Archive for Devotional with Hymn

Jesus Christ, Our Completeness

2017-04-10 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
(Psalm 73:25-26, NIV)

Loving Father,
You let us feel and experience
our profound neediness for Jesus Christ.

Our gnawing inadequacies,
our disappointments and pain,
our restless, unfulfilled longings
bind us to this truth:
Jesus Christ alone is
our holiness,
our peace, and
our completeness.

He alone is the life and love we crave.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Father, You See Our Need
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from Prepare Yourself for Worship

2017-04-07 Devotional with Hymn, Prepare Yourself for Worship No comments

Prepare for Holy Week

Father, prepare my heart and mind for Holy Week.

Help me to
cheer,
rejoice, and
sing praise
as Jesus comes to us triumphantly in the face of death,
proclaiming Himself our Messiah!
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest!

Help me share His burning zeal for His Father’s house.
And may He cleanse my heart as well whenever I allow
life’s busy-ness to crowd out prayer.

Open my ears and my heart, Lord,
as Jesus urges us to
pray boldly and
patiently endure the persecution that will surely come.

Infuse my life with the fragrance of love
as a woman models how to
lavishly worship Jesus,
with no thought of self,
holding nothing back.

Humble me and
challenge my concept of ministry
as our Master takes on Himself
the lowest,
most menial,
most irksome service to His disciples.

Then, Father, help me watch with new eyes
as Your only Son
sweats blood in the garden,
silently endures brutal injustice, and
dies willingly under indescribable torture.
Impress Your love in a fresh way on
my mind and
my heart.
Make me ready once again to
receive it and to
pour it out on others.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: As You Love
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Today in Your Care

2017-04-05 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Sovereign God,
You dwell in eternity,
unmoved by time.
Your promises,
Your purposes,
Your burning love are
always now,
always sure,
always undiminished.

Today
I am in Your tender care.
Here in You,
nothing is forgotten,
nothing ignored,
nothing overlooked,
nothing left to chance.
Your purpose is never threatened.
You suffer no surprises and
no setbacks.
You are not bound
by the present or the past,
by norms or impossibilities.

Within me is
pain,
sorrow,
weakness, and
uncertainty.
But You have hidden me in Yourself.
I am completely,
eternally,
untouchably safe in You.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Be Still, My Child
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Foreshadowing the Resurrection

2017-04-03 Devotional with Hymn No comments

If a man dies, will he live again?
All the days of my hard service
I will wait for my renewal to come.
You will call and I will answer you;
you will long for the creature your hands have made.
(Job 14:14-15, NIV)

I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him with my own eyes…
How my heart yearns within me! (Job 19:25-27, NIV)

You have made known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (Psalm 16:11, NIV)

God will redeem my life from the grave;
he will surely take me to himself. (Psalm 49:15, NIV)

He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples…
He will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces.
(Isaiah 25:7-8, NIV) 

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out
by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley;
it was full of bones…He asked me, “Son of man, can these
bones live?”…So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath
entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—
a vast army. (Ezekiel 37:1, 3, 10, NIV)

Adam and Eve turned away from God, though He had warned them that if they did, “they would surely die” (Genesis 2:17, NIV). But as He pronounced judgment on them, He also promised that the Seed of Eve would someday crush Satan’s head (Genesis 3:15). Life would come from death.

During Noah’s time, our sin had become so bad that God destroyed our entire race with a flood, saving only Noah’s family. But when it was over, God promised, “Never again will I destroy all living creatures” (Genesis 8:21, NIV). In the struggle with sin, life would win.

Joseph faced imminent death, slavery, injustice, and prison, but emerged as prime minister of Egypt. Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness, and whoever looked upon it was saved from death. The three Hebrew children were thrown into a fiery furnace but emerged unscathed. Elijah raised the widow’s son. When Ezekiel spoke God’s Word, an entire valley of dry bones came to life.

All these were glimpses, foretastes, anticipations of God’s greatest miracle: death itself would die and would be removed from all creation forever. God’s own Son would conquer it. He would endure a horrible death, then rise again, and in His train He would bring an entirely new race of holy, redeemed, glorified children of God.

Easter is a time to celebrate! Thanks be to God!

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Didn’t He Rise!
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from Prepare Yourself for Worship

2017-03-31 Devotional with Hymn, Prepare Yourself for Worship No comments

God Far and Near

Infinite God,
You come to me from
far beyond and
high above my knowing.

You display Yourself,
You flaunt Yourself,
You parade Yourself
through this physical world all around me.
You help me
glimpse You and
experience You and
begin to know You
through the senses You have given.

Infinite God,
personal God,
You come to me
in Jesus Christ,
in skin and fragile flesh and bone.
You make Yourself just like me and
even call Yourself my Father.
You come to invite me,
to draw me,
to bless me back to Yourself.

Transcendent God,
present God,
personal God,
God so high above yet inseparably close to me,
I turn to You now in simple response,
in desire,
in hope,
in surrender.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: My Loving Father
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Receiving Christ’s Servants

2017-03-29 Devotional with Hymn No comments

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church in Cenchrea; that you receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints and that you help her in whatever matter she may need of you; for she herself has also been a helper of many, and of myself as well. (Romans 16:1-2, NASB)

Phoebe was apparently coming to the church in Rome from her home church in Cenchrea, near Corinth, Greece. Reading Paul’s comments about how he wanted her received made me think of how God’s servants are sometimes received by the church.

