Tag Archives: Devotional

March 18, 2021 · 5:30 AM

Breaking New Ground

When you read the creation account in Genesis, it’s easy to think that God created everything with just His voice. “Let there be light. Let there be water. Let the land sprout with vegetation. Let the waters swarm with fish.” But in chapter two we find two things He made by hand. God formed man from the dust of the ground and He planted a garden where He then placed the man. I think it’s significant that out of all creation, He made these with His hands instead of with His voice. They were both made from the ground, but both had to be cultivated. Man needed the breath of God in him, and the garden needed Him to dig up soil so He could plant trees that bore good fruit.

If you’ve ever planted a garden, you know that the hard work begins with cultivating the soil. You have to break it up and churn it so that it is prepared for planting. Our lives are full of uncultivated soil that God wants to plant things in, but we must first be willing to till it. Many times we ask God for more, but we haven’t given Him the uncultivated parts of our lives. We tend to segregate our life into two parts: the part we let God into and the part we want to keep for ourselves. When the later part becomes unmanageable, we cry out to Him in desperation for help, but then promptly kick Him back out once the problem is under control. In reality, we should be seeking His blessings for every part of our lives and giving Him control of everything.

Hosea10:12 says, “Break up your uncultivated ground, For it is time to seek and search diligently for the LORD [and to long for His blessing]” (AMP). What parts of your life are uncultivated right now? If you’re wanting more of what God has in store for you, you’re going to have to clear away the weeds and break up the ground to prepare it for seeds of blessings. Seeds must have fertile soil to germinate in if they’re going to produce good fruit. God wants to have His fingerprints all over your life, but you’re the one who is going to have to give Him access. The Garden of Eden doesn’t just have to exist in Genesis. It can be cultivated in your life when you’re willing to break new ground.

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Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.

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March 17, 2021 · 5:57 AM

Breaking The Routine

I like routines. I’ve found that when life gets stressful, I revert back to simple routines to help me cope. I’ve also found that routines, like going to church, can simply become a habit more than anything else. You get up on Sunday, say hello to a few people, smile, sing a few songs, listen to the sermon, rate it in comparison to all the sermons I’ve heard, stand to pray, shake hands and walk out. Check off the christian box of weekly duty. Go back to life on Monday. Repeat next Sunday. When going to church becomes routine, our faith becomes powerless. There’s a difference between going to church and being the Church. God didn’t call us to routines, but He routinely calls us to live godly lives in the world, to love others and to show His kindness so that others may know Him.

I think that’s why Jesus consistently got upset with the Pharisees. Their salvation found in the routines of God rather than in the demonstration of His love. They cared more about doing the sacrifices just right than the hurting people all around the Temple. When Jesus flipped the script and made it about the people, they lost their mind. Their routines gave them power and authority over people creating pride. They felt better than everyone else because they were following the letter of the Law rather than the actual Law. God cares more about the hurting and the lost than He does for our church routines. Church is important, but Jesus didn’t die so we could go to church. He died to save the lost and gave us the commission of spreading that Good News to create more disciples.

Proverbs 21:3 says, “It pleases God more when we demonstrate godliness and justice than when we merely offer him a sacrifice” (TPT). God cares more about how we live and represent Him Monday through Saturday than our routine on Sunday. Going to church doesn’t demonstrate godliness necessarily. Living for Him and showing His love throughout our daily lives does. We shouldn’t forsake the assembling of the brethren (Hebrews 10:25), but we also shouldn’t neglect those who need justice and a reminder of God’s love. I believe it’s time we woke up from our routines, started living godly lives and demonstrating godliness every day. It’s tough to do, but we’ve been given His strength, His grace and His Spirit to help us. If being a Christian has become routine, pray to ask God help you to break that cycle and to lead you into the life He wants you to live.

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March 16, 2021 · 5:49 AM

Learning Through Pain

One of the mantras that I’ve heard for a while is, “Change before you have to.” I wasn’t always sure what that meant, but I’ve found out a few times in my life and wished I had. Many times the Holy Spirit has sounded the warning alarms in my life, and many of those times I’ve hit the snooze button. His warnings are letting us know that if we continue on the path we’re on, we’re headed for trouble. When I’ve disregarded them, I’ve fallen flat on my face and gone through some painful times as a result of my sin. Sometimes I’m so hard headed and want to do things my own way that the only way I’ll listen or make the necessary changes in my life are to go through a painful time so that next time I’ll listen. God is more concerned with our holiness than our comfort.

It’s hard to put some things in perspective as you read the Bible. In some books, you may cover hundreds of years of history. I keep thinking, “How did they mess up again so quickly? Why won’t they learn?” Yet, their track record is better than mine a lot of the times. In Deuteronomy 30:19 God said He sets before us life and death, blessings and cursing, and that the choice is ours. He wants us to choose life, but when we don’t, their are painful consequences to help us to turn back to Him and to remind us not to go down that path again. It works for a while, but our brains are bent toward trying to do things our way instead of His. Pain is often one of the best motivators for our brain, and it can condition it to not repeat mistakes.

