Bible in One Year: Job 17-19; Acts 10:1-23
Thursday, June 30, 2022
Do It Now! / Oswald Chambers
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Formula for Personal Growth / Charles Stanley
Formula for Personal Growth
Growing in Christ involves far more than just attending church, tithing, and listening to a sermon. In fact, many believers do these yet remain stagnant in their walk. There are two elements necessary for us to become more like Jesus: instruction and involvement.
The first of these, learning truth, is vital to a healthy walk with God. Our Savior proved the importance of instruction by devoting much of His time on earth to it. The apostle Paul is another example, as he wrote letters to educate Christians about godliness.
So how can we gain knowledge and understanding? One of the most important and effective ways is to read the Word of God. Scripture instructs us that just as newborns crave milk, we are to desire His Word so that we might grow. I pray your spiritual thirst will become insatiable.
Yet simply listening to the truth does not mean that we've acquired it. I know many people who love attending Bible studies and expanding their knowledge base, but their lives remain unchanged. Just as today's passage teaches, we have to apply the Word to our lives. Even so, actual growth requires more than merely inputting information. It requires action. James 2:26 states, "For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead."
Are we careless hearers, deceived into thinking that we're growing? Or are we listening intently and abiding in the truth? If we're truly maturing, our lives will be increasingly Christlike, and our desires will align more closely with God's heart. Make sure that you are listening and responding to His truth.
God Doesn’t Want Your Money / Adrian Rogers
God Doesn’t Want Your Money
Sermon: 1635 – Opening the Windows of Heaven
Pray Over This
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Ponder This
If you want financial freedom and the windows of Heaven to open, you must return to God. It is not your money that God wants. It is you that God wants. God needs nothing. In Psalm 50:12, God says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is Mine, and all its fullness.” God loves you. It is not what you have that God wants. God wants you. God says, “Return to Me…and I will return to you” (Zechariah 1:3). If you give your money without giving yourself, remember the adage, “The gift without the giver is bare.” If you think God is trying to somehow get more money out of you, you are so wrong. In today’s verse, Jesus said, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” God calls you to give your money because it reveals the truth about your heart.
- What connection have you noticed between your own heart and how you spend your money?
- Is there anything God is calling you to change regarding how you spend and/or give your money?
Practice This
Make steps today toward any financial changes God is calling you to make.
Giving God My Work / ODB
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Persistence, Part One / Chuck Swindoll
Persistence, Part One
Persistence, Part One
Persistence pays.
It's a costly investment, no question about it. But the dividends are so much greater than the original outlay that you'll almost forget the price. And if the final benefits are really significant, you'll wonder why you ever hesitated to begin with.
A primary reason we are tempted to give up is other people . . . you know, the less than 20 percent whose major role in life is to encourage others to toss in the towel. For whatever reason. Those white-flag specialists never run out of excuses you and I ought to use for quitting. The world's full of "why-sweat-it" experts.
I'm sure Anne Mansfield Sullivan had a host of folks telling her that the blind, 7-year-old brat wasn't worth it. But Anne persisted—in spite of temper tantrums, physical abuse, mealtime madness, and even thankless parents. In her heart she knew it was worth all the pain. Was it ever! Within two years her pupil, Helen Keller, was able to read and write in braille. She ultimately graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College (where Miss Sullivan had "spelled" each lecture into her hand), and Helen Keller devoted the rest of her life to aiding the deaf and the blind.
Want another for instance? Well, this particular man was told that if he hadn't written a book by age thirty-five, chances were good he never would. He was almost forty, I should add. There were others who reminded him that for every book published, ninety-five became dust-collecting manuscripts. But he persisted. Even though he was warned that stories like he wanted to write weren't popular. Nor were they considered worthy of top prizes in the literary field (his work later won the Pulitzer). Hollywood hotshots also told him such a book certainly held no dramatic possibilities. But James Michener hung tough. He refused to wash the desire out of his hair as he persisted. And he presented to the public Tales of the South Pacific. Oh, by the way, the Broadway critics had warned, "It'll never make a musical."
