Would God prefer to bless or curse you?

 16 Mar 26

Today's devotional: taken from YouVersion, Devotions on F.I.R.E. Year One

Readings:

Deuteronomy 28

Mark 15:27-47

The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace (Numbers 6:24-26). 

Would God prefer to bless or curse you?

God says to Abram, “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you” (Genesis 12:3). The Lord reveals His desire to bless many by using the plural term “those,” and shows His lack of desire to curse by the singular word “him.” God longed to bless Israel as a nation and have them bless others. In Deuteronomy 28, God displays His longing to bless His people for their obedience but discourages them from disobedience through the many curses. Furthermore, the Sermon on the Mount conveys the heart of God. The beatitudes (blessings) in Matthew 5:1-11 each begin with the word “blessed” which means marked by God’s favor. 

Employment Point: Walk with God who desires to daily bless you.

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Reflections

It is rather disturbing to read Deuteronomy 28. Besides the mentioning of the blessings that the Lord will bless His people if they ate in obedience to Him, a great chunk of it talks about the curses and the things that may happen due to disobedience.

“The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed.”

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭28‬:‭61‬ ‭NIV‬‬

• this verse, if I were a person living in those times, is already enough to be a scare. Whatever things that we have read in the bible is already bad enough. Parents eating their own children. How barbaric can this get? 
• But what we do know is that the Lord has given and He too, has the power to take away. We ought not to take anything for granted but be contented and give thanks for His blessings and provision.

“come down from the cross and save yourself!” Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.”Mark‬ ‭15‬:‭30‬, ‭32‬ ‭NIV‬‬

• The chief priests and the teachers of the law had never even believed a single word that Jesus said. If He were to really be able to come down that instant, they will still find ways to kill Him. In those instances, the so called believers, and the so called role models, behaved more like pagans than anyone who is holy or even Christ-like
• This is a reminder to us too, that at times, people who are at the top can also fall prey to differences, power, or other things. We ought to pray for them and also ourselves, that the Lord will guard our hearts and our minds, and not allow the enemy to gain any foothold in our lives. May the Lord also help us in our quiet time, to search our hearts and bring to mind the things that are offensive to Him and lead us to the way everlasting. 

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The Judgment Seat of Christ

BY OSWALD CHAMBERS

March 16

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. — 2 Corinthians 5:10

Paul says that, no matter who we are, we must appear before the judgment seat of Christ. We tend to think of this moment of judgment as some far-off event, but it needn’t be. Right here and now, we can learn to live in the white light of Christ’s penetrating gaze. However difficult his judgment may be to face at first, it will eventually bring us delight, revealing all the wonderful work God has done inside us.

Keep yourself steadily before Christ’s judgment, and remember his command: “Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1). A wrong temper of mind about another soul will end in the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are. One worldly judgment about another person, and the end of it will be hell inside you.

Whenever you are tempted to judge, drag the impulse at once to the light and say, “My God, I am guilty.” If you don’t, hardness will set in. It isn’t only God who punishes us for sin. Sin establishes itself in the sinner and pays the sinner back in full: the price is that, gradually, you become so used to sinning that you no longer recognize it as sin.

No amount of struggling or praying will enable us to stop sinning. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to come in and set it right. “Walk in the light, as he is in the light” (1 John 1:7). Many of us think that walking in the light means walking according to the standard we’ve set for other people. That is not God’s standard. Walk in the light of the holiest you know—the Lord Jesus Christ—and let his judgment have its way with you.

Deuteronomy 28-29; Mark 14:54-72

WISDOM FROM OSWALD

Am I learning how to use my Bible? The way to become complete for the Master’s service is to be well soaked in the Bible; some of us only exploit certain passages. Our Lord wants to give us continuous instruction out of His word; continuous instruction turns hearers into disciples. 

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Reflections

While I started reading this devotional, it brought to mine that judgment is not what happens on judgement day. It is how many times we choose to obey or ignore the prompting of the Holy Spirit. 

I am sure you will agree with me that there are times when we hear the Lord’s prompting, to tell us to keep quiet, for example. If we keep on talking, we are going in direct conflict with His commands, we are then not choosing obedience but defiance. If we kept defying the Lord, we will be like what Oswald said, “hardness will set in and we will no longer recognise sin as a sin because we get so used to it.”

It is too easy to judge others, forgetting we are all work-in-progress human beings, prone to errors and sin, until we truly walk in-step with the Lord and allowing Him to shape us. There’s much work to be done on our part in learning to surrender and to obey. 

