Devotionals to draw us
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By Brittney Smith (WITHIN Devotional Contributor)
Sisters, it took a lot for me to write to you today about hope. Over the years, that precious fire in me slowly turned to embers. There were some significant events which contributed to this, but there have been many more little foxes to spoil the vine than anything. Nevertheless, I declare my hope is not dead. Buried alive maybe, but not dead. In fact, I’m more intentional about unearthing my God given right, privilege, and responsibility to hope. 1 Peter 1:3 says “God…has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” The International Standard Version calls it “an immortal hope”. Meaning it’s enduring and durable. Hope from God cannot be destroyed and doesn’t quit. He’s conquered humanity’s greatest enemy (death) and then gave us this hope to live our days in. However, He didn’t promise we wouldn’t face any other enemies or hardships. Like most letters in the New Testament, 1 Peter was written to persecuted Christians. Verse six reveals the circumstances of these believers, “…though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials”. Various trails, that is more than one thing. Just like little foxes spoiling the vine (and big ones)! But alas, hope is not a stranger to trials, darkness, discouragement, torment or even disappointments. Hope does not require the absence of any of these things in order to be. Instead, hope is exactly what makes us resilient in these afflictions and able to stand under the weight of it all. So sister, instead of losing hope or burying it alive in this trial because it hurts too much to hope. I encourage you to lean into your hope even when it hurts, even when you’ve been disappointed already, even when fear and doubt grip your heart. 1 Peter 1:13 “Therefore gird up the loins of your minds, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ”. Hope wants you to see the bigger picture instead of looking at our momentary troubles. Sort of like a patient told me at my job last week. She said, “I’m not going to tell you to have a good day. I’ll say have a good year. You may not have a good day today. You may not have a good day tomorrow. But somewhere before the end of the year you’re going to have some good days.” You and I do have some good days ahead of us. Hope says, “Your future is still good beyond what you’re going through now”. More than having good days here on earth, the Word promises us that we have a hope and a future established with God in eternity because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. May our hope burn brighter than it has in the upcoming weeks. May it continue to grow ever brighter until the day of Jesus Christ. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------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 Peter 1 Colossians 1 Hebrews 10 :23 Questions to Reflect on:
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By Yodit Kifle Smith
"For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome..." (1 John 5:3) Think back to when you were a child and you were told do a chore around the house. Did you do it right away to the best of your ability or did you, like me, wait until the last minute and was just glad that it was over? I don’t know if I can honestly say that as a child, I obeyed only because I loved my parents and it gave me joy to obey. I think, more often than not, I obeyed to simply be compliant and for the obvious reason of not getting disciplined (aka spanked). Why and how we obey speaks volumes about us. As children of God, we are commanded to obey Him. A life of obedience to His Word and His ways is what identifies us as His children. “The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him…” (1 John 2: 4) However, it can become very easy to obey God simply out of compliance and not love for Him. Compliance isn’t rooted in authentic relationship based on love. It’s more of a distant relationship based on fear. And not the reverential fear of God that Scripture talks about, but a fear that is tainted by the outcome of punishment. A fear that thinks more highly of the approval of man than the glory of God. Compliant obedience is not about the desire to obey as much as it’s the outcome if I don’t obey. The Pharisees in the New Testament "obeyed" God. But we find that their obedience came out of the desire to look righteous before others than to be pleasing to God (Matthew 23). As believers, this pattern is exhausting. It’s not sustainable. It will drive us away from God because it has not allowed us to taste the joy that treasures Christ and His work in our lives and the joy that comes from our obedience to Him. Obedience that flows from love and delight in God isn’t exhausting. The Psalmist describes the joy and sustenance that obeying God’s word brings all throughout Psalm 119. This kind of obedience isn’t tainted by the fear of outcome. In fact, this obedience knows that we can’t obey God on our own strength. In and of ourselves, we aren’t bent towards obedience; rather, disobedience. