Tag: devotional thought

He Departed and Went into a Desolate Place (Lk. 4:42)

On By pastorjonathanIn DevotionalLeave a comment

In the middle of all the excitement, He was finding a place to be still. While people were desperately searching for Him, asking, begging Him to lay his ministering hands on the injured and bring healing, He was looking for a place to be alone with the Father.  It was that important.

The day before had been busy.  Maybe He should have slept in, but instead He is out in a desolate place seeking an opportunity to speak the Father.  People were looking for Him.  Didn’t He know that they were lining up at the door?  His ministry was taking off!  He could be doing ministry at that moment, but instead we find Him with the Father.

It’s just then that I’m reminded.  Ministry isn’t His objective.  It’s not the end.  It’s the means to the end.  Worship is the end.  Bringing people to worship is the end.  And you can’t bring people to a place where you haven’t been.  You can’t lead people to do something in public that you haven’t at least done in private.

He wasn’t on His own in the mission.  He had constant contact with the Father.  He got up and spent time in prayer.  He could have stayed, but He left, the mission required it (Lk. 4:43). He had every reason to stay and be “successful” where He was, but that wasn’t the mission.  He had spoken to the Father and obedience to the Father is more important than a seemingly “successful” ministry now.

Healing, calling people to repentance, declaring the work of the Lord were all secondary to worship!  Real and authentic worship!  Worship not by song or way of lip service, but worship wrought out by obedience! Obedience wrought out by a time of solitude in prayer.

Father,

Today I hear you calling.  You call just like every day.  You say, “Come now and drink deeply from the fountain… come now and drink!”  You say, “Jonathan, you drink now from the fountain… before you call others to drink and immerse themselves in Me, you be immersed!  Don’t preach with a parched mouth!  Don’t attempt to do ministry for Me without seeing Me first.”

I admit O’ God that I am tempted some days to run into the day without seeking You first.  Thank You Father for drawing me close to You.  I almost mistook the ministry for You and that is a dangerous place to be (Mt. 7:21-23).  You have my obedience today and I pray you have it for the rest of the life You have given me.  I am yours.

And What Shall We Do? (Luke 3:14)

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The issue of repentance is tricky business.  There is more to repentance than intention.  There is action! When it was time to prepare the way of the Messiah.  When it was time to set things right.  John called people to repent.  Repent not just of having wrong intentions, but of doing wrong things.

You see that is where I struggle.  That is where I get confused.  I try and repent with my intentions, but leave off the action part. Repentance means turning over every misplaced stone in my life and putting it where it belongs. I often turn over the stone, but seldom do I work up the courage to place the stone where it belongs.  Repentance means doing the right thing, not just talking about the right thing.

Did you notice what repentance looked like when John spelled it out the people who were asking?  It was a matter of justice.  Repentance was a matter of treating your neighbor right, providing for those who had need, and being content with what you have. Speaking of being content…  Am I content?

To not be content is to want more.  To not be content is to covet (and last I checked, “do not covet” is still in the top 10 commandments).  Coveting is the enemy of loving my neighbor. I can’t love my neighbor and be coveting his stuff.  Even if I’m not coveting his stuff  I will love stuff so much that I won’t care about his condition.  After all isn’t coveting what would prompt a man who had two tunics not to share with the guy that didn’t have one (Lk. 3;11)?  It’s not wrong to have two tunics, but it is wrong to love your second tunic more than you love your brother. So repentance is action.  It’s giving me second tunic to my brother who is in need.

Father,

It all belongs to you.  Search my heart today.  Help me to see every stone that needs to be set right.  Give me the courage to set things right in my life.  People are more valuable to you than stuff.  I ask that stuff would never come in the way of me serving you.

