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Wednesday, March 13 2024
Donuts and conversations at the Bread Ministry today 10-12. 6-7:30 PM Dinner Huddle. All welcome to either or both! Come and see God at work in, through and around us!
Good Morning Patient, Peaceful, Plodding Along, Priests unto the Lord! AMEN! Which of these do you need to pray into, work on with some friends and garb a more firm hold of? All are a choice we are able and empowered to make in Christ. PTL! Are you anxious, frustrated, mired in the chaos all around you that you can do nothing about? Turn off the noise. Choose trust and joy. Refocus on what God has for you today. Patiently follow Him to His best. Are you dwelling in the past and what used to be's? Forget what lies behind. Build on the good things. Choose to press forward with Jesus to God's new things for you and us. God is on the move! Join Him! Are you running ahead or lagging behind God? Be still, know and yoke to Jesus as we plod along one step of time in faith to what's next while sowing as we go. We are all priests of God. We don't need a mediator because the High Priest, Jesus, lives in us and is interceding for us right now, even when we don't know what to pray. Call on His name and pronounce His name over you and your circumstances! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! There's just something about that name! We can be patient, peace-filled, plodding along with Jesus instruments of His! Choose peace and joy today! Start with meditating on and praying through our devos and blogs below! God really loves you and has great plans for you that come alive as you live and love more like Jesus! Amen! Start right now and partner with some friends!
Gotta fly! Back on normal time again and slept too late until 5:15 today. Need to be on the road already. Shalom! See you soon!
ODB:
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Trapped under two floors of collapsed rubble caused by an earthquake, five-year-old Jinan, a Syrian girl, called out to rescuers as she shielded her little brother from the debris surrounding them. “Get me out of here; I’ll do anything for you,” she called heartbreakingly. “I’ll be your servant.”
Cries of distress are found throughout the Psalms: “When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord” (118:5). While we may never experience the crushing weight of earthquake-collapsed buildings, we all recognize the suffocating fears from a challenging medical diagnosis, economic hardship, uncertainty about the future, or relational loss.
In those moments we may offer bargains to God for deliverance. But God doesn’t need to be persuaded to help. He promises to answer, and while it may not be relief from our situation, He’ll be with us and on our side. Nor do we need to fear any other peril—including death. We can say with the psalmist, “The Lord is with me; he is my helper. I look in triumph on my enemies” (v. 7).
We’re not promised as dramatic a rescue as Jinan and her brother experienced, but we can trust our faithful God, who brought the psalmist “into a spacious place” (v. 5). He knows our situation and He’ll never abandon us, even in death.
By Matt Lucas
REFLECT & PRAY
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How has God shown Himself faithful when you’re in distress? How have you recognized His presence during difficult times?
Heavenly Father, I call to You knowing that You hear me. Thank You for being faithful and loving.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Psalm 118 is one of six psalms (Psalms 113-118) called the “Egyptian Hallel.” These were used when observing Passover, the time when Jewish people remember God delivering them from slavery in Egypt. Psalm 118, the final psalm in this grouping, was used to conclude the Passover meal.
A thanksgiving psalm, it celebrates God’s hesed—a significant Hebrew word meaning “loyal, faithful, or steadfast love” (translated “love” in the niv). The psalm begins and ends with an invitation to praise God because “his love endures forever” (vv. 1, 29).
In the New Testament, nearing the hours before His suffering and death, Jesus would refer to Himself as the fulfillment of Psalm 118:22—“the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (see Matthew 21:42). His sacrifice would be the greatest demonstration of God’s faithful love.
Monica La Rose |
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UR: In God's Time
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. - Isaiah 43:18-19 (NIV)
One spring during my morning walks, I noticed my neighbor building a brick walkway from his porch to the street. Gradually over several weeks, I watched as he prepared the ground, poured gravel, and laid bricks. Then for some reason I could not perceive, I saw that he had ripped up half the path and piled the bricks in his yard. Eventually, the path was completed, and the mess was cleaned up. If I had not been paying attention, the finished path might have seemed to appear overnight. But I had witnessed the process: the planning, measuring, waiting, ripping up, and restarting.