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit in us to desire obedience to God. It’s reliant on the grace that comes only from Him-a sustained grace that is received from knowing Him and wanting to know Him more. Where has your obedience been coming from lately? Have you found it coming from a compliant place? Are you reading the Word of God out of obligation and legality or can you like the Psalmist say, “Oh how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97). Are you saying you forgive with your words but keeping unforgiveness in your heart because you don’t trust God to be your vengeance? Has going to church become a Sunday thing to cross off your list? Has serving become a chore? If we find ourselves in any of those places, the prayer is that God would restore the joy of our salvation and uphold us with a willing spirit (Psalm 51:12). May we be reminded of the love He has shed within our hearts (Romans 5:5) so that we would overflow with obedience to please Him. May we find rest in the truth of His Word that His commandments are not burdensome. May we ask the Lord to lift our eyes a little higher to see Christ and treasure Him. May our obedience be the result of rooted joy in our faith. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: Psalm 51:12 Psalm 119 (highly encourage you to take the time to read this whole chapter) Matthew 23 Luke 11:28 John 14:15 Romans 5:5 1 John 2:4 1 John 5:3 2 John 1:6 Questions to reflect on: 1. How have you been approaching your obedience to God lately? 2. If you have found that you are being compliant instead of joyful in obeying, where do you feel the change began? 3. How have you seen the difference in your life when you are being compliant in obedience VS. joyful in obedience? By Yodit Kifle Smith
“Well done good and faithful servant…"(Matthew. 25:23) Aren’t these the words we want stringed together at the end of our lives as we stand before our Righteous and Holy God? These are also the words we should want to hear daily. Faithfulness is daily. Our walk with the Lord and in the Lord doesn’t promise us earthly benefits. This path will be one with warfare and struggles, but He assures us of the joy that awaits us when we will be forever in His presence, no longer susceptible to brokenness and pain. What great Hope! It’s this Hope that pushes us to be faithful. It’s what allows us to “count it all joy when we face hardships and various trials, knowing that the testing of our faith produces endurance, and letting that endurance have its perfect result so that we may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing” (James 1: 2-4). The truth is, we don’t drift into faithfulness. We must daily choose to intentionally fix and gaze our eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of our Faith (Hebrews 12:2). Faithfulness looks like opening our Word when everything in our flesh wants to sleep more or get other things done. It looks like walking towards those we disagree with even though it’s easier to have nothing to do with them. It looks like lovingly serve those who don’t always acknowledge your labor. It looks like uttering words of desperation in prayer when cynicism would rather keep your words to yourself. And God delights in our faithfulness. We live in a world that is allergic to faithfulness. If something doesn’t feel good or it’s uncomfortable, then just move on to the next thing. If it’s not feeding your desires, why stick with it? Why struggle when there are so many options to experience freedom? This is the stream we have to swim up against. While faithfulness doesn’t come naturally to us, it’s a daily exercise that is built as we rely on the Holy Spirit to draw us nearer to God. One of the ways our faithfulness to Him strengthens is by focusing on His faithfulness to us. His Word reminds us that when we were deep in our sin, having no desire to know Him or love Him, He died for us (Romans 5:8). He extended His grace and mercy when we didn’t (and never will) deserve it. What’s more astounding is that He is faithful to us even when we are not faithful to Him because He can’t deny who He is (2 Timothy 2:13). It’s His character to be faithful. This shows us that it was never on the basis of our works or our faithfulness to Him that allowed us to encounter such love. It has always and will always be about Him. He can’t go against who He is. This is encouraging to our faith. We are quick to associate His faithfulness to us based on our faithfulness to Him, leaving us in an unstable relationship with the Lord. We lack the true peace and joy that is assured in Him when we are constantly looking at our relationship with Him like our human relationships. We