Even the times when we saw how others have fallen short, may we not judge them but to just pray for them and be gracious to them for the Lord had not judged us and has been gracious to us. 

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Lent devotion Day 27/53

taken from YouVersion, Lent for Everyone

Lent for Everyone is a devotional created and written by N.T. (Tom) Wright. For each day of Lent, there is a reading chosen from the Gospel of Matthew, plus a reflection by Wright. These readings have grown out of a project encouraging Lent reading in Northern England. This is the second in a three-volume series based on the Revised Common Lectionary of the Church of England.

Today’s reading:

Matthew 19

WEEK 4: MONDAY

At the time I am writing this, a politician has just received loud and long applause for saying rude words about the very rich, especially people in the banks who pay themselves vast sums of money. Everybody likes to hate the rich. That's the popular mood right now.

That's why the most surprising thing about this story is — how surprised the disciples were when Jesus declared it would be hard for the rich to enter God's kingdom (verse 24). You might have thought that would be obvious, not least to some- one who had been listening to Jesus and following him for some time. But it seems as though the disciples still looked at the world through the lens which said that the more rich you were, the more God was pleased with you. Some passages in scripture do seem to point that way. But mostly this was an assumption people made, a way of coming to terms with the obvious inequalities in society.

(Let's be clear, by the way. When the rich man speaks of 'having eternal life', and when Jesus speaks of 'entering the kingdom of heaven', or 'having treasure in heaven', they are not talking about 'life after death' in the popular, modern sense. They are talking about the whole new world that they believed God was going to make, 'the renewal of all things' (verse 28). The point is that they believed that 'heaven' was going to rule on earth, so that the question was about who would inherit and share in that new heaven-and-earth world.)

Jesus had seen, in this case and no doubt many others, that earthly riches form a lining of lead around the heart. They insulate you from God and from other people. They drag you down to be less and less the person you might have become. Here was this man, all eager and willing — except for the one thing that mattered.

Jesus' initial reply is also quite surprising. He lists the commandments, but not all of them: murder, adultery, theft, lying, honouring father and mother, and (an ancient summary of the whole law which Jesus had made his own) loving your neighbour as yourself. What about the earlier commandments, the ones about not having or making any other gods but Israel's God, the one about honouring his name, and the command about the Sabbath? Wouldn't we have expected Jesus to include those too?

Well, there is a sense in which he does. When the man tells him he has observed all those commandments, Jesus gives him two more: sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and come and follow me. In the place where we might have expected Jesus to speak about putting God first, getting rid of idols, and honouring God's name, we have the command to get rid of money and to follow Jesus. This makes us realize that when Jesus challenged the man at the beginning ('Why ask me about what's good? There is only one who is good') there may have been more to the quip than meets the eye. Putting Jesus first and putting God first seem to be coming close to the same thing.

That's why we can never remain content with shallow discussions about the goodies and baddies in today's culture. Yes, some people play fast and loose with other people's money and get fat on the proceeds. But plenty in the same profession work tirelessly for their customers and give away much of their own income. Yes, many people in the western world today have made greed a way of life. But many work responsibly within the system and do their best to make it more humane, more honouring to God. All Christians should ask themselves, on a regular basis, if there is anything holding them back from following Jesus completely and utterly, any lead weights around part of their character or lifestyle. Who knows what the answer will be? All we know is that, when the answer comes, it will be fully in line with the scriptures upon which Jesus was drawing, and even more fully in line with Jesus himself.

In the last analysis, it's all down to God's power. In the previous chapter, we were taught to forgive because God had forgiven us. Here we are taught that the way to follow the God of all power and possibility may well be to give away our own power and possibilities. When God finally transforms all things, then and only then will we discover who his true disciples have been.

TODAY

Lord, make us grateful for all you give us, and ready to give it all back to you.

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Let’s pray:

Father Lord, we truly thank You for providing us shelter, food, a healthy body, a comfortable bed to rest, a place to work, a good boss(es), peace in our hearts, happy family, amongst many more and also the very breath that is keeping us alive. Help us Father, not to take any of these things for granted but have this grateful heart to sing praise and thanks to You Lord. We know Lord You give, You can also take away. Help us then, to not forget all these things and be in obedience to You and Your commands. Thank You Father for the grace and mercy. Praise You Father 🙌🏻✝️