Good Morning Masterpieces of God, Made New in Christ, for His Purposes, Surrendered Servants! Amen! So be it Lord! May that define me, us and Your Good News Delivery Team at St. Matts! Come! Fill us! Refine us! Prepare us! Move us to go live and love like Jesus and to do our custom made parts for such a time as this. Unite us as teammates too. Raise up prayer warriors, teachers, leaders, workers as you lead us to the harvest. Thank You! Bring your dreams, visions, plans alive. Help us to die to self, choose boldness and follow well to Your best. May we pursue with passion Your perfect plans and run and finish our races well. May we honor and glorify You! Thank You for custom making and gathering us for such a time as this! Here we are! Send us! Your Kingdom come and will be done. Amen
Earnestly pray through this and offer yourself to God. Ask Him to reveal his plans for you today and for the weeks ahead. Ask Him to gather your team and to lead you. Ask Him to empower you, your gifts and to prepare your heart. Ask for His passion, heart and mind to overflow into love, hope and help for many. Pray for Him to connect us to some new people this week and to multiply the harvest. Thank Him for the custom purposes each of us are created to do. Thank Him for being with us always. Thank Him for His perfect plans!
God never ceases to surprise and affirm as He reveals glimpses that we are following His plans. Just look at how He has threaded our devotionals for today through yesterdays message and affirms that we are hearing His still small voice and following Him to what He has planned. I often struggle in prayer and have shared before how I feel like I am a broken record saying and encouraging the same things over and over. BUT GOD! I share what I am hearing daily and my journal notes and it's God that keeps saying, sharing these plans and affirming that we are hearing and following and on the right track. Can you see that? Are you encouraged? What's God saying to you right now? Write it down and process it with someone. God really does have great plans for you and us to discover and enact. What might they be? What's your part? What will you do about it?
God has given me this passion and burning desire to lead us to become a house of prayer for the nations by reaching out to more connection points and connecting more people to Jesus and making more disciple making disciples. He's given me a vision of starting and multiplying some small groups that gather in neighborhoods and homes that might lead to some church plants. It's a picture He's given for how to move beyond adding new followers to multiplying many new disciples. It's the Jesus way and the way the early church blossomed and multiplied much good fruit. At the same time God was stirring this vision in me and some others, He was also stirring it in our bishop as he has felt God calling us to work on and pray in to our EC vision statement. "We will become a dynamic movement of God, led by pastors and laity that have a burning passion for God and missionary zeal to reach the lost." That is a vision that will come to life in different ways because of where God has placed us and how He has gifted and empowered our Body of believers and for such a time as this. That vision is birthed, grows and flourishes through much prayer. The bishop has called our churches to monthly fasting and prayer for this vision on the first Wednesday of each month. I have not pursued this because that is bread day, but I believe God is wanting us to join Him in this. So, every first Wednesday of the month I am calling us to fasting and prayer, however God leads you to do that. The next one is Wednesday Aug. 7th. I will be at the church for bread and then gather any that want to to pray in person and on Zoom for a half hour or as long as the Spirit leads from 12-12:30 or ??? Mark your calendars and plan to fast and pray for revival and be a part of releasing God's will and power for us to become His dynamic movement. I have invited our district to join us in this.
That is just the beginning of the things God is stirring me to earnestly pursue, plan and lead over the next few months. What is He stirring you to? What has He made you to do for such a time as this to help to bring alive and do your part in His GN delivery co?
Before this gets way to long, I am stopping and allowing you to hear God's affirming, guiding voice through the thread of our devotionals today. Yesterday we processed Ephesians chapter 2. Today God is speaking through Our Daily Bread's interpretation of Eph. 2:4-10. Thanks for the affirmation Lord! Speak to and direct our hearts! Amen! Chas. Stanley reminds us of God's Good plans and the reminder that we are created for custom works that sometimes require dying to self, our plans and agendas. TWFYT reminds us to go when God says to go and the Upper Room calls us to pray into His plans as does the Harvest blogs. There is no denying that God is speaking, revealing and wanting to lead us to His perfect plans. He is affirming and revealing. What's He revealing to you and what will you do about it? Who are your teammates? Keep knocking and seeking. God is speaking! Ask for ears to hear even the whispers and His mind to process well and His heart to go and follow. Amen! You are His masterpiece with custom made purposes! Go and live and love more like Jesus each day as you run and complete the race He has prepared just for you! AMEN!
ODB:
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The criminal had been apprehended, and the detective asked the perpetrator why he had brazenly attacked someone with so many witnesses present. The response was startling: “I knew they wouldn’t do anything; people never do.” That comment pictures what is called “guilty knowledge”—choosing to ignore a crime even though you know it is being committed.
The apostle James addressed a similar kind of guilty knowledge, saying, “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them” (James 4:17).
