Tag: Devotional

Know Who You Are Talking Too (Nehemiah 1:5)

On By pastorjonathanIn Devotional, NehemiahLeave a comment

And I said, “O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, (Nehemiah 1:5 ESV)

There once was a young boy at the Louvre Museum in Paris who came up to the world famous painting, the Mona Lisa. He started to comment to no one in particular and then to a crowd as people began to gather around him. He said things like, “look it’s got lots of tiny cracks in it. The artist obviously wasn’t very good.” And “look at that smile, have you ever seen such a hideous half-way smile in your life?” The boy thought he was doing good as he continued to make his comments about the painting, but then the curator to the museum showed up. He gracefully said, “I’d like to correct some of your misconceptions about the painting. It is THE most famous painting in the world. It was painted by the master Leonardo da Vinci. There is much mystery surrounding this painting but one thing we know for sure… It is a master piece.”

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oo often when we pray we talk to God like we have a full grasp of the situation, like what we see is all there is to the world! We pretend to educate God rather than being educated by him about the world he created! Instead of coming to him and asking, “God what is your plan,” we come to him with a plan in mind. Our list of petitions (requests) come off more as like a wish list at best or demands at worst. We totally forget who God is.

Biblical prayer starts with a recognition of who God is. It’s hard to petition God with my petty list of wants and desires after I have recognized who he is. My prayer turns from “me” focused to “God” focused. That’s how Nehemiah prays here and it is how Jesus teaches us to pray in the model prayer (Matthew 6:9). Beginning with reverence and honor for God helps us remember who we are talking to and the nature of prayer.

Too often the first word in prayer is “I,” “I need this” or “I want you to…” We are reflecting on the wrong person in prayer when we do that. We don’t have the power to accomplish anything otherwise we wouldn’t be praying. We are going to God to see how he will act and move in this situation. We are asking him to do what only He can do.

Take time today to reflect on who God is and ask Him for His will to be done in your life. Use the model prayer (Matthew 6:9-11) and pray it in your own words as you wait on Him to reveal His will for your life.

The Model prayer was a game changer in my personal prayer life. I used to come to God with a wish list of things I wanted Him to accomplish. I had prayer all wrong. When I started coming to him and asking Him to do his will in my life and submitting my life to Him I began to see God work in ways I never thought possible. There is a huge difference between asking God to do what you want and asking God to do what He wants in your life.

Fasting Brings Feelings into Focus (Nehemiah 1:4)

On By pastorjonathanIn Devotional, Nehemiah2 Comments

As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. (Nehemiah 1:4 ESV)

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What do you do when you have deep feelings about injustice in the world? How do you move? What is the next step? Is it just emotion or can that emotion be channeled into something productive? Take a look at Nehemiah. We are only four verses into this book and already we see his strength of character to ask the question about how others were doing, to hear and respond with weeping, but then he does…MORE.

First he does more feeling. He adds fasting to the mix. He wants his body to ache because his heart aches. This is a long forgotten discipline in our culture. Fasting is the intentional with drawl from food so you can focus on what you feel. In your body it serves as a detox or a cleanse, kind of like a reboot for your digestive system.  Spiritually speaking it does something similar.  In Nehemiah’s time a fast would mean taking time away from meal preparation which included everything from the purchase at the market to the actual cooking of the meal. This was a big time saver, but more than that it was a way not to focus on the day to day things that can consume our thinking and allow a pure focus on what God might have for Nehemiah. Too often we drown out God’s voice because of all the other voices we fill our lives with. In a modern context fasting might also include setting aside entertainment, social media, and other voices that have a way of consuming out thoughts so that we might be able to hear clearly from God. Fasting brings feelings into focus.

Our feelings alone can lack focus. We have a crush on a person who just looks cute, but when we get to know them we find out they are a jerk… but until your feelings are brought into focus by reality you move and act as if they are a perfect person. Feelings are a helpful response to where we are and how things have been, but they are unreliable guides to our future. This is why we should never just act on our feelings alone.  Just ask anyone who has said or done something stupid in a moment of anger.

