1 OCT 23 Sunday: A Closer Walk Devotional

 1 OCT 23 Sunday: A Closer Walk Devotional

“They offered sacrifices on all the hilltops, just like the nations the Lord had driven from the land ahead of them.  So the people of Israel had done many evil things, arousing the Lord’s anger.” 2 Kings 17:11

We can watch the news, television shows, or even social media and see what the world is focused on.  We see the worship of self, nature, and the evils birthed from it.  As believers, we are struck by the evil that is present in the culture in which we live.  You can go anywhere on the earth and in any culture and see various pagan religions played out in the lives of the people.

Today, our societies encourage evil and call it good.  They also condemn good and call it evil.  For believers, we are to hate evil and stay away from practicing it ourselves.  Israel had been freed from years of slavery and abuse at the hands of the Egyptians. God did this for them and chose them to be his very own people.  In doing so, he made an agreement or covenant with them.  His commandments showed them the difference between good and evil.

It also gave them a picture of God’s holiness, goodness, love, and power.  Israel would fall into temptation and sin against God breaking the covenant by adopting the ways of the world.  In the verse above, the people established their worship and hope in evil ways rather than in God.  We do this today when we blend the world’s ways, philosophies, ideologies, paganism, and other religious practices with God’s.  We end up losing focus on God. 

As David gives us insight in Psalm 121, I look to the mountains, does my help come from there? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth! Everything else comes up short and ultimately destroys the life we have now and damages our relationship with God.  Even though it is very difficult to strip off the things in our culture that trip us up, we can do so by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

Are you focused on the world’s ways or Jesus?

Reading Plan: Psalm 66, 67; 2 Kings 17:1-18; Acts 9:36-43; Luke 5: 1-11

29 SEP 23 Friday: A Closer Walk Devotional

 29 SEP 23 Friday: A Closer Walk Devotional

“Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me.  Your terrors have paralyzed me.  They swirl around me like floodwaters all day long.  They have engulfed me completely.  You have taken away my companions and loved ones.  Darkness is my closest friend.” Psalm 88:16-18

Do you ever get sucked into a mind game or battle? Relationships, communication, and conflict can cause you to second-guess yourself and really cloud your thinking.  Sometimes the truth is veiled and you can’t find it.  Sometimes it is there, but you don’t like it.  Either way, it can shake you up mentally.  Truth is our anchor which secures us when the storms of life come.  It allows us to gain our bearings and make sense of things.

In the passage above, the descendent of Korah is dealing with the rejections of God.  Korah and his followers led a rebellion against Moses and Aaron, thinking they should be allowed to go into the presence of God.  God chooses who can come to him and to be in his presence.  People couldn’t just decide for themselves and muscle their way in.  That wouldn’t bode well and it didn’t.

In this case, God judged Korah and his followers by opening up a giant hole in the ground and swallowing them alive.  Those family members who were left behind felt the rejection of God and the people.  Some of the psalms were written by them.  Sometimes we can feel like them as believers and enter a dark and lonely place.  It feels like we have been abandoned and rejected, but if you are God’s children then you need to breakthrough this battle in the mind.

How? We must replace those feelings with the truth and grab hold of that anchor until the storm passes.  Jesus did this very thing as he was being tempted by Satan in Matthew 4.  Each time a false accusation or statement came to him, he parried it with Scripture.  There is one caveat, if you are sinning and running from God, he will chastise you until you repent.  So keep accounts short.

Are you experiencing a battle in your mind? Would you like to win?

Reading Plan: Psalm 88; 2 Kings 9: 17-37; 1 Cor. 7:1-9; Matt. 6: 7-15

30 SEP 23 Saturday: A Closer Walk Devotional

 30 SEP 23 Saturday: A Closer Walk Devotional

“Wherever your treasure is there is the desires of your heart will also be.  No one can serve two masters.  For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.” Matthew 6: 21, 24

Time and time again, I talk to people talk to me about their next assignment, tour, or what they will do when they leave the military.  I find those conversations to be intriguing and sometimes disheartening.  Change and the unknown can produce anxiety in a person’s life.  All of us are affected by change in different ways.  These seasons of change are actually opportunities for self-reflection and a deeper connection to God.

