Have you limited God in your thinking?
3 Apr 26
Today's devotional: taken from YouVersion, Devotions on F.I.R.E. Year One
Readings:
Judges 10
Judges 11
Luke 9:1-36
For with God nothing will be impossible (Luke 1:37).
Have you limited God in your thinking?
An elderly Sarah is asked the following question that all of us should ponder: “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14). Jesus seeks to expand the faith of the apostles. There is a crowd consisting of five thousand men alone who gathered before Him. The hour is late and Jesus says to His disciples, “You give them something to eat” (Luke 9:13). Our Lord’s directive is given to show the impossibility of the apostles feeding this hungry large multitude. Did the disciples forget a lesson they perhaps learned in the synagogue about the Lord supernaturally feeding the Israelites quail for one month? God then probed Moses, “Has the LORD’s arm been shortened?” (Numbers 11:23). As the Lord gave Isaac to Sarah, quail to the Israelites, bread and fish to the five thousand, He can still do the impossible today.
Employment Point: Trust God for the impossible.
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Reflections
““Now since the Lord, the God of Israel, has driven the Amorites out before his people Israel, what right have you to take it over? Will you not take what your god Chemosh gives you? Likewise, whatever the Lord our God has given us, we will possess.”Judges 11:23-24 NIV
- people may judge others based on their parentage and Jephthah was driven out of his own country by his own people. Yet the Lord was with him as his people brought him back to fight for them and to become their head. He was not only vindicated, he was made head for those who despised him from the start.
- The words coming out of his mouth are claims with authority. The authority that comes from our Lord Jesus that spoke with wisdom and with peace. With also opportunities to back out from the wrongdoings.
- This part of the bible showed me two things. My lineage doesn’t mean anything. It is our own personal relationship with the Lord that matters.
- The Lord can use anyone to glorify His name. In fact he can use the smallest and weakest of all to accomplish His tasks. Remember Joseph. Also when the Lord is with us, we shall have no fear. No weapons formed against us will prosper.
“And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.””Judges 11:30-31 NIV
- it’s saddening whenever this verse is read. The Lord has never told us to make vows. In fact He told us not to. In our own ways on what we thought would be good to keep such promises, we ought to also discern and pause before we speak, especially anything in relation to sacrificing something or giving back something to the Lord. That was never His intention else we treat Him for the things like a form of trade. That is never the case.
- Grace and salvation can never be earned. At least not with our Lord
“He told them: “Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt.”
Luke 9:3 NIV
- to me, this seems like what a missionary does. Bringing nothing and starting from ground zero.
- I read somewhere from a reflection of someone who is a missionary in the field. It wrote about how people judge them as different because they have the “modern” things that the common people do not have. So from the beginning, it started off on the wrong ground. The people already feel that these new people are like a level higher than them. It did not make them feel comfortable near them.
- Perhaps as a missionary, we ought to also consider how we live our life. Whether we are also seeing ourselves differently from the mission field and the way they live. Perhaps something for us to ponder.
“If people do not welcome you, leave their town and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.””Luke 9:5 NIV
- I felt this verse is a forewarning that there will be rejections, just like how others rejected Jesus, they too will, for sure reject us.
- So do not be discouraged when faced with rejection. The Lord already told us what we should do.
“Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”Luke 9:23 NIV
- Take up our cross DAILY. Not just one day, two days but daily. Consistency.. without fail.. else we would just be walking without carrying the cross and leaving the cross on the ground. When we have to deal with our challenges, we will need our cross to move over, else we will need to turn back, look for the cross where we last left it and start carrying it again. Make conscientious effort to follow Him.
- When I reading this verse in the busy MRT, a lady next to me was scrolling through tictok videos. A thought came to my mind. If I were not a believer, that is perhaps something I would do too. Pointless, aimless scrolling. Living a meaningless life.
“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”
Luke 9:24 NIV
- we are told to live a radical life from the world. We don’t blindly follow. We forgive and love our enemies. It is Christ’s love that we want to tell the rest and His kind of world that we want to be in. One filled with peace, joy and love.
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If You’d Only Known
BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
April 03
If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. — Luke 19:42
Jesus entered into Jerusalem in triumph, but a strange god was there: the pride of Pharisaism. The Pharisees were religious and proper, but Jesus saw straight through them: “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean” (Matthew 23:27).
What is it that blinds me in my day? Do I have a strange god—not a disgusting monster, but a mindset that rules and dominates me? More than once, the Lord has brought me face-to-face with this strange god, but instead of yielding to the Lord, I scraped through. Now I am still in the strange god’s possession, still blind to the thing that would bring me peace.
“If you, even you, had only known …” These words imply culpability; God holds us responsible for what we do not see. It is appalling that we can be in the place where the Spirit of God should be ruling us and still be increasing our condemnation in his sight.
“Now it is hidden from your eyes.” God goes directly to the heart, and the tears of Jesus follow. The terrible sadness of the might-have-been! God never reopens doors that have been closed. He opens other doors, but he reminds us that there are doors we’ve shut that need never have been shut.
Never be afraid when God brings back the past. Let memory have its way. It is a minister of God, with its rebuke and sorrow. God will turn the might-have-been into something wonderful in the future.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
A fanatic is one who entrenches himself in invincible ignorance.
