By Yodit Kifle Smith
Anytime I gather with my longtime friends, we always reminisce about the “good ol’ days.” We sit and talk for hours recounting memories that made laughter flow out so easily.  And with a hint of sadness, we always come to the conclusion that those days can never be recreated. 
Have you ever felt the sadness of knowing that a past memory of something you cherished can no longer be? We see this same sentiment expressed by the people of Israel concerning the temple of the Lord in the book of Haggai.
At this point of history, a small group of Israelites had returned back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city and their lives after being conquered by the Babylonians and put in exile for 70 years because of their rebellion and disobedience to God’s covenant. 
God had sent the prophet Haggai to encourage them to remember their covenant and remain faithful to God by first rebuilding the temple that was destroyed by the Babylonians. However, the people felt discouraged because the temple they were building looked nothing like the majestic temple that Solomon built (1 Kings 6). 
They recalled the former glory of God that rested in that temple and felt no motivation to finish rebuilding the new one.  They didn’t think it was possible to relive the former days of glory with the Lord in His temple. But the Lord comforted them with these words through Haggai:
“Be strong, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the Lord, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the Lord Almighty. 5 ‘This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear...‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the Lord Almighty.” (Haggai 1:5,9)
This is an encouragement to us when we are tempted to look at the days of old in Scripture and believe that the powerful ways God moved and revealed Himself then no longer happen today. His word promises that He is the same yesterday, today and forevermore (Hebrews 13:8). 
It is also an encouragement when we feel that because we no longer feel the awe and wonder with the Lord that we felt earlier in our faith walk, His presence is no longer with us. God's presence in our lives isn't dictated by our feelings, nor is our faith measured by the intensity or magnitude of it given any season we find ourselves in. It has always been and always be about the object our faith: Christ Jesus. And in Him, we go from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18)
In this text, God reminded them and He is reminding us now that the certainty of His presence, power and provision in our lives outweigh the feelings of comparisons we are tempted to have. 
And one day, we will be in the midst of His full glory, experiencing His presence in unimaginable ways. Until then, cling to the truth of His character. 
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The weekly devotionals seek to encourage you to dig deeper into Scripture as you take the time to daily read, meditate, and internalize the verses in the devotional, along with the passages provided below to give greater context. Take the time to read them throughout the week (repetition is important) and ask the Holy Spirit to help you grasp what God is showing you about Himself, about you, and how to live in light of these truths. 
Passages to read/memorize/meditate:

1 Kings 6
Haggai 1
2 Corinthians 3:18
Hebrews 13:8



Questions to Reflect on:

1. Have you ever felt like the former days were better in seeing God's glory? If so, what are some of the fears you felt?
2. How has this devotional helped you understand the never changing character of God in your life?

By Debbie Ramamoorthy (WITHIN Devotional Writer)
​(***Trigger warning as there is mention of sexual assault***)
When was the last time someone did something that frustrated you? Hurt you? Disappointed you? Broke your trust? Betrayed you? I don't know about you, but this type of thing happens multiple times a day to me. I can't control how other people respond to me, my actions, my words, or my movements on social media, etc. But what happens when someone responds to me in a way that is offensive? I am hurt, offended, defensive, and lose my trust in that person.
 
God has been laying on my heart the topic of Forgiveness repeatedly. Recently, I was listening to a podcast where Lysa Terkeurst was a guest speaker. If you are not familiar with her, she speaks eloquently about this topic. 
 
In my broken, sinful, prideful nature, my lack of forgiveness is something I've just learned to live with. Without realizing it, my lack of forgiveness eventually leads to hate. What a terrifying reality that this seed plants deep into our souls something as serious as hate! The deeper implication of this is that our Father God is not honored nor glorified with any unattended forgiveness that lies within us. 
 
We can't control who hurts us, how they will offend us, or when they will betray us. But what we know for certain is that daily we hurt, offend and betray God. We intentionally turn our backs on our Heavenly Father, who from all good things come and every blessing under this Earth flows. What does He do in response? He loves us. He keeps running towards us. He keeps pursuing us.
 
Let's just sit in that for a moment. When we hurt our Father daily, He continues to love us relentlessly and deeply. But when others hurt us, we take offense, resisting to forgive them, and eventually allowing that to develop into something that hardens our heart.
 
But God gives us a way out of that place.
 
The reason for forgiveness is to draw us deeper into relationship with Jesus. It gets rid of anything that may be getting in the way. 
 
