Archive for the ‘Devotionals’ Category

12-20-10

“Those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it… Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty (lack of focus)… I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest…I should become disqualified.
(I Cor. 9: 24-27). The prize Paul sought was to receive God’s testimony about his life, that he walk in obedience. Paul’s highest goal was to win the prize of presenting this testimony to Jesus on the last day that his obedience was complete and his love for Jesus was perfected. The prize involves offering to Jesus a life of complete obedience and then receiving His response, which includes eternal rewards that express how He feels about us loving Him in this way.

“Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected… I do not count myself to have apprehended… I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God.” (Phil. 3:12-14) Paul wrote towards the end of his life that he had not yet attained the prize of the testimony of obedience. God’s testimony about our life is not given until we complete our race. Paul had several years before his race was over. The prize of the upward call of God is to receive the testimony about our life that we finished the race in obedience. Paul was assured of the prize of the crown of righteousness as his race was nearing completion. “There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness…on that Day”
(2 Tim.4:8).

We have a certain amount of years in this life to bring every area under the Spirit’s leadership as our way of demonstrating our love to God. All who are wise will make this their greatest single goal for which they will gladly sacrifice pleasure, money, and even honor in ministry.

The pursuit of comprehensive obedience includes bridling our speech, making a covenant with our eyes and refusing to look at anything that stirs up lust, disciplining our physical appetites, and managing our time (for service and prayer) and our money (to increase the kingdom beyond personal comfort).

Power in our life is found in pursuing obedience. There are powerful dynamics that occur in our heart when we soberly seek to walk in total obedience. God gives us many opportunities to make decisions that prove our love to Him. We will make wrong decisions we regret, yet we have opportunity to change them. If we make right decisions in obedience, He gives us many opportunities to confirm them, or prove them in our character.

Our greatest calling is to love Him in a complete way with love that is perfected. Every movement of our heart in seeking to show love to Him by obedience moves Him, and thus it is not in vain. Do you know the way you move Him? Each time we repent of compromise, it moves Him. The Lord values our journey to grow in love. If we do not quit in our pursuit, then we win.

Blessings,

Gary

11-22-10

God’s ultimate purpose for His creation is to provide a family for Himself and a Bride for His Son as His eternal companion to reign with Him forever. The guiding principle of God’s activity throughout history has been to raise up a prepared bride for His Son. The Father set His heart to train the Bride to willingly prepare herself to rule the earth with Jesus. “For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.” Rev. 19:7

The inheritance that the Father promised Jesus is a people who He fully possesses. God will cause all creation to bow in obedience to Jesus, “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,” and Jesus will receive a people who fully love Him, “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul…” (Deut.30:6)

Jesus loves us to the same degree that the Father loves Him. We will love Jesus to the same degree the Father loves Him. We will be equally yoked to Jesus in love, as Jesus will not be unequally yoked to His bride. From before the foundations of the world, God’s ultimate purpose was to have a people who were blameless in their love for God.

Human history began in Eden with Adam and Eve joined as a bridegroom and bride.
Paul interpreted Gen. 2:18-24 as speaking of Jesus and the Church. In the relationship of Adam and Eve, we see a prophetic picture of Jesus joined to His Church as a bride. “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”
Eph.5:31-32

Natural history ends in an Eden-like city with Jesus and His people joined as a bridegroom and bride. (Rev. 21-22) The New Jerusalem is call the Bride because it was prepared for the Bride and is where she experiences a face to face relationship with God. Natural history ends with a Bride who has been made ready for her marriage to Jesus. The history of the redeemed before the wedding feast is the preparation for their life after it. ‘The marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready… He said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!’ (Rev. 19:7-9)

Jesus began His public ministry at a wedding (Jn. 2:1-12) and He ended it declaring that the kingdom of God was like a wedding. (Matt22:1-14)

Jesus began His ministry to the apostles by revealing Himself as the Bridegroom God and ended it by calling them to cultivate intimacy with Him as the Bridegroom God. Jesus’ ministry was first introduced by John the Baptist functioning as a friend of the bridegroom and ended by the Apostle John revealing the Bride. “The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!” (Rev.22:17) It shall be, in that day…that you will call me (Jesus) “My Husband” (Hos. 2:16)

Blessings,

Gary

10-25-10

Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Mt. 22:36-40)

People who love Jesus will love others much more. It is impossible to love Jesus and not love people more. The greatest anointing of the Spirit is to walk in the two great commandments by loving Jesus with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves.

Love for others, like loving God, flows from regularly encountering God’s love for us. “We love Him because He first loved us.”(I Jn. 4:19) To walk in genuine love as defined by God is much more than sentimentalism. It takes seeking to love Jesus with “all” our heart, mind, soul, and strength. To walk in love requires the Spirit’s power to energize us; we regularly need our emotions stirred and strengthened by the subtle impressions of the Spirit. “The love of God has been poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” (Rom. 5:5)

Only by loving Jesus and ourselves are we able to consistently overflow in love for others. We must love God first and ourselves to have power and energy to properly love our neighbor. We can only love our neighbor in the overflow of loving God, for only in being loved by God and in loving God can we properly love others.

“But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. (Luke 6:27-28,32-33) This demanding commandment requires a comprehensive re-ordering of how we think and process life. We by nature are self-consumed, so it takes the power of the Spirit to walk this out.

