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2017-04-14 Devotional with Hymn, Prepare Yourself for Worship, Uncategorized No comments

Prepare for Easter

Father, as I celebrate this Easter season,
teach me what it means to live as
an Easter person
in this present world.

Everyone here is facing
inescapable death.
Help me live Your resurrection life among them,
glowing with
hope,
purpose, and
joyful anticipation.

Here sin seems inescapable.
Failure is considered inevitable.
Help me live as one set free from sin,
fully forgiven and
fully empowered for triumphant living.

Here, as we face the future,
we are gripped with
helplessness and
despair.
May I walk in the bright confidence of Easter.
Help me live as one whose eternal, glorious life in You
has already begun, and
will never end.

Father, may lost and hopeless people
sense the beautiful reality of Easter
in me.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Alive in You
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Completion

2017-04-12 Devotional with Hymn, One with Our Father No comments

from the book, ONE WITH OUR FATHER 

John 4:34; 5:36; 13:1; 17:4, 23; 19:28

Throughout His earthly ministry, from first to last, Jesus repeatedly spoke of completing the work His Father had sent Him to do. It seemed always on His mind. To express His desire, He used a Greek word meaning to complete, finish, or accomplish.

For example, when He was weary from travel, His disciples urged Him to eat. Jesus was more concerned with drawing a Samaritan woman to His Father:

“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.” (John 4:34, NASB)

Jesus’ critics scoffed at His claim that God was His Father. They considered it blasphemy! Jesus said His works proved that God was His Father:

“The works which the Father has given Me to accomplish—the very works that I do—testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.” (John 5:36, NASB)

On His final night with His disciples before His arrest, Jesus prayed to His Father and gave Him this report on the task for which He had been sent:

“I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.” (John 17:4, NASB)

Jesus finished this same prayer by praying for all who would believe on Him in the years to come. Looking ahead, the work He desired to see completed was their perfect union with each other in the Father and Son:

“I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.” (John 17:23, NASB)

What was the task that had characterized Jesus’ ministry from first to last? It was showing the Father’s love, in all its length and depth and height:

Jesus knowing that His hour had come that he would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end [margin: to the uttermost, or eternally]. (John 13:1, NASB)

Considering this focus of His life, how else would Jesus spend His final breath as He died in agony on the cross?

After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, “I am thirsty.”
Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. (John 19:28, 30, NASB)

The completion of His Father’s work was Jesus’ daily food, His unshakable foundation, His love’s driving force, His dying wish, and His vision of the future for every believer.

Father, my desires,
my time,
my energy,
my future are in Your hands.
Plant me like a seed,
as You did Jesus.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Christ Is Our Horizon
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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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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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