How many military battles would never have been won without persistence? How many men and women would never have graduated from school . . . or changed careers in midstream . . . or stayed together in marriage . . . or reared a mentally disabled child? Think of the criminal cases that would never have been solved without the relentless persistence of detectives. How about the great music that would never have been finished, the grand pieces of art that would never have graced museums, cathedrals, and monuments the world over? Back behind the impeccable beauty of each work is a dream that wouldn't die mixed with the dogged determination of a genius of whom this indifferent world is not worthy.
Think also of the speeches, the sermons, the books that have shaped thinking, infused new hope, prompted fresh faith, and aroused the will to win. For long and lonely hours away from the applause—even the awareness—of the public, the one preparing that verbal missile persisted all alone with such mundane materials as dictionary, thesaurus, historical volumes, biographical data, and a desk full of other research works. The same could be said of those who labor to find cures for diseases. And how about those who experiment with inventions?
I once heard about a couple of men who were working alongside the inventor Thomas Edison. Weary to the point of exasperation, one man sighed, "What a waste! We have tried no less than seven hundred experiments and nothing has worked. We are not a bit better off than when we started."
With an optimistic twinkle in his eye, Edison quipped, "Oh, yes, we are! We now know seven hundred things that won't work. We're closer than we've ever been before." With that, he rolled up his sleeves and plunged back in.
If necessity is the mother of invention, persistence is certainly the father.
God honors it. Maybe because He models it so well. His love for His people, the Jews, persists to this very day, even though they have disobeyed Him more often than they have loved Him in return. And just think of His patient persistence in continually reaching out to the lost, "not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). And how about His persistence with us? You and I can recall one time after another when He could have (and should have!) wiped us out of the human race, but He didn't. Why? The answer is in Philippians 1:6:
He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
(NIV)
The One who began will continue right up to the end. Being the original finisher, He will persist. I'm comforted to know He won't be talked out of a plan that has to do with developing me. I need help! Don't you?
June 30 / Wisdom from the Psalms
Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery.
Beth was different when she was singing. Somehow the pressures of the world disappeared when the music filled her head and heart. Her whole life felt somehow lighter, brighter, when she lifted her voice in praise through song. Music was the best expression of who she was and what she believed. Music made God real to Beth.
Music is a universal language. Every culture has its music, and it is revered as one of the finest arts. Music brings people together and can move us closer to God. God loves music and the spirit from which music springs. The quality is not nearly as important as the intention of the heart. Sing out to God, and He will bless you richly.
Prayer: Music touches my heart in a special way, Lord. Speak to me through the beauty of music. Touch me day by day. Amen.
Go With the Flow/ David Jeremiah
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How to Learn Scripture with the Right Motives / Senior Living
How to Learn Scripture with the Right Motives
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. - Psalms 119:11
A story is told of a village church in Kalonovka, Russia, where attendance at Sunday school picked up after the priest started handing out candy to the peasant children. One of the most faithful was a pug-nosed, pugnacious lad who recited his Scriptures with proper piety, pocketed his reward, then fled into the fields to munch on it.
The priest took a liking to the boy and persuaded him to attend church school by offering other incentives. There, the priest managed to teach the boy the four Gospels. In fact, this little boy won a special prize for learning all four by heart and reciting them nonstop in church!
Fast forward 60 years, and the boy still loved to recite Scriptures, but in a context that would horrify the old priest. For the prized pupil who memorized so much of the Bible is Nikita Khrushchev, the former Communist czar. The same little lad who nimbly mouthed God’s Word as a child later declared God to be nonexistent.
Khrushchev memorized the Scripture for the rewards rather than for the meaning it had for his life. Artificial motivation will produce artificial results. So as you learn the Word of God, keep your motives pure and make it an exercise of both your heart and your mind!
Prayer Challenge
Ask God to keep your motives pure when it comes to learning His Word. Pray that He would help you absorb it into your heart as well as your mind!
Refreshed and Restored / Greg Laurie
Refreshed and Restored
“Turn us again to yourself, O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved” (Psalm 80:19 NLT).