Nehemiah feels a deep sadness for his countrymen and especially for Jerusalem being a city without walls, instead of jumping into action though he brings his feelings into focus by fasting and he brings his thoughts to God in prayer.

Now lots of folks think that prayer is where we move God to action, but they have it backwards. We don’t pray to tell God what he should do; we pray to ask God what we should do. The point of prayer isn’t to conform God’s will to ours, but to conform our will to God’s (Matthew 6:9-10).  Nehemiah goes to God to get God’s perspective, as we will see in the coming days and weeks, God sees the need clearer than Nehemiah ever could.

You may be at a crossroads in your life where you feel like God is calling you to do something but you are unclear about what he wants you to do. Fasting may be a very helpful option to bring things into focus. Consider setting aside some of the distractions in your life so that you can hear his voice more clearly. It is wise to get clarity on what God is doing before you act.

Feeling Bad News (Nehemiah 1:3-4)

On By pastorjonathanIn Devotional, NehemiahLeave a comment

And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.” As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. (Nehemiah 1:3-4 ESV)

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We live in a society where people flee from pain and discomfort. Sometimes we would rather not hear news at all than to hear bad news. We burry our head in the latest video game, music album or endless search for funny memes and videos rather than face the reality of the situation in front of us. It would have been easy for Nehemiah to dismiss the discomfort of his countrymen as their problem. After all, he lived in a city with walls.

Something you should understand about city walls. They were like locks on our doors today. They served to keep people inside safe and people with bad intentions out. Imagine moving to a new neighborhood only to find out that the new place you are living in doesn’t have locks. What’s worse is that it doesn’t have doors and there is no police force to call when someone breaks in. That was the situation the people in Nehemiah’s home town were experiencing.

Nehemiah allowed himself to feel a deep empathy for his fellow countrymen who lived in a city that had no protection from its enemies. As we will find out in the rest of this book, he’s not a weak man, but here he sobs like a child. He isn’t running from the issue, he is feeling the full force of it.

Sometimes we can become desensitized to the humanity of people who are suffering. Maybe we’ve seen the images of one too many starving children on the TV screen to care anymore. We have grown callous. In our hearts we think, “That’s somebody else’s problem” or “I can’t do anything about that,” and we move on to the next Pokémon to capture or meme to post. (Not that these things are bad in and of themselves, but when we use them as diversions from what God is pressing on our hearts).

I think that feelings are important. We will learn later that they aren’t a good guide, but that they can be a good indicator of where we are. How do you feel about the current state of your school, neighborhood, or workplace? Take time to journal your thoughts today.

For me it was frustration. I saw a huge need, but didn’t know how to address it. Obviously the things we were doing in student ministry were working with churched kids but we were struggling to reach people who hadn’t been to church (which as it turns out was most of the public school population). I also felt sadness, like we were losing a generation. I wondered about what could be done to reach students who had never heard the gospel.

Who Do You Care For?

On By pastorjonathanIn Devotional, NehemiahLeave a comment

When I was sixteen years old I came home drunk late on a Saturday night and was sneaking to my room. I had to go past my parent’s room to get to my room and as I passed by I heard my mom talking. Which I thought was strange because I knew my dad was working overnight as a security guard at the local hospital. I listened in to see who she might be talking too on the phone so late at night.

I soon found out that she wasn’t on the phone, she was praying. And it wasn’t just any prayer it was a deep and raw emotional prayer. She was sobbing, literally crying out to God. Then I heard my name. She was praying for me. She was asking God that I would repent of my sins and believe on Him. She was asking that I would be protected from the things that I couldn’t even see. She was pouring her heart out… for me.

Long story short, my mother’s prayer that night and many nights before and since have brought me to faith in God. They have shaped my life in more ways that you could ever imagine. Today we are going to look in the scriptures at the story of a Nehemiah a man of boldness, compassion, and prayer.

