Archive for Devotional with Hymn

Blessed Are the Meek

2014-01-12 Beatitudes, Devotional with Hymn No comments

This is the fifth of an eleven-part series on the Beatitudes.
Each part features a hymn to a familiar tune.

Jesus’ third beatitude is this:

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5, NIV)

Father, as we see Your greatness, we face our smallness.
As we glimpse Your power, we grasp our weakness.
As we marvel at Your transcendence, we embrace our lowliness.
Standing before You, humility is natural, honest, and sweet.
As we worship You, we forget ourselves.
As we crown You Lord, we gladly resign the throne of our lives.
Self-protection is unnecessary, for You, Sovereign God, are our protection.
With Psalm 123, we pray:

I lift up my eyes to you, to you whose throne is in heaven.
As the eyes of slaves look to the hands of their master…
so our eyes look to the Lord our God
till he shows us mercy. (vv.1-2, NIV)

As we gaze on Your great glory, we abandon our own.
James 4 says:

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble…
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. (vv.6, 10, NIV)

As we rely completely on Your provision,
we no longer grab and grasp and worry.
We simply pray:

My heart is not proud, O Lord,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me. (Psalm 131:1-2, NIV)

When Your own Son came to us, filled with all the fullness of the godhead,
He was meek.
He was completely empty before You,
completely dependent on You.
He relied on You for everything He said and did.
This Jesus invites us to come to Him.
He says:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30, NIV)

Jesus invites us to lay down our constant, crushing burden of self-concern
and take up the one easy burden of simply trusting You.

Father, give us the Spirit of Your Son Jesus.
Give us His Spirit of meekness—
not weakness, but meekness.
And from His Spirit, grow within us
His gentle heart with
His gentle words and
His gentle hands.
Make us truly and completely Your children, meek before
You,
Your people, and
the world.
Father, empty us of ourselves
that we may be filled forever with You.

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: Meekness
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Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

2014-01-09 Beatitudes, Devotional with Hymn No comments

This is the fourth of an eleven-part series on the Beatitudes.
Each part features a hymn to a familiar tune.

Father, we are Your people.
As we live in Your presence, You say to us,

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. (Matthew 5:4, NASB)

In what ways should knowing You, Lord, cause us to mourn?

We see this world, and we remember Eden.
We remember all You had planned for us.
Now we see all these people You created for Yourself,
into whom You breathed Your own life.
They are so very far from You, their only source of good.
They sin, they suffer, they cause suffering, and they die.
O our Father, we mourn for all that has been lost!
O God, forgive us!
We see all these dear ones, engulfed in grief and pain,
dying in the darkness every day, and
we mourn with You, loving Father.

We mourn our own sin.
We were like them, so far from You.
Evil filled our hearts and minds and hands.
You redeemed us, You bought us back at the price of Your only Son.
But even now as Your children,
our response to You is so cold and inconsistent.
We still think and act selfishly.
We are still fearful and mistrusting,
though cradled here in Your loving arms.
We are easily distracted from You and
so indifferent toward You.
We see You, glorious Father, and
we see ourselves, and
we mourn.

The nearer we grow to You, Father,
the more we mourn our separation from You.
The more we love You, the more we long to be with You
completely and constantly,
with no separation, no distance, no barriers, no veils,
nothing but You.

Father, You Yourself are the comfort for our mourning.
Your presence is fullness of joy.
You promised us Your Son, and You have given Him.
You promised us Your Spirit, and He is with us and in us right now.
You have also promised to live among us as our God and our Shepherd.
You have promised to wipe every tear from our eyes.

Father, we are waiting for that day.
We long for You.
We mourn for You.
O Lord, come!

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: We Mourn
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Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

2014-01-07 Beatitudes, Devotional with Hymn No comments

This is the third of an eleven-part series on the Beatitudes.
Each part features a hymn to a familiar tune.

Jesus’ first beatitude is this:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
(Matthew 5:3, NASB)

God has decreed the well-being of those who are poor in spirit. His sovereign word says they will have abundant life, and that they will be “prosperous” and “successful” in an ultimate sense, beyond mere money. But what does it mean to be “poor in spirit”?

To be poor is to lack possessions. To be poor in regards to spirit is to have a spirit, or a heart, that lacks possessions; a spirit that does not “possess” or claim ownership of anything; a spirit with no wealth, no glory, no will or way or strength of its own.

Such a spirit is what we had in Eden before the fall. Then we were surrounded by God’s abundant gifts, but none of them had taken root in our hearts. We possessed nothing. We clung to nothing. We claimed ownership of nothing. God was all-in-all, and our spirits, hearts, and desires were reserved for Him.