We often hear the word revival in the church, but we might wonder what revival is exactly. I think we overly mystify this word and don’t necessarily understand its actual meaning.
Revival is another word for refreshment, restoration, or simply returning something to its original condition.
For instance, when someone buys an old car from the junkyard, does bodywork on it, repaints it, adds new tires and wheels, and puts in a new engine, that is a restoration. When you see it rolling down the road, you can’t believe it’s the same car.
Or if you have a plant that’s withering, but it comes back to life again after you’ve watered it, that is a restoration as well.
The psalmist prayed, “Won’t you revive us again, so your people can rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6 NLT). And Psalm 80:19 says, “Turn us again to yourself, O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved” (NLT).
Revival is refreshment. Revival is restoration. For the believer, revival is getting back to that first bloom of a love relationship with Jesus Christ. Sometimes when we’ve been walking with the Lord for a while, the passion begins to fade. The zeal begins to erode, and we don’t have the same excitement in walking with the Lord as we had before.
We want longevity as we walk with Christ, but we don’t want to sacrifice our passion.
Revival takes place when God’s people come back to life again because they are refreshed. They have been refilled and restored to their original condition.
And what is the original condition? It’s the same condition as the church of the first century, the church of the book of Acts. It’s the church that turned their world upside down.
Refiner's Fire / Billy Graham
Refiner's Fire
Why do Christians suffer? Rest assured that there is a reason for Christian people being afflicted. One reason why God’s people suffer, according to the Bible, is that it is a disciplinary, chastening, and molding process. From the Scriptures we learn that the chastening of affliction is a step in the process of our full and complete development. Affliction can also be a means of refining and of purification. Many a life has come forth from the furnace of affliction more beautiful and more useful than before.
Daily Prayer
Lord, whatever I have to face, through it let me learn more of Your love and compassion.
“And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.”
2 Chronicles 33:12 ESV
Overcoming Evil / Alistair Begg
Overcoming Evil
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
While studying at Cambridge University in the 1940s, a young woman became the Secretary of the Communist Party. The winter of 1946-47 was phenomenally severe, causing water pipes to partially freeze and therefore resulting in a water shortage. The female students were limited to one bath each week, and as they waited in the long line, there was a lot of grumbling and jockeying for position—including on the part of the Communist Party Secretary.
One of the girls who had the most direct access to the bathroom was a Christian. The Communist student noticed over time that this girl never asserted her rights and responded gently to the selfishness of others. The Christian was practicing and living what the young Communist claimed to believe but did not do. That observation led to a conversation, a conversion—and, eventually, a new missionary in the Far East.
Whenever we try to defeat evil by our own evil words and deeds, we are consumed. Evil cannot be overcome by a similarly evil force. Evil is doubled rather than negated. If we lose control of our ourselves as we engage with an enemy, then we have been defeated not by that person but by the Evil One. We are the ones who have been overcome and have lost the opportunity to do what is right in God’s eyes.
Overcoming evil is a popular notion in our culture. We hear it in songs and motivational slogans. Often the idea is that if we can just “stand together,” we will succeed in defeating the ills that plague us. It’s a noble idea, but it lacks the necessary power. We can’t overcome evil on our own; it simply won’t work. We are “more than conquerors” only “through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). The power of God by His Spirit and His word gives us both the impetus and the strength we need to triumph.
This is the path that Jesus took. He did not take vengeance into His own hands but entrusted Himself to the hands of the Father. Christ went to the cross, where love triumphed over evil. As we choose to be gentle, do good, and walk the way of the cross, we will experience God’s power at work in us to overcome evil with the goodness of His love.
The hymn writer Charles Tindley reminded us of this truth when he wrote:
With God’s Word a sword of mine,
I’ll overcome some day …
If Jesus will my leader be,
I’ll overcome some day.[1]
By His grace, you will overcome all the challenges and injustices of this world someday. And as you meet wrong with right, slights with kindness, and negativity with blessing, by His grace you will overcome evil with good today.