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Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.”  (Nehemiah 1:1-3 ESV)

It was an ordinary day when Nehemiah’s life took on a bold new direction. The sun didn’t shine any brighter, the birds didn’t sing any louder, and there wasn’t a melody hinting that his world was shifting direction. He wasn’t at youth camp, He wasn’t sitting in a conference and he wasn’t out on a mission trip.  It was just a normal day like any other. Yet, it was on this normal day that God did something extraordinary in Nehemiah’s heart.

God can do extraordinary things in our hearts and lives on ordinary days. You don’t need the buzz of fancy lights and loud music to know that God is up to something. You don’t have to hear from professional camp speakers or evangelists for the Holy Spirit to stir your heart. The God of the Universe is able to find you right where you are!

It all began with a simple question. Nehemiah simply asked about how everything was going back in Judah. Now here is the thing, we will find out a bit later that Nehemiah is a little bit of a big shot. He has a demanding job in the government and he sees people from all over the empire. He’s got plenty of stories to tell about all sorts of people and places, but when his brother comes from his rural home town he takes time to ask about how everything was back in Jerusalem.

Nehemiah was concerned about the welfare of his people. They mattered to him. He takes time to ask about home and he listens! The message he hears alters the direction of his life. He finds out that the people back in Jerusalem have no walls for protection and are open to exploitation by those around them.

Who do you care for? If you are a teenager in public school, I want you to ask yourself, “How is everyone at my school doing?” Or if you are home school you might focus on your neighborhood, “How is everyone in my neighborhood doing? If you work, consider your job, “how are people at work doing?” What is life like for these people? Do they have any needs? Odds are you may have never stopped to reflect on this before (we’ll talk about that more in the days ahead) but right now take time to consider how it is going with the people where you live.

I had an ordinary day like Nehemiah where God did something extraordinary in my life. It began with a student I met in Mobile, AL named Steven. Steven had grown up driving by churches all of his life and had never heard about how Jesus had died for his sins. I did some digging to find out how many students might be out there like Steven and I found out that roughly 85-88% of public Middle school and High students don’t attend church and many have not even heard the simplest of bible stories. It reminded me of Romans 10:14 where Paul says, “How can they hear without a preacher?” and it became my Nehemiah moment.

Five Basic Questions to Help You Study the Bible

On By pastorjonathanIn discipleship, leadership, Uncategorized3 Comments

I’m coaching several young men and women on how to explore the bible for themselves as well as how to share biblical messages. It’s really part of discipleship. One of the key things we do is use are these five basic questions to help us understand the text we are studying. I call them diagnostic questions because they help us to diagnose the spiritual meaning behind the text. It’s important to note that these questions are not original with me, and I don’t know the original source.  (If you do know a quotable source, I’d like to know, so please comment below so I can give proper credit).

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Generally I’ll have someone read the passage out loud to the group. We will follow along in our own bibles. Then I’ll begin by asking these questions one at a time. We pause long enough after each question to answer. Our answers come from the scripture itself and if someone wants to know more about an individual’s answer they can ask, “Which verse did you pull that from?” This helps to keep the conversation on track and thoroughly centered on the scripture.

So here are the questions we ask:

  1. What does this passage teach about God?
  2. What does this passage teach about man?
  3. Is there a command to obey, an example to follow, or a promise to claim?
  4. Is there a sin to confess or avoid?
  5. How do I need to specifically apply this to my life?

The last question becomes a spring board into personal application. It’s where we move from the generalities to specific areas of application. When sharing in a group setting it is important that your group is comfortable enough with one another that they can share person struggles and desire to see God have victory in different areas of their life.

These five questions are helpful on most biblical passages. They are a great way to communicate about what the passage actually teaches and to come to some conclusions about personal application. I like that it is easy to model and easy to reproduce. I’ve had leaders pick up this model and use if for bible studies. Indeed, I picked it up along the way from someone else, whom I am sure picked it up from someone else, etc. There is no telling where it began (seriously, if you know tell me).

