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Saturday, August 17 2024
Good Morning Sinners Redeemed by the Blood of Jesus! Thank God I'm forgiven and restored and covered in the blood of Jesus. We are cloaked in His righteousness. PTL! We often struggle with His capacity to forgive and still love us when we fail. We also encounter all kinds of people that have created God in their image. People who box God in and cannot accept that He could forgive or love them or accept that He could forgive anyone without us sacrificing and working our way back to His graces. BUT GOD! We are made in His image. He is Love. He has forgiven, cleansed and forgotten when we come in confession and repentance with hearts longing for Him. PTL! We often feel like we have to do this or that to earn His favor or forgiveness or blessings. And Jesus is looking deep into our souls with open arms of love that bid us to come and rest in His love and forgiveness, mercy and grace. Come know His peace and love. Come all you weary and find rest for your souls. Amen! Too often we find it so hard to relax and enjoy life in Christ and to delight in his presence. Be still, know and delight in His love, forgiveness, grace and mercy today. Choose to trust with childlike faith and come into His love and find pleasure in His presence. Glorify His Holy Name. Rest in Him. Receive His peace beyond understanding. His love is beyond measure and comprehension to our feeble minds. Let us stop creating God in our own image and come to know, honor and worship the knowable yet unfathomable God of Heaven who calls you by name and has redeemed you by His love. He's saying to you right now, "Come. Rest in me and receive the fullness of my love." And I say yes Lord! Here I come ready or not! Surprise! He's always ready and waiting. Amen
As we continue our study in Ephesians, I am drawn so deep into His love and gaining wisdom. We are just sort of perusing through the book. It would benefit you to take some time for deep study of this letter. Funny how God works. I am not much of a reader and laid aside a book my friend Jeremy Chambers wrote several years ago, It's called Kingdom Contours and is written to help the everyday disciple to understand and apply the varied writings of many on the topic of discipleship and Kingdom movement. As we were in the midst of our Ephesians study, I came to Chambers' urging for us to study, even memorize Ephesians. And as we looked at APEST (Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, and teacher) gifts of church leaders the other week, I got to His section on that and am still absorbing his great teaching on team leadership for the church. Something we are working on as a vision team and thinking about how to reproduce as we disciple and send others into the harvest as we are created and gifted to do. Then a study on this season of the Chosen quotes Eph. 3:14-21 just as we got done studying that and today as I went to my Bible Gateway app to copy that, their verse of the day is Eph. 2:10 that we use often to remind ourselves who we are in Christ--His redeemed masterpiece made and empowered for such a time as this. God is speaking for sure through this study. Are you hearing Him? Meditate on these passages today. Father open Your Word. Holy Spirit teach and direct us. thanks. Amen!
Ephesians 2:10 (New Living Translation) For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
Eph. 3:14-21, Paul’s Prayer for Spiritual Growth
14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father,15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. 16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. 20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.
Charles Stanley reminds us from Rom. 12:1 of our call to be living sacrifices and how sometimes we crawl off the altar because things are hard or we decide to live for self for a moment. He calls us to repent and get back on the altar. God's deep love calls us and compels us back to His love and forgiveness and to get back at it. That's if we allow it! Ask for His help to empty yourself, die to self, take up cross and run to Jesus' love and mercy. Our Daily Bread speaks into our wrong thinking and choices that have us bound in what we view as a prison of sin and unforgiveness. He has come to set the captives free. As Isaiah 43:1 reminds us, He has redeemed us. He's calling you by name. He knows you and is calling you back to his love. He is doing a new thing and calls us to release the past and our sin and move forward with Him. The Upper Room reminds us of His deliverance from and promised comfort in the storms and how being immersed in His Living Word speaks into your life and situations and helps with that. And The Word for You today calls us to small groups and mentorships that help us when in those storms and to stay accountable as we repent and crawl back on the altar. Oh God is speaking to me! What's He saying to you? Write it down, Pray about it, Process it with some friends and crawl back on the altar of His love and rest in His lap as you receive forgiveness, grace and mercy that never ends. He loves you and is calling you by name. He has redeemed you. You are His. Run to Him like a child and delight in his presence this morning. Enjoy some precious time with Him today! He really loves you! Always and forever! Amen
CS
ODB:
A star quarterback in American football stepped onto a stage that wasn’t a sports stadium. He spoke to three hundred inmates in the Everglades Correctional Facility in Miami, Florida, sharing with them words from Isaiah.