1 Peter 3:8-14
An Impossible Promise / Spurgeon
An Impossible Promise
Ah, Lord God! It is you who has made the heavens
and the earth by your great power
and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.
At the very time when the Chaldeans surrounded Jerusalem, and when the sword, famine, and pestilence had desolated the land, Jeremiah was commanded by God to purchase a field and have the deed of transfer legally sealed and witnessed. This was a strange purchase for a rational man to make. Caution could not justify it, for it was buying with hardly a probability that the purchaser would ever enjoy the possession. But it was enough for Jeremiah that his God had instructed him, for he knew with certainty that God will be justified of all His children. He reasoned thus: “Lord God, You can make this plot of ground useful to me; You can rid this land of these oppressors; You can make me sit under my vine and my fig-tree in the heritage that I have bought; for You made the heavens and the earth, and there is nothing too hard for You.” There was a majesty in the early saints, who dared to do at God’s command things that human reason would condemn.
Whether it be a Noah who is to build a ship on dry land, an Abraham who is to offer up his only son, a Moses who is to despise the treasures of Egypt, or a Joshua who is to besiege Jericho for seven days, using no weapons but the blasts of trumpets, they all act upon God’s command, contrary to the dictates of human reason; and the Lord gives them a rich reward as the result of their obedient faith. Would to God we had in contemporary Christianity a more potent infusion of this heroic faith in God. If we would venture more upon the naked promise of God, we would enter a world of wonders to which as yet we are strangers. May Jeremiah’s place of confidence become ours—nothing is too hard for the God that created the heavens and the earth.
Our Truthful Father By Chelsey DeMatteis
Our Truthful Father
By Chelsey DeMatteis
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” - John 17:17-19
This world is a messy place. It's loud, vigorous, and rampant with waywardness. It squanders truth at all costs and labels it excluding. It elevates falsehood and celebrates it as love. This reminds me of what my life looked like before I claimed Jesus as Lord over all. I sadly craved the false stability of living for the world and took the bait of the world's standards of "truth". I ushered in opinions of anyone and freely welcomed desires to feed my emptiness. "Truth" in my life at that point was formed by nothing more than feelings and emotion-based responses. But God! By His grace, He swiftly saved my soul from this path of destruction.
When I finally surrendered my life to Jesus, I didn't know anything more than the Lord's prayer and John 3:16. I pray that gives you hope (either for yourself or for someone you're praying to come to know the Lord). I wasn't a Bible scholar, I didn't have much of anything in my memory tank from what I'd learned in my youth, but what I did have was a heart at the end of its rope and small a very small yet powerful reminder of God's Word.
It honestly amazes me that I had God's Word still written on my heart through all my years of rebellion. These small seeds planted in my heart as a child would soon be watered and flourish into a deep desire to pursue the truths of God and His heart. I no longer wanted to live in this emotional state of being tossed to and fro by my feelings and other people's opinions. My soul craved the actual truth, the undeniable, unwavering, all-consuming steadiness of God.
As I began to grow in the knowledge of His Word through taking time to study Scripture and be poured into by mentors, His truth began to pierce the harshest parts of my flesh. The promise of sanctification began to reveal areas of my life I didn't know needed tending. Suddenly the truth I found in Christ became my anchor and the falsehood of my former life had to flee.
This reminds me of Jesus' prayer in John 17. Jesus was praying to our Heavenly Father on behalf of those who were believers (those who came to a saving faith), not for those of the world. He prayed that we, as believers, would be sanctified in the truth because his Word is truth (John 17:17). I saw this unfold personally, which is why it has always been a favorite part of Scripture for me. It boldly lays out not only who created truth but tells us why we're called to walk in it.
It all boils down to this, God is truth and the truth from God sanctifies our sinful flesh. I can without waiver promise you, that God is all truthful. In Him, we find everything we need - peace, hope, joy, mercy, grace. Through Him, we become the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Because of His love for us, we were gifted His Son, and through Christ's life, we've received the truth of the gospel which changed our lives on earth and our lives eternally forever.