The construction of my neighbor’s walkway illustrates that sometimes things don’t happen overnight — even when God is doing something new in our lives and inviting us to grow from it.
Isaiah 43:18-19 reminds me to keep my eyes open for how God is at work in my life.
Growth is a process — one step at a time. We can trust that God is always doing something new. As we become more aware of God’s presence, we can watch for the new things God is doing, give thanks, and proclaim God’s great work.
TODAY'S PRAYER
Dear God, we praise your name and proclaim the new and wondrous works you do in our lives. Amen.
Harvest Prayer blog:
March 13 - Peace, a Fruit of the Spirit
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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. (Galatians 5:22)
The fact that peace is a fruit of the Spirit is simply biblical truth. It can become for us a matter-of-fact, intellectual truth that doesn’t impact us until we see it up close and personal.
The week I was working on this devotional, I received a blog from a former teacher and friend, Dr. Eleanor Daniel regarding the work of peace in her life. I share it here. Two days after she wrote this blog, she went home to Jesus.
“Today’s post has particularly personal meeting. It’s my 77th birthday, celebrated with great joy with my four siblings and other family and friends. But even more significantly, when we began drafting this post a couple of weeks ago, we could talk about PEACE as a fruit of the spirit in academic terms. I have found that peace is a very personal matter right now. Life is undergoing a big change. I have been on dialysis for over three years and had anticipated being on it for some time more. That is not to be. In the progression of things it is important to stop dialysis. My final dialysis treatment was this past Friday. And I have been told I can anticipate a couple of weeks to live. When I returned from the hospital three days ago, I shared the fact that I am no longer on dialysis with one of my close friends in the nursing home. She said to me, “You look different. You look well! You’re at peace, aren’t you.” I AM AT PEACE—the peace that passes understanding. And now, “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you PEACE” (Numbers 6:24-26, emphasis added). —Dr. Eleanor Daniel
When peace as a fruit of the Spirit has been cultivated and is allowed to grow in our lives, it allows us to deal with absolutely anything that comes our way. Cultivating peace means standing against that which is not peace. When anxiety rears its head, we reject it rather than embrace it. The worries that often come our way are rejected. When we are plagued by “what if?” thoughts, we turn from that, recognizing it as unprofitable thinking. Most of all, we continually come before Jesus in prayer, asking him to grant us his peace.
The fruit of the Spirit that is peace is not about the absence of violence or merely a passive acceptance of things as they are. This peace is never about changing our outward circumstances to make life easy for us. It is always about walking close to the Prince of Peace and allowing him to deal with everything we are facing. In his presence, we dwell in peace. It becomes a permanent way of life…even at its end.
Like virtually everything in the Kingdom of God, peace must be sought and asked for. Would you make the pursuit of the peace of Christ a part of your everyday prayer time?
Thank you, Lord, for giving me your Spirit and allowing the fruit of your Spirit’s presence to be growing and active in my life. I know, Lord, that each of those qualities or characteristics must be cared for and desired. I especially today take the peace you have given me through your Spirit and ask you to cause that to grow to the point where your peace overcomes everything that might attempt to steal that peace.
--Adapted from Prayer, Peace and the Presence of God (A 30-Day Journey to Experience the Shalom of Jesus) by David Butts. This book is available at prayershop.org. Use the code CONPSP3 at checkout to receive an additional 10% discount.
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- Praise our God, who is unfailing in love and great in compassion (Psalm 51:1-2).
- Give thanks for the forgiveness of all your past, present, and future sins through Jesus’ death 2,000 years ago!
- Confess that your sin has been against God himself (51:3-5).
- Commit to the full integrity of having God’s truth and wisdom in the inner recesses of your heart (51:6).
- Ask God for full cleansing, purity, joy, and gladness (51:7-9).
- Pray for the integrity and understanding of your church’s leaders. Ask God to give them effectiveness in equipping you to lead people to God’s forgiveness and righteousness (51:13-14).
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