BELIEVE: week four: THE BIBLE

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“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” ~ 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Remember the first time you walked outside in the winter as a child and you saw your breath? Perhaps you leaned too close to a window and saw moisture appear as you exhaled. The oxygen we breathe in becomes carbon dioxide in our lungs. These gases are both invisible, but as we exhale, the carbon dioxide mixes with water vapor, and because cold air has less water vapor than the warm air from our lungs, it produces fog.

But what happens when God exhales? The word for “God-breathed” in 2 Timothy is theophneustos, and it gives us a clue. Theo means “God”; pneustos means “spirit” or “breath.” The first time we see God exhaling is in Genesis when he is breathing life into the nostrils of Adam. In 2 Timothy we again see him breathing out, but instead of fog, God’s Spirit or breath becomes words on the tips of men’s pens. Those words bring life to all who study them.

Next time you see your breath on a cold day, remember God exhaled and created life-sustaining words to live by. We call it the Bible.

“I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God that guides my beliefs and actions.”

[Excerpt from Believe: 31-Day Devotional by Randy & Rozanne Frazee, pgs. 11-12.]

Fear Not!

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Today’s Devotional Thought:

“...The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” ~ Philippians 4:5b-7

Are you afraid? I admit I am afraid at times. For me it is not a fear for me but a fear for my children. I fear for them because of the world in which they must grow up. I read the news and I fear.

I am not alone in my fears. In 1975, Roger Hart conducted a study on where children felt safe to play. He focused on 86 children between the ages of three to twelve in a small town in Vermont. Hart would follow the kids throughout the day, documenting everywhere the children went by themselves. He then took that information and made physical maps that measured the distance each child was allowed to go by themselves and what the average was for every age group.

Hart discovered that these kids had remarkable freedom. Even four- or five-year-olds, traveled unsupervised throughout their neighborhoods, and by the time they were 10, most of the kids had the run of the entire town. And the kids' parents weren't worried either.

Then several years ago (about 2014), he went back to the same town to document the children of the children that he had originally tracked in the '70s, and when he asked the new generation of kids to show him where they played alone, what he found floored him. Hart said, "They just didn't have very far to take me, just walking around their property." In other words, the huge circle of freedom on the maps had grown tiny.

Hart added, "There is no free range outdoors. Even when the kids are older, parents now say, 'I need to know where you are at all times.'" But what's odd about all of this, is that the town is not more dangerous than it was before. There's literally no more crime today than there was 40 years ago.

So why has the invisible leash between parent and child tightened so much? Hart says it was absolutely clear from his interviews. The reason was fear. Here's the conclusion to his new study: fear of the world outside our door narrows the circle of our lives. [Adapted from NPR, “World with No Fear,” Invisibilia podcast (1-15-15)]

We have become a fearful people and through our fear the circles of our lives have begun to shrink. There may be many reasons for this but the answer for our fear is trust in God. “The Lord is near...” He is no further away today than He ever has been. When we trust Him (even with our children) He still takes away our anxieties to give His peace. It is a peace that guards against fear.

Are you fearful? Why? Trust in God. Bring Him your fears and He will give a peace that transcends understanding. He is still God. He is still in control.

Prayer: Holy Father, You do not change. You are the same today, tomorrow and forever. There is nothing beyond Your power, Your control. Forgive us for our fear, our lack of trust in You. We give You or fears. We lay them at Your cross and proclaim our trust that you are able to protect Your children. “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21).

The Master Weaver...

Philippians 1:12-14, "Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear."

You're chained. Your life is balanced on the edge of uncertainty. Will you live or die? Most of us cannot imagine what that scenario would be like. Would you be afraid? Would you cry? Would you curse God for allowing you to be in such a situation?

Paul saw something else. Now I'm sure he saw his situation but he saw something else, perhaps Someone else. He believed that God had a plan. He believed that God was most certainly and imperceptibly working beneath the surface to will and to act in such a way to achieve a higher and greater goal.

The longer I submit to God's will in Christ the more I see what Paul saw. It is from the backward glance at my life that I see God has always been working beneath the surface to achieve higher and greater goals, to make something beautiful. Because of what God has done I can trust Him in what He is doing. My job, in all this, is just to trust and to seek God's will. As the old hymn says, "Where He leads me I will follow." And when I get there I will be able to look back to see the beautiful thing God has done.

In his book Jesus Among Other Gods, Ravi Zacharias tells the story about how God, the Master Weaver, sovereignly works to weave beauty into our lives as we respond to his will. During a trip to India, Zacharias noticed a father and son who were weaving some of the most beautiful Indian wedding saris in the world. Zacharias explains the background and then describes the scene:

"The sari, of course, is the garment worn by Indian women. It is usually six yards long. Wedding saris are a work of art; they are rich in gold and silver threads, resplendent with an array of colors.

"The place I was visiting was known for making the best wedding saris in the world. I expected to see some elaborate system of machines and designs that would boggle the mind. Not so! Each sari was being made individually by a father-and-son team. The father sat above on a platform two-to-three-feet higher than the son, surrounded by several spools of thread, some dark, some shining.

"The son did just one thing. At a nod, from his father, he would move the shuttle from one side to the other and back again. The father would gather some threads in his fingers, nod once more, and the son would move the shuttle again. This would be repeated for hundreds of hours, till you would begin to see a magnificent pattern emerging.

"The son had the easy task—just to move at the father's nod. All along, the father had the design in mind and brought the threads together.

