Archive for Devotional with Hymn

Go Beyond

2019-10-11 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

[Your creatures] all wait for You
To give them their food in due season.
You give to them, they gather it up;
You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good.
You hide Your face, they are dismayed;
You take away their spirit, they expire
And return to their dust.
You send forth Your Spirit, they are created;
And You renew the face of the ground.
(Psalm 104:27-30, NASB)

Go beyond thinking of God
as merely a means to an end,
as a way to obtain more loving relationships or
inner peace or
even everlasting life.

He Himself is the end of all things.
He is our greatest blessing,
our glorious reward,
our eternal destiny.

Love,
inner peace, and
everlasting life
are merely partial descriptions of
all that He is.

Hymn: The Upward Call
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A New Day

2019-10-04 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

Father, it’s like a sunrise
whenever I taste Your love;
whenever I sense Your working;
whenever I realize Your personal presence with me.
Each time it is a ray of light,
a bit of splendor!
It is a glimpse of Your magnificence!

And each sunrise,
each shining, new day,
reminds me of what is soon to come:
the dawning of a radiant, stunningly-perfect day
that will never end.

No more darkness.
No more pain or sorrow.
No more dying
ever again.
Just You and
all that You are,
filling all that is.

In the meantime, Father,
thank You for each of Your glorious reminders!

Sometimes the Bible explains heaven
in terms of earthly things,
to help us begin to grasp
what is beyond our experience.
But when we get there, I believe we will see that
heaven is the original and
earth is a shadow of it.
As we get closer to the Light,
we will see more truly and broadly.

Hymn: I See the New Creation
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A Living Hymn

2019-09-27 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
Day to day pours forth speech,
And night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
Their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their utterances to the end of the world.
(Psalm 19:1-4, NASB)

Father, the heavens sing of Your greatness so
beautifully and
constantly.
Even their silence is
eloquent and
majestic.

Can I, Your child, do any less?
May my daily kindness sing of Your
warm smile and
open-armed acceptance.
May my generosity sing of Your
great bounty and
eagerness to share.
Let my patience under pressure sing of Your
faithfulness and
gentle strength and
unshakable peace.

Let my joy in every situation remind those around me that You are
always near and
always good.

Father, make my life a hymn to Your great love.

O Father, my Father,
may I always respond to all You are!
Like the mountains,
may I quake at Your footsteps.
Like the green earth,
may I bear rich fruit because of Your presence in me.
May all pride melt away before the fire of
Your magnificence and
Your holiness.

Hymn: God Alone
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Good to All

2019-09-20 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

The Lord is good to all;
he has compassion on all he has made.
(Psalm 145:9, NIV)

When someone else is “lucky,” I sometimes feel a little jealous.
It’s not a storm of jealousy…just a whisper.

But God has many children, and
He is lavish with them all.
They are my brothers and sisters,
dearly loved by the One I love.
Because they are dear to Him,
they are dear to me.

I see my Lord in them.
I love Him in them.
I serve Him in them.

There is no place for jealousy.

Lord, let praise always be my reaction to Your goodness.

Father,
I will rejoice in all our blessings,
even when they fall on the next person,
not on me.

Hymn: A Thankful Heart
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God Loves to Grow Things

2019-09-13 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit.” (John 15:5, NASB)

The truth is all around you:
God loves to grow things.
When you look at your own life, with your
faults,
struggles, and
blind spots,
remember:
God loves to grow things.

When you look at other people,
with all their insensitivities and annoying qualities,
remember:
God loves to grow things.

Think of people as growing things.
You’re seeing them in only one moment of their development.
God, the patient gardener, is working
carefully and joyfully,
moment by moment,
year by year.
He is tenderly nurturing them from
a tiny seed to
beautiful fullness in Him.

Try not to step on His flowers.
If a holy and all-knowing God can love them just as they are,
can’t we?

All our relationships are to be shaped by
the love of the Father – His love
for them, for us,
for all of us.
He loves “them” as much as “us”.
In every relationship,
only His unselfish love is worthy of Him.

Hymn: Live and Love and Grow in Christ
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From Every Nation

2019-09-06 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

[Jesus said:] “People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places…in the kingdom of God. (Luke 13:29, NIV)

We were at the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, which commemorates the place where the angel announced to Mary that Messiah would be born of her.

I was struck by the many languages, nationalities, and religious traditions that filled the church. They were like children on their first day in heaven, rushing from place to place, bubbling with excitement. Most had traveled long distances at great expense to be there.