We will often sit and discuss a potential new job, location for a tour, or new places to see and experience.  We start dreaming or exploring the positives and negatives of the new phase that will be entered.  We actually start to grieve a bit, knowing that we have planted roots,  made friends, and have probably hit a good rhythm in what we do.  Sometimes we don’t want to leave, but we have to.

What about God? Do we ever take the time to ask him, what do you want? Is there a place you have us serve? Do you want to develop us in a place we don’t necessarily want to go? When I ask those questions, people pause and respond; I didn’t think about that.  Well, God desires to be in the kind of relationship that we talk to him about everything.  He is the author and finisher of our faith, so he will orchestrate where we will go, and who we will meet and serve. He will also put before us the challenges of developing our character and the gifts of the Spirit.

Jesus tells his followers to be mindful of where your heart’s desires are placed.  If it is focused on temporal earthly things, you will go astray.  It is a heart check.  If you don’t check yourself, you will wreck yourself.  Our service and lives must be devoted to God, that means laying down our future before him and saying, take it and make it useful to thee.

Where is your life devoted and whom do you serve?

Reading Plan: Psalm 87, 90;  2 Kings. 11:1-20; 1 Cor. 7:10-24; Matt. 6:19-24

28 SEP 23 Thursday: A Closer Walk Devotional

 28 SEP 23 Thursday: A Closer Walk Devotional

“Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.” 1 Cor. 6: 19-20

During a training class this week, I heard an interesting quote from Victor Frankl.  He said, “I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”  We like our freedoms in America and people are drawn to this country because of it.  We are also hated for having these freedoms.  The truth is, freedom is never free.  It cost the United States a great deal of blood and sacrifice to achieve it and also to maintain it.  

Those freedoms are limited though.  We are not autonomous and there are responsibilities attached to them.  The Apostle Paul reached a people who were far from God, lost, and slaves to sin.  They had free will, as far as to freely choose any sins they wished, but they were spiritually blind and dead.  When the Gospel was preached to them, the Holy Spirit gave them eyes to see, ears to hear, and a new heart to receive Jesus.

They became free from the bondage of sin and death, but that did not mean they were free to themselves.  God purchased them.  What is described in the verses above is slaves being bought.  The people were not set free to do as they pleased, but free to be all that God had planned for them to be.  Believers have a new Master, which is Christ.  Paul himself states this in many of his greetings to the churches: Paul a slave of Christ.  He understood he was not his own.

The bodies and souls of believers belong to Jesus and the Holy Spirit takes up residence within.  Our solemn duty is to honor God with our body and to live in a manner that glorifies Him.  We have freedom in Christ to do the works that please Him and are given responsibilities that He expects us to upheld.

Are you living like you are free “from” Jesus or free “in”Jesus?

Reading Plan: Psalm 34; 2 Kings. 9:1-16; 1 Cor. 6:12-20; Matt. 6:16-18

26 SEP 23 Tuesday: A Closer Walk Devotional

 26 SEP 23 Tuesday: A Closer Walk Devotional

“You have heard the commandment that says, ‘You must not commit adultery.’ But I say anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:27-28

When I was a boy, I was in the scouts and my Dad used to give me nuggets of wisdom.  When we would go camping or work on merit badges, there were new skills to be learned and cautions that came with them.  Once we set up camp, we would gather wood for the fire.  As a young kid, I was fascinated by fire and the fact that we were going to be taught how to start one.

As the fire got going, we were always tempted to wave a lit branch around or do foolishness with other scouts.  Go figure.  My Dad would calmly tell us, ‘If you play with fire you are going to get burnt’.  Sure enough, someone would not heed the wise words, someone did get burnt.  Someone’s mistake leads to another merit badge, first aid.  Wise words are meant to save ourselves some pain.

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, unpacks and expands the spirit of the law. (The Ten Commandments) Our thought life leads to sin, in and of itself can be sin.  He tells us to deal with it harshly or drastically.  If your eye causes you to sin, cut it out.  He is not telling us to perform self-mutilation, but to cut lust and adultery out of our lives.  

Sins of lust and adultery are an epic failure of dishonoring yourself, your neighbor, your community or nation, and God.  Lust is like fire, if you mess with it, you will get burnt. These words while strong are meant to set a plumbline of holiness and godliness, a set of character traits important for everyone.

Are you playing with the fire of lust and adultery?

Reading Plan: Psalm 78:1-39; 2 Kings. 5:19-27; 1 Cor. 5: 1-8; Matt. 5:27-37