This Week:
Please note Tuesday Zoom Huddle is canceled for this week. Thanks!
Wed 10-12 Donut Day at Bread Ministry
Wed 6-7:30 Dinner Huddle
Sat. 10 AM Weed. plant and mulch party at church.
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Good Morning Clay! We are the workmanship of the Master Potter who forms, reforms, redeems and shapes us to be His vessel. PTL! What's it like for you to be clay in the hands of the Potter? Talk to Him about that and maybe process that with some others. Are you supple and willing to die to self to allow His transforming, refining work? Have you allowed the baking of the Potter's furnace to finish His work? You are His Masterpiece (according to Eph 2:10) made new in Christ to do what God had planned for you before you were born. Has your life entered the finishing phase or is it still being shaped? No matter. He is working all things together and shaping us to be more like Jesus! Amen! May we be available, supple and willing to die to self to allow His master work to shine forth through us! Amen!
Yesterday we discussed what a Jesus shaped life looks like as we thought about the finishing work that was happening with the 12 as they approached that first "Holy Week". He was busy pouring into His disciples and shaping the events of the week. He was finishing up His work and preparing them to step out and carry on the mission. This week we will contemplate what it may have been like to be one of His followers this final week of His earthly ministry. What can we learn and apply as we allow Him to shape and mold us into Christlikeness and our fuller, activated potential in Christ. Talk to God about that and process with some others as you meditate on the devos below. Begin with the song we ended with yesterday as we offer ourselves and allow the One who chose you, the Potter to rework us today and prepare us as His vessels. Come Potter have Your way. Mold, shape and prepare us and use us as we are during this refining process of moving from one way in Christ to our better, fuller potential. We were one way and now another because of Christ! Amen! Come Jesus! Your Kingdom come and will be done! Thank You for Choosing me and continuing Your good work in, through and around me! Amen!
Start with this song: I Am Chosen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE50gfQUUC4
Sarah Young
I to We
ODB
God with Us Age to Age
You whom I have upheld since your birth. . . . Even to your old age . . . I am he who will sustain you. Isaiah 46:3-4
READ Isaiah 46:3-9
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A Danish study explored the phenomenon most of us have experienced: perceiving ourselves as younger than we really are. The findings suggest a constant—whatever our current age, we all see ourselves as 20 percent younger. A fifty-year-old tends to imagine herself as forty years old. (This conjures up a comical scenario in which a child thinks, “Wow, I’m five, but I feel I have the energy and looks of a four-year-old!”)
It doesn’t take a scientific study to state the obvious: We’re all growing older. And Scripture has much to say about this. Isaiah’s words were issued to an Israel that had aged and become weary, but as one commentator says, “This promise to Israel, enfeebled and grown old as a nation, is applicable to every aged follower of Christ.”
The prophet reminds us of God’s provision throughout the life of everyone who has been faithful to Him: “I have upheld [you] since your birth, and have carried [you] since you were born” (Isaiah 46:3).
So as we stew and fret about growing older, we’re reminded that God is still with us. He promises: “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you” (v. 4). Whatever age you are (or the 20-percent-younger version you imagine yourself to be!), embrace today God’s promise: “I have made you and I will carry you” (v. 4).
By Kenneth Petersen
REFLECT & PRAY
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In what ways do you wrestle with concerns about aging? How do you find comfort in Isaiah’s words?
Dear God, I’m feeling weary and tired. Please give me Your strength. I ask that You sustain me and carry me.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
In Isaiah 46:5, God asks, “With whom will you compare me or count me equal? To whom will you liken me that we may be compared?” The answer to this rhetorical question is that no one is like God. Often when the question “Who is like God?” is asked in the Bible, it’s answered in part by reflecting on an aspect of His matchless character. For example, in Psalm 71:19, the psalmist reflects on God’s surpassing righteousness, and in Micah 7:18, the prophet ponders God’s “unfailing love” (nlt). Other verses in the Old Testament that ponder the character of God, the one who will be with us forever, include Exodus 15:11; Deuteronomy 3:24; 2 Samuel 7:22; Psalm 86:8, 10; 89:6, 8; 113:5; and Isaiah
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Connection
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April 7 - Jesus – Provider…Not Performer
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“When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted." So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, "Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world." Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself” (John 6:12-15).
If an answered prayer brings us closer to submission to God’s purposes, then the prayer has served its purpose—to focus on hallowing the Father’s name, to advance the rule of God’s kingdom and for His will to be done on earth as in heaven. Here the prayer for daily bread becomes an extension of “your kingdom come.”
But if answered prayer produces within us a manipulative yearning to see God “do it again,” and He becomes a performer doing encores after the curtain comes down on the show, we enter the realm of demonic power instead of godly submission.
Demons seize hold in order to make others do their will. Demons distract people from the kingdom agenda, promise fulfillment, and in the end remove human freedom. Demonic power manipulates in order to control.
God’s power invites us to come to Him and die with Him that He might accomplish the blessing of the many. Jesus’ ministry is focused on restoring what is lost, on returning people to fullness and to self-giving, that we might be able to choose Him, not based on manipulative demand, but on pure love. The crowd in John 6 didn’t understand that the true bread was to know Christ Himself on Christ’s terms.
Lord Jesus, sometimes I don’t understand how people couldn’t see the truth of all that You are when you did miraculous things as God directed. Rather than being grateful, they wanted more amazing signs and wonders. Your love calls us to die so that we might live. Continue to transform my life to complete fullness of all that You are – not so I will see the miraculous, but so that I will see only You! Draw me towards who You are because of the depth of my love for You, not because of what You do so that I can begin to experience Your miraculous works as part of my every day Christian life!
--Adapted from Power Praying (Hearing Jesus’ Spirit by Praying Jesus’ Prayer) by David Chotka.
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- Praise the Lord for being your shepherd (Psalm 23).
- Give thanks for those refreshing times when you experience “green pastures” and “quiet waters.”
- Confess any dissatisfaction concerning God’s care for you.
- Commit yourself to faithfully following the Good Shepherd in every area of your life.
- Ask God to “strengthen and protect you from the evil one” (2 Thess. 3:3).
- Ask the Good Shepherd to touch the lives of those who have not yet put their trust in him. Pray that they may experience his loving and redeeming care.
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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) © 2025 is a free devotional published daily by OneCry Prayer. Find more resources at www.onecry.com |
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