What a vivid reminder that people come to faith in Christ through many avenues. Those avenues are as varied as the cultures and personalities of all the people of all the ages.

With each of us, our understanding of God is so partial and so marred by ignorance. But God’s goodness comes in many flavors, and His incarnation has so many beautiful faces.

Father,
You don’t rank individuals by
importance or
respectability, and
neither should we.
Each one is Your dearly-loved child, and
we should treat each one as such.

Hymn: God of All People
Recording
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Hear God’s Higher Call

2019-08-30 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. (1 Peter 2:9-10, NASB)

See your God for who He is and
all He is.
He is the Father of the entire human family.
He lovingly formed them all to be His very own.
He invested Himself in each and every individual.
Now realize that we are children of this Father,
this loving, universal Father.
He is so much greater than
our self-centered perspective and
limited minds.
He is grander than
our immature faith and
our love, still growing.

This Father is calling us beyond our
small,
fearful,
sectarian ways.
He is calling us to share
His broader mind and
larger heart.
He is urging us toward prayer that believes
He is all He says He is and
does all He says He will do.
He is leading us toward a faith that is simpler,
a vision that is higher, and
a love that is as universal as He is,
a love that is
boundless and
fearless and
free.

In this lost and needy world, He is calling us to live as
His children,
His Body,
His divine life made flesh and bone.
His compassion for His lost children is
calling us and constraining us to be
the light of the world,
the salt of the earth,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation.

His love is compelling us and empowering us to be
the People of God.

Father, as we follow Your Spirit,
we are many members
all working together as one Body.
We are the Body of Jesus Christ Himself,
living and loving in this world.
What an amazing reality!

Hymn: We Will Be Your People

I Am from You

2019-08-23 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

The Lord God formed man of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7, NASB)

God, in a way, our relationship is private and personal,
one that You and I share alone.
It’s an organic relationship,
as fundamental as my substance,
as my existence.
I am from You.

I turn back to You now as demands leave me
uncertain and
seeking support.
I am from You.

I don’t just have my source in You.
I’m not a child now seeking independence.
I am a part of You once ripped away,
now seeking reunion.
You are life, and I am alive.
You are reality, and I exist.
You are air, and I am a breath.

Father, I am from You.
Make us one again, I pray.

Father, as I trust You,
my reality is as vast as You are.
I share in Your character,
Your power,
Your goodness, and
Your unlimited future.

Hymn: Imagine Your Creator’s Breath

Creator

2019-08-16 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

You created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
your works are wonderful.
(Psalm 139:13-14, NIV)

Creator,
Father,
I am Yours—
life, breath, mind, energy,
spirit and body, past and future,
I am entirely Yours.
Conceived by Your love,
knit together by Your infinite wisdom,
born and cradled by Your power,
I am the child of Your very being,
O Lord of all.

You love me.
Father God,
before the mountains could witness it,
You invested yourself in me.
You devoted yourself to my needs.
Driven by love, You held nothing back—
now, then, always.
I don’t understand it, but
everything around me says it is so—
the air, my food and water, every pattern and color,
every conversation with a friend.
Reminders flood my senses from birth through death.

Creator,
Father,
Your glory invites me to come and know You,
and prodded by my needs,
my failures and anxieties,
I look up to You.
I hunger for You.
Father, fulfill in me that unhindered relationship
that Your love has always craved,
that Your wisdom would patiently teach,
that Your power can provide.
Draw my life energies into yourself,
the Source and Goal of all I am.
Enable me to become all I can become,
to grow, to learn, to discover and aspire,
but all in You and unto You.

Creator,
Father,
nurture that trust within me.
Nurture that love.

True wealth is not possessing, but
being possessed by
almighty
all-loving,
all-wise God.

Hymn: God of the Universe

I Am His Child

2019-08-09 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.
(Psalm 103:13-14, NASB)

God loves us as a parent loves a newborn child.
An infant doesn’t have to earn the parents’ affection.
A baby is loved because of relationship, not because of merit.

Read the beautiful picture painted in Psalm 103.
The Father understands us far better than we understand ourselves.
He never expects us to live like something we’re not.
We don’t need to pretend with Him.

Instead, He takes the initiative to transform us
into more than we can be on our own.
He wants to make us truly His children.
He wants to make us like our Father in every way.

All He asks is that we respond to Him in trust, step-by-step.

Like Your Son, Father,
may my thoughts flow
from You and
to You.
Keep me hungry for
Your glory,
not mine.

Hymn: Holy Father, Only You

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