When we are again poor in spirit, possessing nothing as our own, we are free to cling to God alone. When we do, we enjoy all things in Him. All He has, all He is, His entire Kingdom is ours, and we are entirely His.

Blessed indeed is such a person!

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: Poor in Spirit
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Blessed

2014-01-05 Beatitudes, Devotional with Hymn 5 comments

This is the second of an eleven-part series on the Beatitudes.
Each part features a hymn to a familiar tune.

Jesus spent His entire ministry here teaching and demonstrating a new relationship with our heavenly Father. Life could be full and complete by simply, actively trusting Him. These teachings are especially concentrated in Matthew, chapters 5, 6, and 7, the passage we call the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus begins His description of this new life by summarizing God’s recipe for success. This recipe is called the Beatitudes. Here He pronounces God’s blessing on eight character traits. He says that God has decreed the eternal well-being of people who possess these qualities.

But like much of the Sermon on the Mount, the list is surprising, even shocking. Human society tends to prize people who are strong, assertive, and confident, people who provide themselves and others with the physical goods, security, and pleasure.

Jesus’ recipe for success is completely different. Realize that only He has experienced both life on this earth and eternal life in heaven. Only He has a complete perspective on what is best. And He says that the person who is truly blessed by our Creator is poor in spirit, meek, merciful and pure in heart. That person mourns, desires righteousness above all else, makes peace, and gladly suffers persecution for obeying God.

What unexpected keys to success! None of these qualities are strength, skill, material goods, or human accomplishment. All these qualities flow naturally from trusting and loving God.

These traits come with wonderful promises from our Father. He has decreed that all who show these qualities will be blessed with the Kingdom of heaven, their Father’s rich comfort, rulership of the entire earth, a complete rightness to life, mercy from God, the promise of seeing Him, and the glorious reality of living as His dearly-loved children.

All these blessings concern our inner, eternal person. None are simply material. All will outlast this world. Jesus, the only person with a total view of all of life, urges us to seek these gifts as our Creator’s greatest blessings.

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: Beatitudes Hymn
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Living in the Father’s Presence

2014-01-02 Beatitudes, Devotional with Hymn No comments

This is the first of an eleven-part series on the Beatitudes.
Each part features a hymn to a familiar tune. 

We are needy creatures living in a material world. We need food, shelter, and clothing. To meet these needs, we work, we worry, we gather and grasp. And if we get more than we need for today, we hungrily store it away for the future.

By nature, we are self-centered, driven by desires of which we are only vaguely aware. We long to wrap ourselves in pleasure and security and the admiration of others. We crave glory and gold.

And so it goes. We live, we long, we scramble, and we die, with our hearts entwined with the physical world around us.

But our Creator made us for better things. He made us to be like Himself, to share the endless abundance of all He is. He designed us for love…for eternity. But when we turned away from Him so long ago, we lost sight of our birthright and our destiny. We degenerated into the fearful, selfish creatures that we are.

But our Creator didn’t abandon us. He sent His own divine Son as a human being like us, to show us Who He is and who we can be. He came to renew us in the full image of our holy and loving Creator. He came to teach us that this Creator is our Father, and that He longs to be our Father in a deeper and more personal sense. He wants us to realize that He is always with us. His loving eye focuses always on us. He wraps our entire existence in Himself.

Jesus Christ came to teach us and show us what it means to live in the presence of this Father who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. He is already aware of our every need. And this Father requires of us only one thing: that we trust Him.

As we trust Him and live before Him, the logic of daily living is turned upside-down. With such a Father, trusting makes sense, not worry. Giving is logical, not grasping.  A close relationship with this Father is our highest good, our greatest security, and our deepest pleasure.

 Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: We Are Children
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The Light of the World

2013-12-29 Devotional with Hymn No comments

When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. 

Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 

Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, 

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”
(Luke 2:22, 25-32, NIV)

Jesus is not just the central figure of Christianity.
He is the central figure of all history,
of earth and heaven.
He is the Creator, the Sustainer of all that is,
seen and unseen,
the Sovereign Word of the Sovereign God.
He is not just the wisest person who ever lived.
In Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
He is not just the leader of one group, culture, or movement.
He is the King of all Kings and the Lord of all Lords. 

“See, darkness covers the earth
and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the Lord rises upon you
and his glory appears over you.” (Isaiah 60:2, NIV)
Jesus is the Light of the World, and
as He is lifted up,
all nations, all peoples will come to Him.

We know what the holy and wise of all ages
have longed to discover.
We see Jesus Christ.
How very blessed we are!

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: Light of Every Nation
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God’s Promise to Moses

2013-12-22 Devotional, Devotional with Hymn No comments

[Moses said:] “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him. 

