve got a 90% chance of success, that’s not really much of a risk. It’s a calculated decision made to look like faith. God is looking for those who are willing to go all in and risk it all for His Kingdom. In Matthew 25, he gave three different people three different amounts of talents. To the one who risked nothing because he was afraid, the master said, “That’s a terrible way to live! It’s criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least? (MSG)”
Later on He said, “Get rid of this play-it-safe who won’t go out on a limb. (MSG)” God gets angry when we live life with the goal of arriving in Heaven safely with no bumps or bruises. He put the desire for risk in each one of us. We can either take a risk or allow fear to cause us to play it safe. If you know the parable I’m referring to, the ones who risked it all stayed with the master, but the one who risked nothing was cast into darkness. God calls us to live by faith, not by sight. What risks have you taken for His sake? What is He asking you to risk right now?
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The world has always tried to get the Church to adopt its culture. It wants us to give up or back down from what we believe so we can fit in better. It wants us to accept what it says over what God says. It wants us to question, “Did God really mean it that way?” Satan tried it in the Garden of Eden. He asked Eve, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” He then challenged what God said and got her to believe the lie. Since the beginning, we have been tempted to wonder if what God said is really what he meant.
I’m always saddened to see how many believers fall for this temptation. It doesn’t matter what the sin is, the world would have us question what God calls sin in exchange for acceptance in its culture. It appeals to our deep seated human need to feel accepted, but it challenges our spiritual need to be set apart. In Romans 12:2, Paul challenges us as believers by saying, “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. (MSG)” God has never asked His people to fit in.
Daniel faced the same thing in the Old Testament. Israel had been overtaken by the Babylonians and King Nebuchadnezzar ordered the head of his palace staff to find the best and brightest prospects for leadership. In Daniel 1:4 he said, “Indoctrinate them in the Babylonian language and the lore of magic and fortune telling.” He wanted to take Israel’s future leaders and indoctrinate them so he could change the culture that God had given them. Of all the young men he did this to, we only know of four who refused to accept the Babylonian culture.
Verse 8 says, “But Daniel determined that he would not defile himself.” He refused to fit into the culture that was being forced on him because he understood God’s Word superseded culture. He knew God’s Word does not change with the times or the culture. He and his three friends stood firm in their beliefs. Because of that, he was thrown into a den of lions and the other three were thrown into a fiery furnace. God rewarded their faith by keeping them alive in those situations in an effort to proclaim that He rewards those who do not bow to social pressures.
Every day you and I are forced with the same choice as they were. We can choose to bow to the will of the world or we can choose to stand for God’s Word. We can believe the lie that God didn’t really mean what He said all those years ago or we can trust that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We have been called to be set apart, not to fit in. We have been given the responsibility to be light in a dark world. We cannot change what God said in order to fit in. When we do, our light goes out and we fit into the darkness without thinking. We must shine our lights and lead the world to the cross where salvation lies. We cannot give in.
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12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. 13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.
Philippians 3:12-13
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1. Do good, O Lord, to those who are good, and to those who are right [with You and all people] in their hearts. (Psalm 125:4 AMP)
2. Remember, the sins of some people are obvious, leading them to certain judgment. But there are others whose sins will not be revealed until later. In the same way, the good deeds of some people are obvious. And the good deeds done in secret will someday come to light. (1 Timothy 5:24-25 NLT)
3. Humans are satisfied with whatever looks good; GOD probes for what is good. (Proverbs 16:2 MSG)
4. Do not be fooled. “Bad companions ruin good character.” (1 Corinthians 15:33 GNT)
5. Turn your back on evil, work for the good and don’t quit. GOD loves this kind of thing, never turns away from his friends. Live this way and you’ve got it made, but bad eggs will be tossed out. The good get planted on good land and put down healthy roots. (Psalm 37:27-28 MSG)
6. Do not let evil defeat you; instead, conquer evil with good. (Romans 12:21 GNT)
7. As for the rest of you, dear brothers and sisters, never get tired of doing good. (2 Thessalonians 3:13 NLT)
8. Beloved, do not imitate evil, but imitate good. He who does good is of God; he who does evil has not seen (discerned or experienced) God [has enjoyed no vision of Him and does not know Him at all]. (3 John 1:11 AMP)
9. Find a good spouse, you find a good life— and even more: the favor of GOD! (Proverbs 18:22 MSG)
10. So—join the company of good men and women, keep your feet on the tried-and-true paths. It’s the men who walk straight who will settle this land, the women with integrity who will last here. The corrupt will lose their lives; the dishonest will be gone for good. (Proverbs 2:20-22 MSG)
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How long has it been since you looked at the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5? To me, they’re a measuring stick of where I am in my growth. I have to ask myself, “Is my life producing these fruits?” Paul told us that a life controlled by God’s Spirit would produce those fruits. If I’m not producing them, then I’m not being controlled by God. In that same chapter, he also described the fruits of the flesh. These describe what a life that is not controlled by the Spirit looks like. It’s important to look in the mirror often to see what your spiritual life looks like.
Each morning as I get ready for the day, I stop and look in the mirror to fix my hair and to make sure I look presentable before going out in public. The same thing should happen for us as believers. We should look at ourselves in the mirror of God’s Word to see what we look like. If we don’t like what we see, we need to make adjustments just like we would to our physical appearance. If you had bags under your eyes you could either cover them with make up (this doesn’t solve the problem) or get more rest.