I know that forgiveness is hard, and often feels impossible. Let me get personal with you for a moment, if I may. When I was a young girl, I was sexually assaulted. Without going into too much detail, I will let you know that for over a decade I carried that pain deep within me and refused to forgive the perpetrator. That felt like the safest option and the most reasonable. After all, how could I forgive that person, let alone let him get away. Not to mention, he didn't even ask for repentance! So, you can imagine why I felt adamant to not allow this person the privilege of my forgiveness.
 
Well, over the years, God in His absolute sovereignty continued to chisel within me the spaces of my heart that needed to understand what forgiveness looked like. Ultimately, He was trying to save and protect ME. I learned that He validates our pain. He validates our offense. He validates our hurt. He validates our betrayal and our lack of trust towards others because of their sin against us. He affirms it all. And then He asks for us to lay them at His feet, where He will take our burden.
 
I am not by any means trying to simplify a complex process, but I have absolute confidence that Jesus can take the impossible and walk us through it, making it possible. 
 
My simple ask of you today is this: Each morning, when you wake up, before your feet hit the ground, make a commitment with God that you will forgive anyone who is going to hurt you, offend you, betray you, say something nasty to you, or cut you off in line.
 
By preemptively laying this at His feet, you are inviting God into the process. You are saying that, yes, forgiving is hard, but drawing close to Him and desiring Him is what you want more. And you won't let anything get in that way. You are saying that you recognize that Jesus wants our whole hearts, our renewed minds and our beautiful spirits and He doesn't want us to live with bitterness and hurt and hatred. And what’s amazing is, He enables us to do this by the power of His Spirit.
 
He is always forgiving us, waiting for us with open arms. 
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The weekly devotionals seek to encourage you to dig deeper into Scripture as you take the time to daily read, meditate, and internalize the verses in the devotional, along with the passages provided below to give greater context. Take the time to read them throughout the week (repetition is important) and ask the Holy Spirit to help you grasp what God is showing you about Himself, about you, and how to live in light of these truths. 
Passages to read/memorize/meditate:
Matthew 18: 21-22
Psalm 86:5
Mark 11:25
Matthew 6:15



Questions to Reflect on:

1. Are there any areas of life that you are struggling to forgive someone or something?
2. What are some ways you can invite God into your process of forgiveness?
3. Why does forgiveness feel hard to do? Or why you may be resisting forgiveness?

By Brittney Smith (WITHIN Devotional Writer)

​“But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” (Luke 10:40 NIV)

Yes, I picked a word for the year. Sometimes it feels like a futile exercise, but I enjoy the intentionality and reflection it brings no matter how short lived it may be. For 2021, I have two words! 
“Focus and Follow”.
It took a long time for me to realize how distracted I had become. Probably because I thought a distraction was something unimportant and inconsequential. This story of Martha and Mary showed me how distractions can be valuable matters of the heart that have become skewed and in need of God’s tidying.  
Luke 10:40 explicitly tells us that Martha’s distraction was the various chores she had to do. But when she goes to Jesus, she doesn’t only complain about her work for the day. At the heart of her complaint is her sister. 
I imagine Martha inviting Jesus into her home, fully anticipating her sister Mary to be by her side helping with his accommodations. I imagine this was something they most likely did together in the past. However, this time there was no warning or prior communication from Mary that she would not be helping that day but listening to Jesus’ teaching instead. 
I see Martha as a little blindsided by the change, dare I say negligence, from Mary. Martha was not prepared for a shift in her sister’s priorities. She became irritated, indignant, and vexed at Mary for leaving her alone when she thought she needed her in that moment. 
So you see, distractions aren’t always obvious. The fruit shows up in one area, but the roots are in another. We see Martha distracted with chores, but her heart is on her sister. 
The root of her distraction was the pain of being left alone by someone she depended on. The distraction was what someone else was doing or not doing. CHANGE from how things used to be or how she thought they would be was her distraction. Mary’s change affected Martha indirectly.  
Although Martha got a little spicy with Jesus about it, I love the fact that she took her issue to him first. The second thing I love is how Jesus didn’t ask Martha to change her tone before she addressed him. Jesus basically said I’m not going to deal with the other person. I’m going to deal with YOU and your heart. 
By the end of it, Jesus empowered Martha by letting her know people are free to choose what they want to do whether we like it or not and Martha was free to choose her course as well. He took the helplessness and victimhood out of her perspective and let her know she, too, could choose to do something better or different with her time and energy…So can you. 
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The weekly devotionals seek to encourage you to dig deeper into Scripture as you take the time to daily read, meditate, and internalize the verses in the devotional, along with the passages provided below to give greater context. Take the time to read them throughout the week (repetition is important) and ask the Holy Spirit to help you grasp what God is showing you about Himself, about you, and how to live in light of these truths. 
Passages to read/memorize/meditate:


Luke 10:38-42
Matthew 6:33
Proverbs 18:24
Proverbs 17:17
Colossians 3:13
1 Peter 4:8-10

Questions to Reflect on:

1. Have you talked to Jesus about any area of your friendships that bother you or any hard transition in your life you may be experiencing right now? If you need to, talk to him about it again.
2. What positive change can you make in your thinking and/or physical health right now? Make it simple enough to keep up with. 