“The LORD said to me:…’I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.’” (Deuteronomy 18:15, 17-19, NIV)

In Moses’ day, the nations around Israel used all kinds of magic and superstitious practices to learn the will of the gods. God forbade such sorcery in Israel. He chose to make His will known through His prophets. And unlike the mysterious messages of pagan soothsayers and mediums, God’s words would be clear and understandable.

In the passage above, God is promising to raise up a succession of prophets who would faithfully speak His will to His people. We read the revelations of many of those prophets in our Old Testament. But when the prophets quit coming, the hopes aroused by Deuteronomy 18 began to focus on one Prophet, One who would come and fully reveal all God’s will for His people: Messiah Himself.

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, many saw Him as this promised Prophet:

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” (John 1:45, NASB)

When the people saw the sign which [Jesus] had performed (the feeding of the five thousand), they said, “This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world.” (John 6:14, NASB)

Some of the people therefore, when they heard [Jesus’] words, were saying, “This certainly is the Prophet.” (John 7:40, NASB)

Peter, in speaking to the Jews about the One they had crucified, said:

“Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer…For Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you…’ Indeed, all the prophets from Samuel on, as many as have spoken, have foretold these days.” (Acts 3:17-18, 22, 24, NIV)

Jesus told those questioning His authority,

“If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me.” (John 5:46, NASB)

And on the evening after His resurrection, Jesus conversed with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and “beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27, NASB).

As the centuries progressed, God’s prophets were distilled into God’s Prophet, and God’s words became God’s Word, Jesus Christ.

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:1-3, NIV)

Father,
Your power, Your wisdom, and Your love
have said all they have to say
in Jesus Christ.
Help me to listen.

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: The Word of God Is Jesus Christ
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A Life Framed with Love

2013-12-15 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, [the Magi] returned to their country by another route. 

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” 

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” 

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: 

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
(Matthew 2:12-18, NIV)

Jesus was born as He would die.
He would die as He was born.
The birth and death of the Light of the World
were shrouded in darkness.
His trusted companions were the lowly and powerless.
Jealous leaders pursued Him with murderous hearts
while humble women gently cared for His needs.
His helpless body was wrapped in cloth and laid in borrowed quarters.
Coming and going from this world,
He was immersed in suffering, shame, and desperate circumstances.

Jesus is a portrait of God our Father,
framed with tenderness, mercy, and sacrificial love.

Father, I look at the life of your Son, and
I see the full extent of Your love
etched on every page.
Throughout His birth, His life, and His death,
He drank our shame and suffering full strength.
Father, I bow in silence.
How can I respond to You?
How can I live my love for You?

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: One with Us
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The Word

2013-12-08 Devotional with Hymn No comments

In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and
the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God. 

All things came into being through Him, and
apart from Him nothing came into being
that has come into being. 

In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.
The Light shines in the darkness, and
the darkness did not overpower* it.
(John 1:1-5, NASB; *optional reading) 

Matthew’s gospel focuses on showing the Jews that Jesus is their promised Messiah. Thus he begins with Jesus’ human genealogy, proving that Jesus descended from King David.

John’s gospel focuses on Jesus’ relationship with God, His Father. Therefore he begins with Jesus’ divine genealogy. He says:

In the beginning,
the very beginning,
before anything else was,
Jesus was already there with God the Father.
They were two persons
but one life,
one Being,
one God.

Jesus is the Word, the full and perfect Word,
spoken from the Father’s great heart to us.
All that the Father wills,
the Son makes reality.
All that the Father’s love imagines,
all the life,
all the light,
all the riches of His own being,
are born in our world…and in us…
through Jesus Christ.

Father,
may Jesus Christ be all that You want Him to be
in my thinking,
my speaking, and
my doing.
I want to be one with You in Him.

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: God Is with Us! Alleluia!
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Praise to You, Our Father!

2013-12-01 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Luke 1:46-55

As you read the above passage, called The Magnificat, hear the joy and praise in Mary’s words. She realized that the coming of Christ proved that God was faithful to all His promises.

His coming shows that God is all He says He is and does all He says He will do. Praise to You, Father!

Christ’s coming displays our Father’s deep compassion on all our human weakness and need.

In Christ God pours out His grace on the unworthy and lavishes His mercy on we who don’t deserve it.

In the infant Jesus, the tenderness of our Father becomes flesh and blood. We can touch Him, and He touches us.

In Christ we see the power of our holy God to make us like Himself.

In Christ we sense God’s desire for intimate fellowship with us human creatures.

Father, in Jesus Christ we see You as You are! Praise to You! Praise and glory and thanks to You forever and ever!

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: My Soul Exalts You, Lord
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