must realize that God is not man that He should lie. For those of us who love and fear Him, He doesn’t deal with us according to our unfaithfulness (Psalm 103:10) because if that was the case, He wouldn’t have dealt with us at all. He deals with us according to His loving-kindness. According to His love. According to His faithfulness. We need to rest in these Truths. His faithfulness conforms us to His image, sanctifying us in Him so that our lives will grow brighter and clearer in representing Him. May we treasure His faithfulness to us. His Word is filled with the richness of every faithful promise to those who love and fear Him. May we treasure those in our lives who are faithful to Him. They are ones whom we should look to and glean from. Their faithfulness is a testament to His goodness and never-ending love. May we pursue to emulate that faithfulness as we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:10). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------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: Psalm 103: 10 Romans 5 James 1:2-4 Hebrews 12:2 Galatians 6 Colossians 1:10 2 Timothy 2:13 Questions to Reflect on: 1. Write down the ways in which you have seen God’s faithfulness over your life. 2. How have you remained faithfulness to the Lord? What makes it easy or hard to do so? 3. Take this week to meditate on the Scriptures (Like the ones above and others) that show you and remind you of God’s faithfulness to you. By Diana Rose (WITHIN Devotional Writer)
“The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;” We love to celebrate God’s grace when it finds us in a season of plenty, when the sun is shining and all is right in our world. Praise easily slips from our lips when God’s will is in alignment with our desires, and our prayers are answered with our preferred outcomes. Amen, and praise God when our marriages are flourishing, when our children are choosing to obey, when the bills are paid and there is food on the table! God deserves all the glory indeed when our health is vibrant, our relationships are satisfying, and our days are productive. But what is the posture of our hearts when God’s grace brings us to our knees with grief, when we find ourselves overwhelmed by our suffering, when the tests and trials come? Is praise our first response when illness finds us? Do we worship when we fall into hardship? Is it difficult to give God the glory due Him when life hurts? Life is not easy in a fallen and broken world, and the question we ought to ask ourselves is how do we define grace? “In the day of prosperity be happy, But in the day of adversity consider- God has made the one as well as the other” -Ecclesiastes 7:14 On March 5, 2020 Soledad Arriola died at the age of 98 of medical complications associated with aging. God graciously allowed for her family to visit and say their goodbyes before March 13, 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Just over a month later on April 23, 2020 her youngest son died unexpectedly at the age of 65. His passing within weeks of his mother brought a grief almost too great for the family to bear. Soledad left a legacy of twenty-five grandchildren, fifty-three great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren. I am one of the twenty-five grandchildren and the first born of her youngest son. When my grandmother passed I could see God’s grace in so many ways. The Lord blessed her with a long and full life, giving her 98 years of opportunity for faith. God graciously provided for me to travel to Los Angeles to spend time with her. God allowed me to pray with and for my aunts and uncles and cousins. The Lord gently prepared our hearts for the inevitable. I cried, I prayed, I trusted God and leaned seamlessly into His grace. When I received the news of my father I was so shocked and blinded by grief that I struggled to perceive even a thread of God’s grace. His death brought a multitude of conflicting emotions. I was angry, confused, sad, guilt ridden and so overwhelmed I felt like I was drowning. It was with few words I asked God to give me eyes to see His grace in the midst of what felt like unraveling. Then I opened the Scriptures. “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” Numbers 6:24-26 ESV “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14 ESV “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus,” 2 Timothy 2:1 ESV The biblical definition of grace is embodied in the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Our circumstances are not meant to be the indication of grace in our lives, Christ is. Our feelings don’t move us into or out of grace, Jesus supplies us with His all sufficient grace. If we are honest biblical grace isn’t always what we are looking for, but it is always exactly what we need. Throughout the joys and sorrows of all of life we must keep our gaze firmly fixed on Jesus, the face