The more I reflect on my own life and study the lives of others, I am fascinated to see the design God has for each one of us … if we would only respond to him." [Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods (Zondervan, 2000), pp. 17-18]

I don't know what you're facing. It may be hard, frustrating, painful, sad or discouraging. And you may not know what God is weaving. We can only see snippets of it here and there when we look back. Even so, I can promise you that one day when you see the whole of your life you will see a pattern emerge, an intricate and beautiful design, that only the Master weaver could weave. Therefore, despite what we are facing, we can see something else.

Prayer: Our Father, and the Weaver of our lives, we commit our lives to Your hand. You have a pattern in mind, a beautiful and intricate design, that we can only barely fathom now. But we trust You. We know Your plans are best even if we cannot always understand them. Help us to move when You nod. In Jesus name, amen.

God's mercy hug...

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Today's devotional thought: God's mercy hug...

Matthew 9:10-13, "While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.””

In the culture in which Jesus finds himself, perceived sinners—such as tax collectors who were thought to be extortionists who made money by taking up taxes for Rome—were kicked to the sidelines of society. For that Jewish culture, the most intimate setting you could be in with others is at the dinner table. Eating became a part of religious expression. To eat with sinners would make Jesus unclean. Sinners were dirty, worthless, unwanted and unloved. But to Jesus, these are the very ones to whom he feels called.

When his disciples are questioned, Jesus says, "...go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’" Sacrifice was thought the greatest good in the Jewish system. Jesus says there is something greater—mercy. The religious leader's personal righteousness forbids them to eat with sinners. Jesus' perfect righteousness compels him to eat with sinners.

To walk in Jesus’ footsteps is to be compelled towards mercy, to suspend judgement to give mercy, to lower ourselves to lift others up.

Pastor Jud Wilhite shares the story of a church member named Cody Huff in his book, Uncensored Grace. Before Cody became a member at Central Christian Church in Las Vegas, he was sleeping in an open field next to the church. But at one time Cody was making loads of money as a famous bass pro fisherman who had even been featured on ESPN. Yet he couldn't overcome his problem with drugs. He began a crack addiction that led him to smoke up $600,000 worth of savings, his house, his Harley, his new boat. He smoked away everything he had and ended up homeless. A man who had eaten at fine restaurants and interacted with celebrities had bottomed out and was now homeless.

But God would turn his life around—and it all started with the mercy of a church volunteer. Some people from the church's homeless ministry were handing out sandwiches in the park where Cody slept, and they told him he could get a shower at Central Christian Church. The last place Cody wanted to go was a church, but he hadn't bathed in so long that even other homeless men couldn't stand his smell anymore. Cody explained what happened next:

"I walked into the church, and this lady named Michelle, who knew me from the homeless ministry, said, "Good morning, Cody. How are you?" Then she looked at me, and she said, "Cody, you need a hug." And I said, "Honey, you don't want to touch me because I haven't had a shower in three months." If Michelle heard me, she didn't seem to care. She walked up, and she looked in my eyes, and she gave me a big hug and told me that Jesus loved me. In that split second, I was somebody. She even remembered my name. That was the point where I knew that God was alive in this world."

Over the next several weeks, Cody's life began to be restored. He gave his life to Christ. He started leading a Bible study in the park for other homeless people. "That was over three years ago," Jud says. "Now he's married, and he and his wife serve faithfully in our homeless ministry every weekend. He has his own business. From ashes, God has raised him up to use him as an instrument." [Jud Wilhite, Uncensored Grace (Mulnomah, 2008)]

This is a picture of the mercy God desires. Who can you give mercy to today?

Prayer: Father God, we thank you that when we needed mercy we found Jesus. Though we deserved judgement he gave us forgiveness. Bring us someone today that we can show mercy to. In Jesus name, amen.

About The Finish...

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Today's devotional thought: About The Finish

1 Corinthians 9:24, "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize."

Stuart Briscoe in a message entitled, "Ordinary Folks Make Great Disciples," relates this story: "I taught all my kids to enjoy running. Then they taught me how not to enjoy it. While I could keep a pace ahead of them, it was great. But when they began to haul me out of bed early in the morning on a frosty morning to run, or when my daughter had me running a 10,000-meter race, I started asking, "What in the world am I doing?"

"I asked the question even more when we got to the start. There were 24,998 others. Being Milwaukee, some of them were dressed as beer bottles. One guy dressed up as a banana, another as a bunch of grapes. The gun went off, and everybody was laughing and waving. The banana was shaking hands with the crowd. And then it got rather interesting after about a quarter of a mile. The banana and the beer bottle were hanging over a garden fence--didn't look good at all.

"After about a mile there was no chattering or laughing. And after the second mile, the only sound was labored breathing. After the fourth mile, it was so quiet you could hear the birds singing. At 6.2 miles, people were dribbling in one at a time, and not many of them. The moral of the story is this: You get all kinds of people goofing off at the start, but that doesn't count. To finish does, and disciples of Jesus Christ keep on going."

After all, it doesn't matter how you start but how you finish. To get the prize you need to cross the finish line. So we run with the end in mind. We press forward knowing the end is ahead and the only way to get there is by going forward one step at a time. In another of Paul's letters he says, "Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-24).

Has your run turned more into a perpetual break? Are you making forward progress in your relationship with Jesus? Then get your eyes on the goal and move forward. "Run in such a way as to get the prize."

Prayer: Our Father, give us endurance to run the race marked out for us. Give us a glimpse of the goal of our race today. Imprint an image of heaven upon our heart today. We are running to You...and with You. Give us the strength to keep moving. In Jesus name, amen.