Too many times when we look in our spiritual mirror and see something that doesn’t look right in our lives, we try to cover it up. We want to appear to others as having it together when really the problem is one of the heart. David tried to cover up his sin with Bathsheba. He didn’t want others to know he had committed adultery, so he brought her husband home from the war. When he wouldn’t sleep with his wife, David sent him back to be killed so he could marry her and make it look like they got pregnant on their wedding night. He went to a lot of trouble trying to cover up the physical actions of a spiritual problem.
David had quit being led by the Spirit and was being led by his fleshly desires. He reaped the fruit of that choice. Since he wouldn’t look I hope a spiritual mirror, the prophet of God came and held it up. When he did, David recognized the spiritual problem. Instead of continuing to try to cover it, he dealt with the spiritual problem. In Psalm 51:10 he prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. (NLT)” He realized he needed s change of heart to change his ways.
We are not so different from David. We have fruit we are not proud of and we try to cover it up. You may not have a prophet come knock on your door to call you out like he did, but the problem still has to be dealt with. If you look at the fruit in your life and know you need to change, don’t try to cover the problem up. Deal with it at the source. Pray like David did that God would give you a clean heart, that He would put a right spirit in you and that you would live a life that is led by His Spirit. When you do that, you will produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.
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Recently I attended the commencement ceremonies for my alma matter and a friend of mine had been asked to be the keynote speaker. He talked to them about how the Bible says they should dress for success in life. In one of his points, he made the comment, “Be led by obedience to God, not by opportunity.” I stopped and wondered how many times I had confused opportunity with the will of God. It’s natural to think when a great opportunity presents itself that it’s from God. More often than not, those times are tests of our faith to see if we are going to be obedient to what God wants or to do what’s expedient for ourselves.
If you know anything about the story of David in the Bible, you know that after he was anointed King, Saul began to hunt him down to kill him in order to preserve his royal lineage. In I Samuel 24, Saul was hunting David and went into a cave to relieve himself. What he didn’t know was that David and his men were hiding in that very cave. The opportunity presented itself to David to be able to take Saul’s life and assume the throne. It appeared that God had given him the opportunity to fulfill the promise He had made to him.
David’s men saw it as such and spoke to him about it in verse 4. They said, “Now’s your opportunity! Today the Lord is telling you, ‘I will certainly put your enemy into your power, to do as you wish.” His men were led by opportunity instead of obedience and they gave him bad advice. I’m sure they were tired of living in caves and were ready to live in palaces. They saw this as their opportunity to get out of poverty. They knew David had been anointed the next King so this must have been God’s way of making it happen.
David took their suggestion that this was God’s will instead of seeking it out himself. He made a split decision that he regretted. He snuck up next to Saul and couldn’t kill him. Instead, he cut off a piece of his robe. He heard the quiet voice of God in his spirit over the overwhelming voices of his advisors. He chose to obey God instead by not killing him. His conscious bothered him for even cutting Saul’s robe. In verse 6 he said, “I shouldn’t attack the Lords anointed one, for the Lord himself has chosen him.” He knew the scriptures had said, “Don’t touch God’s anointed.”
The Word of God should overrule any opportunity that presents itself. God will not ask you to do something that is contrary to the Bible. He may allow opportunities to arise in your life, but He will not ask you to chose them over obedience to what He’s already said. It takes wisdom, patience and courage to do what God says even if opportunities present themselves as God’s will for you. Always take time to seek out God’s voice over man’s when opportunity knocks. Don’t just assume it is God giving you what you want. Be led by obedience not by opportunity.
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I was nominated by Lilkaraphael @ bisforblessed.com
I was nominated for this award by Mike Stephens at mikeforchrist.com
Devotions by Chris Hendrix 
Your Words Matter
When I was the general manager of a store, I had to handle upset customers almost every day. I learned that my response to their anger could either diffuse the situation or escalate it. Many times I said the wrong thing or used the wrong tone and it was like pouring gas on a fire. One person got so upset with me that they came behind the counter, out their finger in my face and said, “You better call 9-1-1, you’re going to need them!” It was a scary moment, but as I looked back, my response is what triggered that emotion in them.
Proverbs 15:1 says, “A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare. (NLT)” How we respond to others who are upset matters. Since the inventions of email, text messaging and social media, we have begun to say things to other people we never would have 15 years ago. We feel emboldened to say whatever comes to mind because we aren’t right in front of that person and in many cases we barely know them if at all. We escalate situations by our unfiltered, typed words instead of being worried if our conversation is leading them toward the cross or away from it.
I cringe as I read Christian’s comments on social media regarding the things of the world. I see escalated conversations by those who write with their emotions instead of having eternity in mind. Colossians 4:5-6 tells us, “Live wisely among those who are unbelievers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone. (NLT)” The word gracious here means pleasant and winsome. We are to win others to the cross with our words not push them away.
Your words matter whether spoken or written. You have the opportunity to deflect an anger from those in the world or to dump fire on their anger. The world will never agree with the message of the cross because it stands opposed to the human way of life. It has been under attack for over 2,000 years and will continue to be under attack until the Lord returns. Jesus should be our model of how to respond. When the Romans crucified Jesus, his response wasn’t to argue with them. It was to forgive them. His response to an angry crowd who were killing him was, “Father forgive them.” He won over one guard who killed Him by how He responded.
I keep that in mind any time there is a flare up on social media between the world and the Church. If I don’t have the right response, I keep my comments to myself. Proverbs 17:28 says, “Even a fool is considered wise when he keeps his mouth shut.” If what I have to say doesn’t lead someone to the cross and instead pushes them away from it, I’d rather not say anything. We are to live wisely in a world of unbelievers. Our conversation should lead them to salvation. People are watching what you post and how you live. Are your words leading others to the cross or away from it? Your words matter.
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