of grace. If you don’t know Jesus yet He gives grace for that too: “even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved—” Ephesians 2:5 ESV I remember the last time I saw my father. It was a “chance” meeting: I was leaving the hospital from visiting my grandmother and my father was arriving. It had been over a year since he and I had spoken. I remember in that moment seeing his face, I felt no resentment for the time lost between us, and instantly ran to him and hugged him tight. I remember telling him I loved him. Grace. My half brother and I have rekindled our relationship and he’s allowed me to pray with him. Grace. I now understand how to comfort others who have tragically lost loved ones. Grace. Prayer: Lord thank you that you define grace. Help us to keep our eyes fixed upon Him. *In Loving Memory of Soledad Arriola and her youngest son Steve ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: Ephesians 2:5 2 Timothy 2:1 John 1:14 Numbers 24:26 Questions to Reflect on:
Worship Song of the week to keep our eyes gazed upon HIM: Artist: Maverick City/Naomi Raine Song: The Story I'll Tell By Laura Hardin (WITHIN Devotional Writer)
I love you. I hated those three words for most of my life, unable to release them from my lips. I’d heard them spoken so many times without actions to back them up that the concept of love became as elusive to me as the wind, its meaning completely lost on me. Was it a warm feeling? A slightly stronger version of liking someone? What did it mean that someone “loved me” but refused to care for me practically? What does love matter if it’s not present when I need it most? The love of man is complicated, because we all love out of our own stories--and when you’ve lived through trauma and brokenness it’s hard to love people well. But God’s love is simple, holy, sure and pure. It’s a love we can count on. I wonder if anyone else has struggled with the knowledge of God’s love in 2020. When another man is killed by the hands of police, when COVID continues to devastate lives, when the government appears corrupt on all sides, when the church’s public divisiveness obscures the beauty of Christ and undermines the unity of his blood-purchased Body--God can seem cold, distant, absent, unreal, his love as elusive as the wind. But our feelings do not dictate truth. Nor does the fallenness of the world. Everything listed above is not a surprise to our heavenly Father. In fact, his name is hallowed all the more as it shines bright in contrast to the conspicuous darkness of our society. Everyone has his or her own truth to share with the world, but only God’s word lasts forever (1 Peter 1:21). Everyone's an expert on what it means to love their neighbor, but only his steadfast love endures, putting no one to shame who trusts in him. We may struggle to get to the bottom of what’s going on in the world. But God has revealed the mystery of his will through Yeshua, who described himself as the way, the truth, and the life. The fear of ADONAI is the beginning of wisdom. If we’re struggling to believe and abide in his love, we need to get back to the basics of knowing him. It’s never been more important to know the heart of our heavenly Father. He saw us vulnerable and forsaken without him and without hope in this world, and he chose us to be in his family. He picked us up and cleansed us with the blood of Jesus, forgiving us for every sin. He’s been with us through everything we’ve walked through, using it all to make us shine like him on this earth. When we wander away like the prodigal son, thinking we can do life on our own, the Holy Spirit brings us back to our senses. And as we turn to draw close to him, we find he’s already sprinting in our direction. Our Father is with us and for us always. He even takes great pleasure in doing the work for us. We didn’t save ourselves. He saved us. We can’t sustain ourselves through this tumultuous season. He sustains us. We don’t look to the world and its princes for hope. We look to him, and our heavenly Father comes through every single time. His love has flesh to it--with evidence reaching back to the beginning of time and reaching forward to the promise of a new heavens and earth. Sit back and let the truth wash over you. ADONAI, your father in heaven, loves you deeply. And he loves to show it through action. Want to see it more? Pray. Talk to him. He hears your prayers, which means he takes action. Pay attention to his activity day to day. Watch the display of his ever present love. Remember his greatest display of love, Yeshua our Savior King. Remember the Holy Spirit, the seal of our redemption. Pay attention to your father in heaven, and walk in step with him, abiding in his love. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 15:11-32 Ezekiel 16:1-9 Romans 5:8 1 John 4:10-11 Questions to Reflect on:
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