Which the Lord has Made Know to us (Lk. 2:15)

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When I was younger I used to beg God to speak to me like he spoke to the prophets. At night I would lay in my bed long expecting a miraculous dream or vision.  I wanted to see a unique revelation of God.  I told him that if He would speak, I would listen.  Little did I know that He had been speaking all along.  In my heart I wasn’t longing for the voice of God… I was longing to be special.  My goal in hearing God speak wasn’t so I could obey Him or even make much of Him, it was so I could make much of me.


These days He does speak to me plenty and  plainly.  Before you go getting the straight jacket, please know that I’m talking about His Word, the Bible.  There really isn’t a mystery to what God is up to.  It has all been written down from several different divinely inspired human authors all confirming the same thing… Christ has lived among us, died for our sins, rose from the dead and will return to set all things right.  It’s a more complete message than what the shepherds heard in the field that night.

I often wonder, if I had been woken out of my sleep that night by a crew of shepherds running through town murmmering, “Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men,” would I have followed them to the manger? Whether Angels or Shepherds does it matter whose mouth we hear speaking the Word of God?  Is it not still His Word?  Are the expectations any less?

Father,

I pray that you would deliver my heart today from the kind of pride that seeks to manipulate how You would speak to me.  Forgive me for being like a child trying to trick his parents into getting what he wants. I beg that I would be obedient to the truth I do have from you.  I’m tired of trying to call all the shots.  Thank you for making yourself known to me.  Grow me in grace and the knowledge of You.  I really do want to walk with you today.

They Were Both Righteous Before God (Luke 1:6)

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“Here I am… use me!” I prayed in quiet desperation hoping that the God of the universe would hear my simple sentence prayer and know that my heart was to be used by Him.  But was that really my heart?  Was I really asking Him to use me or was I simply asking to use Him?  The more I reflect on the deceitfulness of my own heart the more I realized just how far from God my heart really was.  Like a child begging to be lifted up by his parent only to reach something formerly out of his grasp I was begging God to exalt me so that I could grab a hold of something cheap and tawdry like the approval of others.

Why do we chase such small things as money, power, recognition, etc. when the only one who really matters in never far away?  I used to read biographies of great men and women who had blazed a trail in history and ask God to make me like them.  I would read about their devotional habits and tied to hard to mimic them thinking that was the key to unleashing God’s power in my life… Oh how foolish I was.  They weren’t looking for God’s power in those early morning sessions, they were looking for God!

This is what it means to be righteous.  They were not looking past the Creator for his blessings, they were looking to their Creator as their blessing. That’s the secret!  It was there all along!  Those who are greatly used by God are often those who seek only to humbly obey Him and walk in righteousness.  They are not righteous for the sake of having others look at them (that’s what the Pharisee’s did).  They just honestly have looked for and trust God and somehow in the mix, these are the people God uses… the one’s whose greatest ambition is to simply please Him. And at the end of the day, isn’t that all he is really after? The full devotion of my heart (Then he can use me however he wants).

Truth and Lies (1 Kings 13)

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1 Kings 13 tells the interesting story of an unnamed prophet. He speaks a prophecy against the false alter that Jereboam has set up. His prophecy is spectacular in that he calls the name of a future king who will as end to the throne some 300 years later.

Jereboam is angry at the prophet and reaches out to cause him harm, but God controls Jereboams hand and the prophet must pray for Jereboam to get the use of his hand back. The king Jereboam then tries a different tactic and tries to persuade the prophet to come over for a meal. The nameless prophet insists he must not stop for food and return home… For this was the command of the LORD.

Note: the message is clear. God’s prophets are not to be swayed… Either by force or by money, the word of the Lord is the word of the Lord.

At this point the story gets interesting as an older prophet enters the scene and persuades the nameless prophet to turn aside and done with him. Obviously he lies to the nameless prophet, but the apparent younger prophet is pursuaded to join the older in a meal (in opposition to the earlier revelation he had from God).

At the meal the older prophet rightly prophesies the death of the nameless prophet and it shortly comes to pass.