God knows you and I aren’t perfect. He knows we’re going to mess up. Thankfully He doesn’t wipe His hands clean of us and give up. His grace is greater than our biggest mistakes and His offer of forgiveness is open to us. God will do whatever it takes to bring us back, even if it means pain, discomfort or embarrassment. Proverbs 20:30 says, “Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways” (GNT). He knows there are a lot of stubborn people like myself who need those painful reminders to come back home. The Prodigal Son lasted in his painful experience as long as he could before he finally decided to go back home. You and I have the same opportunity to return to a waiting Father who will run to us, love us and put the family robe and ring back on our finger if only we will return.

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March 15, 2021 · 5:34 AM

Explaining Your Faith

When I was a young kid, I remember learning to witness to someone using ABC. You were to tell someone, “All you need to do is Ask Jesus into your heart, Believe God raised Him from the dead and Confess your sins.” When I was in junior high, I learned the Romans Road. You’ll use verses in the book of Romans to walk someone through believing in Jesus (Romans 3:23, 6:23, 5:8, 10:13 and 10:9-10). In high school, we were given tracts and we’re taken to the local movie theater on Friday nights to hand them out. As an adult, we had an Evangelism Explosion class that taught us a method, and then we went door to door in the neighborhood around the church. While I love all these methods, the simplest form of witnessing was overlooked.

On the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit came down with power on a group of 120 people who had been praying for 10 days. There was a rushing, mighty wind that filled the room, fire appeared above their heads and people began praying in different languages. The ruckus created a crowd around their prayer meeting. People outside must have gotten loud because Peter stepped out and began to explain what was going on in them what happened to Jesus and then how to be saved from their sins. It was short and sweet and delivered with conviction. The Bible says that about 3,000 people heard his message and became Christians that day. I’ve never won 3,000 for Jesus, but I’ve found that the most effective at winning the lost is being able to explain who Jesus is and how He changed your life.

1 Peter 3:15 says, “And if anyone asks about the hope living within you, always be ready to explain your faith” (TPT). The thing that I had never really been taught was how to simply explain my faith. Those other methods taught me how to walk someone through accepting Jesus, but what we need is to learn how to give an answer for our faith and the reason for our hope in a chaotic world. There’s no formula for that. It’s simply explains your story of what Jesus did in your life and why you believe in Him. I want to encourage you today to spend some time thinking about that. Why do you believe in Jesus? What has He done in your life? How would you explain that to someone who asked you about it? Being able to explain those three answers will be your most effective witnessing tool.

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Refined By Fire

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March 11, 2021 · 5:30 AM

Busy Work

I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand busy work. I hate being given a task just for the sake of having something to do. I see it as a waste of time rather than a time filler. Nothing truly productive comes from it. I’d rather save my energy, brain power and time doing nothing rather than doing meaningless tasks. Whether it’s at work, home or wherever, we’ve all been given busy work since we were kids.

Sometimes doing things for God feels like busy work. I can’t see the purpose behind doing what He’s asked, so it feels like busy work. Whether it’s busy work or not, I obey because it’s God who is asking. Many times it’s simply to go somewhere, pick someone up, say something to someone, serve at an event or something like it. When I don’t get to see the impact or reason, it can feel like busy work to me.

I was discussing this with one of my pastor friends recently. Then I recalled a couple of events that I could barely remember doing, but the people I helped acted as if I had saved their life. The “busy work” on my part had a significant meaning to the person God was directing it toward. It was a great reminder that often what we do for God may feel like busy work at times to us, but to others, it’s life changing stuff.

Paul reminds us in I Corinthians 15:58, “Keep busy always in your work for the Lord, since you know that nothing you do in the Lord’s service is ever useless” (GNT). If you’re feeling like God has given you a lot of busy work lately, take heart. Nothing you do for Him is useless. It’s not a waste of your time, talents or resources. Often you’re changing lives without even knowing it. God doesn’t give out busy work to keep us occupied. He gives us work that we’re to stay busy at because eternity is at stake.

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Your Holy Pursuit

Today’s world has us concerned mainly with our output. We measure what’s important to us. That could be our bank account, our income, our work, our busyness, etc. We’ve learned to value ourselves by our output. In this pursuit of value, we’ve overlooked our inputs. When do you feel most mentally alert? When are you feeling your best physically? When do you feel closest to God? Those are tough questions that we rarely give any thought to, but if you will think about them, you’ll notice patterns and behaviors that increase those feelings. Output activities drain you mentally, physically and spiritually, but input activities increase your energy in those areas. As I mentioned, we’ve become so focused on outputs that many of us feel tired, mentally drained and far from God.