This moment, though, was not about the spectacle of a famous athlete but about a sea of souls broken and hurting. In this special time, God showed up behind bars. One observer tweeted that “the chapel began to erupt in worship and praise.” Men were weeping and praying together. In the end, some twenty-seven inmates gave their lives to Christ.
In a way, we are all in prisons of our own making, trapped behind bars of our greed, selfishness, and addiction. But amazingly, God shows up. In the prison that morning, the key verse was, “I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19). The passage encourages us to “forget the former things” and “do not dwell on the past” (v. 18) for God says, “I, even I, am he who . . . remembers your sins no more” (v. 25).
Yet God makes it clear: “Apart from me there is no savior” (v. 11). It is only by giving our lives to Christ that we’re made free. Some of us need to do that; some of us have done that but need to be reminded of who the Lord of our life truly is. We’re assured that, through Christ, God will indeed do “a new thing.” So let’s see what springs up!
By Kenneth Petersen
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In what way are you imprisoned by your own sin? What do you need to do to break free from your brokenness?
Heavenly Father, please free me from the prison bars of my sin.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
We have more background information on Isaiah than on most other prophets. There’s much speculation, though no actual proof, that he was a priest. He had two sons: Shear-Jashub (7:3), which means “a remnant will return,” and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (8:3), which means “swift to the spoils, quick to plunder.” According to tradition that goes back to the second century ad, Isaiah was executed by King Manasseh, who allegedly had him sawn in two, perhaps referenced in Hebrews 11:37. Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament more than any other Old Testament book (Psalms is the second most quoted).
Bill Crowder |
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UR: Comfort From The Storms
You, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high. - Psalm 3:3 (NIV)
A springtime storm had crashed through our area the previous night leaving a rare path of destruction in our mountainous area. As I sat on my front porch, I thanked God that no one had been injured. Chilled, I returned inside where a cup of creamy hot chocolate soon warmed me. As I read my devotions for the day, I realized that the scripture and devotional message were doing the same thing for my weary spirit.
I had faced storms of my own lately. I had retired unexpectedly after a stroke when I had really wanted to work just a little longer, and I felt purposeless. Then, my 98-year-old mother and one of my best friends both passed away in a span of two weeks. Two of the people I talked with regularly were suddenly gone. I was feeling numb and devastated.
Just like the warmth of a cup of hot chocolate, when I read scripture the warmth of God’s love fills my soul. I am reminded that although people have to leave us and jobs may be lost, God will never leave us. God will be there every step of the way to fill our empty hearts and to help us find new purpose.
Today's Prayer
Loving God, thank you for loving us and sending your Holy Spirit to help us get through the stormy days of life. May we find purpose in sharing your word with others. Amen.
TWFYT:
Harvest Blogs:
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“Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” And pointing toward his disciples he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:48-50).
Jesus wanted to make clear who His real mother and siblings were: the ones who obeyed God.
Jesus wants obedience: for us to obey the Word of God and the Father’s will. Those who obey are the true family of God.
Lord, I repent for every time I’ve disobeyed You. I repent for every time I’ve known Your will and consciously chose not to do it. I repent for when You prompted me to read Your Word and I haven’t. I repent for when I’ve led a rebellious, selfish, and worldly-driven life instead of a God-focused life.
I declare I will obey Your Word, Your Will.
I thank You that I can walk humbly with my God and follow Him all my days. I thank You for giving me the honor of belonging to Your family.
I praise You that Your ways are perfect. I praise You that You’re a “sure thing.” I praise You that I will never lack as I obey You. Let us be inseparable, Lord.
--Adapted from Praying What Jesus Says by Natasha Miller. This book is available at prayershop.org. Use the code CONPSP3 at checkout to receive an additional 10% discount.
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- Praise Jesus, who is “declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4).
- Thank the Father for having given us his “incomparably great power . . . the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead” (Eph. 1:19-20).
- Confess the times when you have not taken into account the mighty power of God in your life.
- Commit yourself to meditating daily on the Scriptures and on the power of God (Mt. 22:29).
- Ask God to use your weaknesses to “show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Cor. 4:7).
- Pray for God’s power to be unleashed in the life of the unsaved people you know, that their eyes will be opened to God’s love for them.
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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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