Application: the nameless prophetess used by God to utter one of the most spectacular prophecies, yet was easily decieved into not believing what the Lord told him, because of a lie told him by another prophet. How often are we like the nameless prophet? We will believe and know something is true, yet when confronted with our own tender areas of sinfulness we will be quick to make excuses as to why God would allow our particular version of sin.

This man would not be persuaded by a king, but would trust the advice of an old prophet over the Word of God.

Diversify your Investments and Give Generously (Ecclesiastes 11)

On By pastorjonathanIn Devotional, discipleship4 Comments

Ecclesiastes 11

Solomon tells us to cast our bread upon the water.  He is not stating that we should literally go throw bread out at the lake, but rather this is probably a shipping term.  In Solomon’s day comerce would take grain and goods from one country to anther via the shipping lanes (on the water).  Yet, they didn’t have weather tracking systems and sometimes ships would go to sea never to be heard from again.  But, often ships would make it to port.  Sell the grain and goods and bring home a hefty profit.  Solomon says it is better to go ahead and invest in many places than place all your eggs in one basket (so to speak).  You don’t know where the hurricane will strike, the oil leak will emerge, or the demand for 8-tracks will hit rock bottom.  However, one thing is sure.  If you stare at the sky and try to calculate the weather and never invest, you won’t receive a profit (11:4).  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  So invest in lots of places and spread out the risk.

I think the application here is for more than how you are going to manage your retirement portfolio.  Sometimes we can be paralised by the obstacles ahead of us.  Your sitting there staring at the sky looking for the right conditions.  You don’t know the future.  The only way to live life is to take some calculated risk.  Things will not always work out according to your plan.  Better to attempt something great rather than use the excuse that you were just waiting for the right moment and it never came.

Make investments where it really counts. Be generous in your relationships.  Give to others.  Be a good friend, a good spouse, a good parent, open your home to others, show grace, forgive, look for opportunities to share Jesus.  Don’t be disappointed if you are not immediately met with success in these areas of your life.  Cast your bread on the water.  Live soberly knowing that one day we will all give an account to God (Ecclesiastes11:9).

Real Failure Comes From a Lack of Wisdom (Ecclesiastes 10)

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Chapter 10 is much like Solomon’s speech to the graduating class.  Its a reminder that God is sovereign, people should be humble, and that apart from God’s wisdom you will make a mess of your life.

I know a man who lived well and for a majority of his life he trusted God.  Yet near the end he became a fool and made some bad decisions.  We are all only one bad decision away from ruining it all.  It’s not how you start the race its how it ends that matters. (Ecclesiastes 10:1)

Sometimes we meet resistance in life just because we are foolish.  There is story I once heard of a young man who wanted to be a lumberjack.  He was younger and more athletic than the other lumberjacks in his crew.  He showed up to the forest the first day and made the claim that he could chop down more trees than anyone else on the crew by the end of the week.  So they went to work and sure enough the young and athletic lumberjack was leading the way and cutting down trees almost twice as fast as the rest of the crew.  Eager to make his mark on the lumberjack world he worked through his lunches and while the other guys took a break. Somewhere around mid-week things began to slow and the young and athletic lumberjack was cutting fewer and fewer trees.  Finally by the end of the week he had cut the least amount of trees and the foreman had to let him go.  On his way out of the camp he went up to one of the older men who had been cutting down trees for years.  He said, “I don’t get it.  I am stronger and faster than anyone out here.  I never took breaks.  I worked through lunch.  How did you cut down more trees than me?”  The older lumber jack simply replied, “I took time to sharpen my axe.”  Sometimes it’s not about how hard you swing or how fast you are.  Sometimes as the old business proverb goes, “Work smarter, not harder.” (Ecclesiastes 10:10)

Application:   Where do you need wisdom in your life? There are decisions that you need to make in your life right now.  Some of them are somewhat small and inconsequential (like what will you eat for lunch).  Others of them really  matter.  Like what kind of husband, father, son,  or leader will you be.