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Reflections
If we’d only known-Indeed we do not. Which is why we need the Lord. Relying on ourselves brings us nowhere.
On the reverse this is also true isn’t it. In the past when the people look at the Pharisees, they see them as religious leaders, teachers, etc. someone whom they respect. However, Jesus said that they are like whitewashed tombs. Looking clean on the outside and rotten on the inside. I feel we are like that too isn’t it?
People may see that we are good people, God’s children but deep down we perhaps know better where we stand. Are we really as clean as we looked on the outside or are those just a nice facade? What are the things that are pulling us away from God?
As it is Good Friday today, may we come to the Lord and spend time meditating on His words. To come and seek Him and ask Him to reveal the things in us that is causing Him grief, the things that we refused to let go, the things we thought was right. May our hearts be open to His correction and rebuke.
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Lent devotion Day 45/53
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 27:33-56
HOLY WEEK: GOOD FRIDAY
Overwhelmed with horror at what we are seeing, we join the crowds as they hurry along behind the soldiers with their prisoner. Forget the calm tableau of so many historic paintings of the scene, with Mary and John standing at a discreet distance from the foot of Jesus' cross. In the Middle East, then as now, there were always more people in the crowd than would fit into the small streets, always people pushing and shoving. The soldiers might keep people at arm's length, but not much more. There were probably fifty people within ten feet of Jesus, jostling, shouting, jeering, pointing, spitting. Some weeping.
You could tell the story a thousand different ways, and they'd all be true. Jesus' followers quickly came to tell it in such a way as to bring out what Jesus himself had been trying to say all along, and what Matthew has been trying to tell us throughout his gospel: this is the event through which Jesus became king. King of the Jews. King of the world.
To see how Matthew has done this, you have to imagine yourself, in that crowd, as someone who has prayed and sung the Psalms all your life. The Psalms turn the hard lumps of Israel's story and hopes into liquid poetry, flowing along like a great river, carrying you with it. And as you stand at the foot of the cross, you have a nightmarish sequence of flashbacks, of déjà vu moments, watching Israel's hopes and dreams come to life, or rather to death, in front of your eyes. Bits and pieces of the Psalms, acted out right there. Jesus is offered sour wine to drink. They cast lots for his clothes. They hail him as 'king of the Jews'. They mock him with his own words. And, after three hours of darkness, Jesus screams out the words that begin the Psalm (22) where some of those things happen: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' The fulfilment has come, and it is a moment of utter terror and hopelessness. It is as though the sun were to rise one day and it would be a black sun, bringing a darkness deeper than the night itself.
As you stand there in this strange, powerful mixture of recognition and horror, bring bit by bit into the picture the stories on which you have lived. Bring the hopes you had when you were young. Bring the bright vision of family life, of success in sport or work or art, the dreams of exciting adventures in far-off places. Bring the joy of seeing a new baby, full of promise and possibility. Bring the longings of your heart. They are all fulfilled here, though not in the way you imagined. This is the way God fulfilled the dreams of his people. This is how the coming king would overcome all his enemies.
Or bring the fears and sorrows you had when you were young. The terror of violence, perhaps at home. The shame of failure at school, of rejection by friends. The nasty comments that hurt you then and hurt you still. The terrible moment when you realized a wonderful relationship had come to an end. The sudden, meaningless death of someone you loved very much. They are all fulfilled here, too. God has taken them upon himself, in the person of his Son. This is the earthquake moment, the darkness-at-noon moment, the moment of terror and sudden faith, as even the hard-boiled Roman soldier blurts out at the end. (Don't forget that 'Son of God' was a regular title claimed by Caesar, his boss.)
But then bring the hopes and sorrows of the world. Bring the millions who are homeless because of flood or famine. Bring the children orphaned by AIDS or war. Bring the politicians who begin by longing for justice and end up hoping for bribes. Bring the beautiful and fragile earth on which we live. Think of God's dreams for his creation, and God's sorrow at its ruin.
As we stand there by the cross, let the shouting and pushing and the angry faces fade away for a moment, and look at the slumped head of Jesus. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in him, here on the cross. God chose Israel to be his way of rescuing the world. God sent Jesus to be his way of rescuing Israel. Jesus went to the cross to fulfil that double mission. His cross, planted in the middle of the jostling, uncomprehending, mocking world of his day and ours, stands as the symbol of a victory unlike any other. A love unlike any other. A God unlike any other.
TODAY
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for all that you bore that day. Thank you for your victory, the victory of love and justice. Thank you that you are the Son of God.
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““He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.”Matthew 27:42 NIV
- a reminder that His thoughts and plans are higher than ours. So sometimes when things happened in a way we don’t understand, it doesn’t mean that it is beyond hope or the end. Sometimes, the end is only the beginning…
Let’s pray:
Father, pls forgive us of the times we choose to believe in ourselves and not seeking You first. Forgive us of the wrongdoings that we may have subconsciously committed even without us knowing. We are sorry Father and we ask of Your forgiveness and to reveal to us the weaknesses in our lives. May Your light shine through us and light up our lives too so that we in turn, may also light up others. May the world be filled with Your light and Your glory. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen 🙏🏻
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