By Laura Hardin (WITHIN Devotional Writer)
​
Everybody appears to be a saint on social media. Incredibly thoughtful and loving, desiring justice for the vulnerable and oppressed, displaying discipline and order in their photos, and preaching the gospel in their captions. If only God were as impressed with our performances as much as our followers, who are often more eager to behold our curated images than to behold the image of Christ on the pages of their own Bibles. 
No, our God sees through it all and calls our bluff. And as He did with the Pharisees of His time on earth, He invites us to look within and give Him the sin that clings so closely (Hebrews 12:1). 
In Luke 11:39, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for focusing on external cleansing rituals instead of dealing with the filth inside, “their greed and wickedness.” In Luke 11: 42, he further rebukes them for tithing their herbs to the temple of God but neglecting justice and the love of God. This is a grievous charge since they probably recited the Shema along with the rest of the Jewish community, praying to love ADONAI with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength and to love their neighbors as themselves. They kept this priority of God before them morning and evening but failed to live it out 
After this, Jesus brings many more charges, thoroughly condemning their hypocrisy and bringing to light the reality of their spiritual death. Yet sandwiched between the verses above is a glimmer of hope for anyone who has ears to hear. 
“You fools!” he exclaims. “Did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you” (Luke 11:40-41).
Therein lies the grand invitation that the prideful would have missed, too distracted and defensive about all they were getting wrong despite their tenacious performing. It’s so easy to identify with Jesus here, nodding our heads at His every word, pointing our fingers. But really, we should see ourselves in the Pharisees.
How often do we invest our energy fixing up the exterior, dwelling on how we appear to God and others, rather than addressing what’s really going on in our own hearts?
Sure, when we first believed, there was no other way to come to our Lord. When we first believed Christ, we knew ourselves to be sinners in need of God’s mercy. Upon hearing the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we eagerly traded our sin for His glorious righteousness, our sorrow for His inexpressible joy, our punishment for His great reward.
How sad then we forget that in Christ, we must continually give Him the sin that so easily entangles. And I pray now that we would see this offering as part of our faithful abiding, integral to our morning and nightly prayers, and susceptible to the sharp edge of the living and active word of God. 
For He meant what He said. When we give him our sin as an offering, as an acknowledgement that those things no longer belong to us, everything becomes clean. The Apostle John puts it this way, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
It’s only when we keep our mouths shut, when we hide behind our works, that we are the most in trouble. And that was definitely his message to the Pharisees that day: “Don’t you see that you are in danger!”
So what is it that we must give our Lord today? Will we heed our Lord’s invitation to just give the yuck to Him?
Behold His hands held out to take whatever plagues us, whatever tempts us to dwell in the death and decay of sin. Remember, He already took our sins upon Himself. Yes, scripture teaches us He even became sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). He became our selfishness. He became our apathy. He became our lust. He became our envy. He became our pride. He became all the things we’re so apt to hide, pretending we’re better than we are. 
Our good deeds don’t erase what’s within. Only His power through faith can perform such a miracle. And, in this instance, our faith looks like repentance. He takes our sin and replaces it with His holiness, little by little, shaping us into his likeness. And what a refreshment this brings to our weary souls.
 For this reason, I’m so thankful the Lord sees through our facades of cleanness. In seeing us and speaking to us through his word He draws us into deep transformative fellowship with Himself and His people.  Indeed, we give Him our sin as an offering, and He in turn continues to give us every good thing we don’t deserve. Praise Him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The weekly devotionals seek to encourage you to dig deeper into Scripture as you take the time to daily read, meditate, and internalize the verses in the devotional, along with the passages provided below to give greater context. Take the time to read them throughout the week (repetition is important) and ask the Holy Spirit to help you grasp what God is showing you about Himself, about you, and how to live in light of these truths. 

Passages to read/memorize/meditate:

1 John 1:5-10
Psalm 51:6-12
Isaiah 53:10-12
Genesis 3:21

Questions to Reflect on:

1. In what ways are you tempted to perform before God and others?
   
2. How might you be tempted to ignore sin issues in your own heart?
   
3. God has already approved of you based on the work of Jesus Christ. How does that reality sit with you?
   
4. What sins can you give to him today as an act of worshipful trust?