Jesus constantly took time to get alone with God in prayer. That was His method of input or recharging Himself. All day long He would be doing output things like preaching, teaching, healing and forgiving. To make sure He had enough in the tank each day, He woukd withdraws to secluded places. David found his spiritual inputs in God’s Word and in worship. If you’ve ever read Psalm 119, you know it’s all how much He loved God’s Word. For the leaders of the Early Church, prayer was their input. In Acts 6, they appointed seven men to oversee some of the administrative side of the church so that they could give their full attention to prayer and the Word of God. So I’ll ask you again, what are your spiritual inputs? Have you been too focused on your outputs?

In Paul’s last letter before he was martyred, he wrote final instructions to Timothy on how to conduct himself. Part of 2 Timothy 2:22 says, “Whatever builds up your faith and deepens your love must become your holy pursuit” (TPT). Your spiritual inputs must become your holy pursuit. They must take precedence in your life. While this world, and even the Church, is concerned with your outputs, God wants us to be focused on our inputs. An empty vessel will have nothing to pour out. An empty vessel simply goes through the motions. Yet, it’s the empty vessel who will say, “Lord, didn’t I do all these things (outputs) in your name?” And Jesus will reply, “Depart from me. I never knew you (you never took the time to know me (inputs)).” Outputs are important, but inputs need to be our holy pursuit.

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March 9, 2021 · 5:47 AM

Trust Comes First

When I’m talking with someone who is a newly appointed leader, I don’t want to overwhelm them with a bunch of information. There’s really one thing they need to focus on with their new team, and that is trust. Without trust, nothing else really matters. You can give inspiring speeches, set daring goals and create easy to follow plans, but no one will do much until they trust the leader. Think of a leader in your life that has produced the most growth in you. They had your trust I’m sure. You would follow them anywhere they led because of that trust. People will follow any leader to the extent that they trust them. If there’s little to no trust, there will be little to no progress. The way you build trust is to say what you’re going to do, and then do what you said you’d do.

We often think of people as leaders, but the Bible is full of people who followed God and did amazing things. For each of them, there was a period where they learned to trust Him. Moses learned to trust God at the burning bush. He gave all kinds of excuses as to why he couldn’t do what God was asking because there was little to no trust. God answered them all and showed him many signs to build trust so that he could lead the Israelites out of Egypt. In a similar fashion, God had to build trust with Gideon. He was timid and afraid of his enemies when God called the mighty warrior out of him. He built trust by placing dew on his door mat. So much trust was built that Gideon trimmed down an army of 32,000 to 300 men in order to fight 135,000. It didn’t make sense to him, but because of that trust, he was able to lead them to victory.

How much do you trust God? You may not have had a burning bush experience or dew on your mat, but God has been doing things al, your life to build trust with Him. Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord completely, and do not rely on your own opinions. With all your heart rely on him to guide you, and he will lead you in every decision you make” (TPT). Trusting God completely is what we’re called to do, but like Moses, we tend to make excuses as to why we can’t. Or sometimes we’re like Gideon where we don’t see our own potential the way He does. Either way, you can only follow God’s leading in your life to the extent that you trust Him. If you’re not experiencing the growth or movement that you want, check your trust level. God is ready to lead you into a greater life and relationship with Him, but you must trust Him with all your heart first.

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March 8, 2021 · 5:34 AM

Activating Your Gifts

You may have heard it said that hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard. There are people who have acquired a skill, and work hard at it, that out perform people who are gifted and talented naturally with the same skill. I’ve learned that if a person will exercise or use their natural, God given talents, they will exponentially increase in their effectiveness. A person who isn’t naturally gifted with something will have to work much harder to increase their effectiveness, but they can do it. In both cases, it’s a matter of using that skill often and learning how to be more effective with it. That’s where the hard work comes in. The problem is that many people become lazy with their God given talents and don’t work to improve what seems to come naturally.

When David was just a boy, he killed a lion and a bear. That’s God given bravery and talent. Most of us would run the other direction in those circumstances, but he went at them. He used what God put in him. I can also imagine him practice his slingshot skills while he watched the heard. It takes hard work to aim one of those, and he was clearly ready when the time came for him to face Goliath. That skill, combined with his God given talent of bravery and fighting is what caused people to rally behind him. He didn’t just sit on his talents, he used them often to expand the territory of Israel. It wasn’t until he stayed home from using his talents that he sinned with Bathsheba. Instead of going to the war, he stayed behind.

In Romans 12:6, Paul writes that God gives each of us gifts and talents. He then goes on to say, “So if God has given you the grace-gift of prophecy, activate your gift by using the proportion of faith you have to prophesy” (TPT). He says something similar in the next verses about other gifts. We activate them or increase their effectiveness when we use them. Too many times, we’re like the person who buried their talent (a term for money) and didn’t increase its potential because we didn’t do anything with it. Whatever gift God has given you, it’s time to dig it up and use it on a small scale. Remember, we have to be faithful in the little things first before he can put us in position to do greater things. Look around you today and find at least one instance where you can use your God given gifts and talents.

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