Intersecting Faith and life:
Today, where do you see areas of truth you shy away from and why? Ask the Lord to lead you to places in His Word that remind you He is always truthful and that the truth comes from Him alone. How can you live out His truth today where the Lord has you?
Further Reading:
John 17:1-26
Daily Blessings / June 30
Daily Blessings
“Perplexed, but not in despair.” - 2 Cor 4:8
Oh! what a mercy, amid every degree of inward or outward perplexity, to be out of the reach of Giant Despair; not to be shut up in the iron cage; not to be abandoned, as Judas or Ahithophel, to utter desperation and suicide, and, after a long life of profession, concerning faith to make dreadful shipwreck! Now the child of God, with all his doubts, fears, sinkings, misgivings, and trying perplexities is never really and truly in despair. He may tread so near the borders of that black country that it may almost be debatable land whether he is walking in despair or upon the borders of it; for I believe many children of God have at times come to the solemn conclusion that there is no hope for them, for they cannot see how they can be saved or have their aggravated sins pardoned.
And though this be not black despair, nor such utter, irremediable desperation as seized Saul and Judas, for there still is a “Who can tell?” yet it certainly is walking very near the borders of that dark and terrible land. I cannot tell, nor do I believe any can, how low a child of God may sink, or how long he may continue under the terrors of the Almighty; but we have the warrant of God’s word to believe that he is never given up to utter despair, for the Lord holds up his feet from falling into that terrible pit, and being cast into that sea to which there is neither bottom nor shore.
I Heard a Still Voice / Streams
I Heard a Still Voice
There was silence, and I heard a still voice - Job 4:16
A score of years ago, a friend placed in my hand a book called True Peace. It was an old mediaeval message, and it had but one thought—that God was waiting in the depths of my being to talk to me if I would only get still enough to hear His voice.
I thought this would be a very easy matter, and so began to get still. But I had no sooner commenced than a perfect pandemonium of voices reached my ears, a thousand clamoring notes from without and within, until I could hear nothing but their noise and din.
Some were my own voices, my own questions, some my very prayers. Others were suggestions of the tempter and the voices from the world’s turmoil.
In every direction I was pulled and pushed and greeted with noisy acclamations and unspeakable unrest. It seemed necessary for me to listen to some of them and to answer some of them; but God said,
“Be still, and know that I am God.” Then came the conflict of thoughts for tomorrow, and its duties and cares; but God said, “Be still.”
And as I listened, and slowly learned to obey, and shut my ears to every sound, I found after a while that when the other voices ceased, or I ceased to hear them, there was a still small voice in the depths of my being that began to speak with an inexpressible tenderness, power and comfort.
As I listened, it became to me the voice of prayer, the voice of wisdom, the voice of duty, and I did not need to think so hard, or pray so hard, or trust so hard; but that “still small voice” of the Holy Spirit in my heart was God’s prayer in my secret soul, was God’s answer to all my questions, was God’s life and strength for soul and body, and became the substance of all knowledge, and all prayer and all blessing: for it was the living GOD Himself as my life, my all.
It is thus that our spirit drinks in the life of our risen Lord, and we go forth to life’s conflicts and duties like a flower that has drunk in, through the shades of night, the cool and crystal drops of dew. But as dew never falls on a stormy night, so the dews of His grace never come to the restless soul. —A. B. Simpson
A Symbol of Triumph / Max Lucado
A Symbol of Triumph
Click below to listen to today's devotional
Very early on Sunday morning Peter and John were given the news: Jesus’ body is missing. Instantly the two disciples hurried to the sepulcher, John outrunning Peter and arriving first. What John saw so stunned him he froze at the entrance. What did he see? The burial wraps had not been ripped off and thrown down. They were in their original state—rolled and folded. How could this be? This question led to John’s discovery: “He saw and believed” (John 20:8 NIV). Through the rags of death, John saw the power of life.
Could God do something similar in your life? Could he take what today is a token of tragedy and turn it into a symbol of triumph? If God can change John’s life through a tragedy, could it be he will use a tragedy to change yours?
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
The Strictest Discipline / Oswald Chambers
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