Friends, let’s be honest:

1.         Our emotions are more human than we’d like to admit. And we sometimes react to each other on an emotional level, rather than on a rational level.

2.         We often react to each other’s personalities, cultural traits, and abilities out of self-interest. We like people who make us feel comfortable. We don’t like those whom we perceive as threatening our interests. In our inner reactions to people, we can be petty, territorial, and downright jealous.

In these verses I see three reasons why we should receive all Christ’s servants with respect.

“Receive her in the Lord.” Because I truly love Christ, I want to love those He loves. I want to embrace those He has embraced, though they may have as many faults as I do.

“Receive her…in a manner worthy of the saints.” Jesus considers that person one of His “holy ones”, which is the literal translation of the word for “saints”. He has set them apart for himself. As His humble servant, I need to treat them as worthy of that honor.

“Receive her…for she herself has also been a helper of many.” We sometimes fail to respect those whom God has mightily used for His children’s welfare. We devalue those whose work Christ values so highly. Somewhere there are people who have been blessed, lifted, and drawn to Christ by that person. And for that, they deserve our full acceptance and genuine respect.

May the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. (Romans 15:5-7, NASB)

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Philippians 2:1-8
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In the Light of the Cross

2017-03-27 Devotional with Hymn No comments

I have been crucified with Christ
and I no longer live,
but Christ lives in me.
The life I live in the body,
I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.

May I never boast except in
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world has been crucified to me,
and I to the world.
(Galatians 2:20; 6:14; NIV)

Merciful Father,
flood my heart and mind every moment
with the full truth about Jesus Christ:
His life,
His death,
His resurrection, and
the completeness of His salvation.

Let me live in the blazing light of
all He is and
all He has done.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: In the Light of the Cross
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from Prepare Yourself for Worship

2017-03-24 Devotional with Hymn, Prepare Yourself for Worship No comments

God of All

God of all reality…

God of all time and
all eternity,
of all that has been,
all that is, and
all that will be…

God of every wonder ever seen,
every truth ever known,
every mystery ever pondered,
every good ever desired
and so much that is beyond imagining…

You are the One who calls to me.
You are the One who calls me to Yourself.
You are the One who offers me
full knowing and
unbroken fellowship with You.

How can a creature like me respond to such an offer?
All I can do is bow to You
here and now,
and simply say,
“Here I am.”

Listen and sing:
Hymn: God of the Universe
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Fruitful Prayer

2017-03-22 Devotional with Hymn, Pictures of God No comments

from the devotional book, PICTURES OF GOD

Read John 14:12-14; 15:7-8; 16:23-28

Part of a fruitful relationship with God is prayer. As Jesus taught His disciples for the final time before His crucifixion, three times He talked about prayer. Three times He made the lavish promise, “Ask, and you will receive.”

What did He mean by this? Is this a blank check to indulge all our desires?

Whenever we want to understand what a person is saying, we have to take it in context, in the flow of what he or she is communicating. Taking isolated sentences out of context is a recipe for disaster, whether in daily conversation or in interpreting the Bible.

Read today’s scriptures, and notice the contexts for Jesus’ promises about prayer. The context is always Christian service. He is talking about asking for ministry purposes, not for personal reasons. The focus is on bearing fruit for the Father. There will be times in God’s work when we will either ask the Father plainly for what is needed, or the job won’t get done. So ask!

Ask for the Father’s benefit, not your own. Ask in Jesus’ name, for His purposes, for the Father’s glory. Prayer is not drawing the all-wise, all-loving Father down to your petty, personal viewpoint. Prayer is drawing us upward into His perspective and His concerns. Sovereign God is not going to dance to your tune. He wants to teach you to dance to His. Note what James says: 

You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:2b-3, NASB)

Pray as a branch in the Vine. Pray out of the life you share with Jesus Christ. Pray as standing in the loving Father’s presence, as a brother or sister of Jesus Christ, as His friend and servant.

Pray as Jesus would pray, and the Father will answer you as He would answer Jesus.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Ever Standing in Your Presence
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The Just Will Live by Faith

2017-03-20 Devotional with Hymn No comments

“How can someone as weak and inconsistent as I possibly please a holy God?” Romans chapters 1 – 8 offers so much wonderful, life-giving assurance.

  • We do not obey God by keeping a list of rules. The rules are important, but we can’t obey them by our own efforts. We cannot please God that way (Romans 7:7-25). Our obedience is “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5). God wants only this: He wants us to trust Him, and to live out that trust.
  • As we trust Him step by step, God changes us into the Christ-like persons He wants us to be. We change, not by determined efforts at self-reform, but by trusting God (Romans 1:16-17).
  • We don’t become right with God by trying to make our lives right with Him. We become right with God the same way Abraham did: by trusting God (Romans 4). As we trust Jesus Christ, He nurtures a living relationship with us. He lives His holy life in us as we trust Him (Romans 5 – 8).

All God’s promises, all His holiness, all His power flow through us and grow in us as we trust in Him. Righteousness from God is by faith from first to last…The righteous will live by faith (Romans 1:17, NIV).

Listen and sing:
Hymn: By Faith in Jesus Christ
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