Through His great salvation of us, God has designed us to be agents of good in the world. Ephesians 2:10 affirms, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” These good works aren’t the cause of our salvation; rather, they’re the result of our hearts being changed by God’s Holy Spirit taking up residence in our lives. The Spirit even gives us spiritual gifts to equip us to accomplish those things for which God has recreated us (see 1 Corinthians 12:1-11).
As God’s workmanship, let’s yield to His purposes and the empowering of His Spirit so that we can be His instruments for good in a world that desperately needs Him.
By Bill Crowder
REFLECT & PRAY
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Review 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 and read about the spiritual gifts. What gifts has the Spirit given you? How can you exercise them?
Loving God, thank You for the salvation You’ve provided as a free gift of grace. Please give me the courage and wisdom to know how best to serve You and others.
Discover your God-given calling here.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Paul has just outlined his prayer for the readers of his letter (Ephesians 1:15-23). When he prays, he asks God on their behalf that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you” (v. 18). But who, exactly, is he praying for? The letter to the Ephesians may have been intended to be “circular,” that is, for circulation among other churches. Specifically, however, these first readers were gentile Christians in the port city of Ephesus. Having prayed for them, Paul then gives guidance on how to fulfill God’s purpose. God “made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions” (2:5). He “raised us up with Christ” (v. 6) to “show the incomparable riches of his grace” (v. 7). This is why we “do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (v. 10).
Tim Gustafson |
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CS:
TWFYT:
UR: Light in the Darkness
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. - John 1:5 (NIV)
Why should I continue to pray? Why should I continue to read Bible verses that I have read hundreds of times? Our messy world and the challenges people face in their daily lives make me question my morning routine. Everywhere I look, the world is a mess. Not a week passes without learning about a relative, friend, or neighbor who is facing a crisis of some kind. I have learned that no one is immune from trouble.
And then some mornings, a total stranger from another part of the world will touch my questioning heart. Their heartfelt words in The Upper Room will give me hope. That hope in the darkness pushes me to revisit these words from John 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” To overcome the darkness in the world, all of us must hold fast to Christ’s light.
TODAY'S PRAYER
God of us all, help us always to seek your light and cling to that light in all circumstances. Amen.
Harvest:
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July 22 - Learning to Hear the Right Voice
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Indeed, the biggest problem in hearing God’s voice is discerning between His voice, the voice of our own flesh, and Satan’s voice. Gaining more and more knowledge of Scripture helps us to discern the difference. But so does spending time with God in prayer. You will learn to recognize His voice the more you hear it.
The boy Samuel in the Old Testament shows us this truth. One night as he was trying to sleep, he heard someone call his name, “Samuel, Samuel.” He ran to Eli, his mentor, saying, “Here I am.” But Eli told Samuel he hadn’t called. This happened three times before Eli realized the Lord was speaking to Samuel. So he told the boy to say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening,” the next time the voice called out (1 Samuel 3). In the midst of these verses lies a telling fact: “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him” (1 Samuel 3:7).
That may be the case for many of us. We have not yet heard the Lord, so we find it difficult to discern His voice. The last verses in the chapter give a different picture of Samuel’s life: “The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word” (1 Samuel 3:19- 21). Wouldn’t it be great to have the same thing said of our lives at the end—that none of God’s words fell to the ground. The more we listen, the more we will discern.
Lord God, learning to hear Your beautiful voice is my deepest desire. Your word says that if I draw near to You, You will draw near to me. Help me to spend all of my days drawing closer to You – leaning in to hear You speak to my heart as I pray, as I read Your word, and as I sit in the stillness. Show me how to know You so well that I never confuse Your voice with my own, or with the voice of the enemy. May I be as obedient a listener as Samuel, and throughout my life may none of Your words fall to the ground!
--Adapted from The Power of Personal Prayer (Learning to Pray with Faith and Purpose) by Jonathan Graf. This book is available at prayershop.org. Use the code CONPSP3 at checkout to receive an additional 10% discount.
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- Glorify God as the one who fills all of your desires and needs with his presence alone.
- Thank God for being sufficient for you even when every other source of joy or support is taken away.
- Confess your dependence on other people or situations to make you content and happy.
- Commit yourself to making Jesus your “pearl of great price,” and ask him to make you willing to give up all you have for the sake of his kingdom, if necessary (Mt. 13:44-46).
- Ask God to bring to your mind the material needs of an unsaved acquaintance so that you will be able to help meet those needs and bring that person closer to the kingdom.
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Prayer Points taken from Patterns for Prayer by Alvin VanderGriend. This book is available at prayershop.org. Use the code CONPSP3 at checkout to receive an additional 10% discount.
Connection (Devotions for Everyday Life) © 2024 is a free devotional published daily by Harvest Prayer Ministries. Subscribe here. |
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