We are not called to love others “instead of” ourselves but “as” ourselves by using the same standard in measuring love for others as we use for ourselves. We are to seek our neighbors’ benefit “with the same focus and energy,” as that we seek for ourselves.

To love others as ourselves is to value their longing for significance, acceptance, and success as being as important as our own. Because all people are created in God’s image, they deserve to receive love from us just as we receive love from God.

We are not to dismiss loving ourselves, but we enhance it by loving others with new depth. We will experience God’s tender compassion as we show it to others. Loving others is the greatest work of the Spirit and it’s the ultimate proof of His work
in the human heart. As we love God and ourselves, we overflow in love for others. It is the visible measurement of our invisible love for God.

Blessings,

Gary

10-19-10

“If you love me, keep my commandments… He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me… If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word.
(Jn. 14:15-23).

Jesus defined loving God as being deeply rooted obedience. There is no such thing as loving God without seeking to obey His word. Love requires the wholehearted pursuit of obedience in both our attitudes and actions.

Each of us has a different struggle according to our personality and circumstances. Thus, we each have a different assignment from which we offer our gift of love to God. Saying “no” to sin gives us an opportunity to express our love to God. What God wants most is our response of love that is shown in seeking to obey His Word. Jesus wants love from us that allows Him to take total control of our lives to protect us and glorify us in His love as our place of greatness.

“You are worthy…for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and nation.” (Rev. 5:9) Adoration and gratitude to Jesus for His greatness and kindness is essential to love. With awestruck, grateful love, we adore Jesus and trust His wisdom, humility and power. He is the most deserving and capable Person to rule our life and the whole earth. We often take the wealth of God’s kindness so lightly. “Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4) Love grows as we are moved by the truth of Jesus’ greatness and by gratitude in seeing the whole story of how He is treating us.

True love expresses loyalty to God’s Word instead of yielding to the fear of man. Love for God is loyalty to His truth as seen in Jesus. Our love must be expressed in alliance with Jesus of the Bible, not the Jesus of humanist sentiment. The Holy Spirit will glorify and exalt Jesus by guiding us into all truth about Him. There are three truths about Jesus we must hold firm to in defining who Jesus is and how we love Him. First, is His deity – His right to establish absolute standards for which the nations are accountable to Him. Second, the only way of salvation is through Jesus. Thirdly, He possess the wisdom and love to judge sin in time and eternity.

Finally, love is not passive but includes burning desire. We seek to love Jesus more than anything else. “For the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Ex.34:14) The God who has everything wants us because He is love. He wants to take over our life and to consume us from the inside out as He determines our destiny and establishes our eternal greatness and joy. “Take up your cross and follow Me. Leave it all behind. Say goodbye to houses and lands for My sake.” This is the voice of a Bridegroom who gave all for the sake of love, as one who laid down His life for His friends, who loves us with all His heart, soul, mind and strength, and wants a people yoked to Him in this kind of love.

Blessings,

Gary

10-11-10

“My son, if you receive my words, and treasure my commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding; Yes, if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding, and if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God” (Prov. 2:1-5)

“If you receive my words…” That’s a spirit of obedience. In other words, it’s the opposite of rejecting His words. You don’t receive His words because you believe them; you receive His words because you commit to agree with then in your lifestyle. If His finger is on you in an area, and if you don’t respond, you are not receiving His words for you, you are resisting it. And, prayer is no substitute for obedience, meaning you can’t live in deliberate disobedience and add more prayer time and throw in a fasting day and hope it all sorts itself out. No, you need to accept His words and then live a life obedient to them.

“Treasure His words,” means to meditate on them. We treasure the words and make them dear to us by turning the Word of God into a dialogue with God. We agree with His word, we ask for more insight and we commit to respond and ask for help.

Incline your ear to wisdom, apply your heart to understanding is to have a teachable spirit and open heart. When we are reading the Word, we cannot approach it with a bias as to its meaning. We have to apply our heart to what we read and come under the discipline of the Word, and not resist its meaning to justify what we want it to mean. I lay down my bias and what I want it to mean and accept what it does mean. I cry out for understanding and ask the Lord to give me more insight and revelation.

“Search for it as hidden treasure.” Search for it; pursue it diligently. It is not enough to “kind of” get the information. We have to search for it as hidden treasure which will take some rigorous effort to attain. It is within reach, but it is not easy to get, because the Lord only wants to give deeper things of His heart to the people who cannot live without them. He gives salvation for free, but He gives the deep things of His heart to the people who hunger and search for them.

Proverbs 25:2 says, “The glory of God is to conceal” – or hide- “a matter; the glory of a king is to search it out.” God says, “It is my glory to hide the deep things. It is a kingly spirit to come after Me. When I hide Myself, love comes to the surface and the seeker who comes after Me can’t take no for an answer.” So if you have said, “Lord, you are hiding yourself”, the Lord might say, “It is my glory to do this but it is your glory to search it out because here I am.”

If you do this you will discover the knowledge of God. Let’s not give up. Let’s not draw back based on how we feel or how well we are doing. Let’s stay committed to diligently seek after the hidden treasure of the knowledge of God.

Blessings,

Gary