Overcoming Insecurity: How Leah Became a Princess

On By pastorjonathanIn DevotionalLeave a comment

At some time or another we all wrestle with insecurity. Insecurity acts like emptiness. It’s a place where we feel inadequate, like something is missing. Sometimes our insecurity can cause us to cross lines we normally wouldn’t cross. We try and cover over a perceived lack, fill the void in our life, go on a quest for what we perceive to be missing. We can look for fulfillment in things like money. We may or may not have a lot of it. When things go well, we buy something. When they don’t go well, we buy something. Money becomes our fix. We sooth over our hurts with a new stereo, set of sunglasses or even just compulsive shopping spree at check out center at Walmart.

Some of us look for fulfillment in a relationship, we think that if we find the right guy or the right girl that it will fix whatever is broken so deep inside of us. We go from relationship to relationship, or we go on in a doomed relationship because we are scared to face life alone. We make compromises to please the other person, just to stay in the relationship.

I want to tell you a story about Leah. Leah had a big insecurity in her life that caused her to make big compromises. She was lonely and the people who were supposed to love and support her, like her dad, didn’t have much confidence in her. Leah just wanted to be loved and one day someone gave her the opportunity to take a short cut to have all of her dreams come true. She just had to cross a line. The kind that once you cross it, you can never come back. I don’t know how Leah felt about crossing the line, but I know that she did it… She wanted to be loved that badly. She would do ANYTHING to fill the void in her life. Continue reading “Overcoming Insecurity: How Leah Became a Princess” →

The First Thing You Should Ask When Approaching God

On By pastorjonathanIn Devotional, PrayerLeave a comment

The first petition in the prayer is “Hallowed by your name.” This is not in the language of a statement, but a request. Everyone knows that we pass around petitions when we want folks to sign their name to something that we will be presented to a governing body. It can be a petition to remove the coke machine from the cafeteria lobby or it can be a petition for congress to address an issue. The idea is the same. It is a request. After the introduction the model prayer becomes a list of six petitions. These are the sorts of things that should be at the top of our prayer list. These are the sorts of things that we should ask from God.

The first thing Jesus lists has to do with the name of God. The word “hallowed” simply means holy, set apart, special, revered, honored. Perhaps the best synonym for this word is “glorified.” You could read this petition as, “May your name be glorified.” The implication of this are profound. The very first thing that we are to ask God for is more glory for his name!

I don’t think you can utter this with sincerity without first looking inward and asking, “do I glorify God?” Do my actions point to Him? Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has already told those in attendance:

Matthew 5:16 ESV In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

There is a contrast here between the deeds of a disciple and the deeds of a hypocrite. Hypocrites perform their works in the hopes that you will give THEM praise. Those who follow Jesus recognize that all Glory, all honor, belong to GOD ALONE!

We should honor God with all that we do in His name. There has been much done in his name that does not bring Glory and Honor to him. Folks have picketed funerals, held up signs that “God hates fags.” Armies have waged wars in the name of God. We should be careful what we say and do in the name of God. Just because we use his name, it doesn’t guarantee that God is with us. Many people who have done things in his name will find themselves kicked out of the kingdom because they never really knew the king (Matthew 7:21)

One of my favorite phrases is, “I don’t have the answers, but I know who does.” This simple response to a friend in crisis has a way of pointing them back to the truth. This was what Joseph said to Pharaoh when he had a dream that needed an interpretation. This is what Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar when he had a vision that needed interpreted. Both men put the glory back on the father and said, “We are powerless, but we know the one who has the power.” This was a way of bringing both kings to glorify God.

By the way, there is something in our hearts that rebels against this notion. Apart from the wonderful work of Jesus in our lives we are very self-centered individuals. We want the glory. Often we make ourselves the center of prayer. The first petition out of our mouth is for something we want. It’s not even for something we need. We beg God for a raise, a promotion, peace to cover over the anxiety in our hearts, we come upset over how we’ve sinned against him again. We offer prayers to him like he is a genie and he has to grant us wishes. I think a large part of our population miss God because they have this preconceived notion that God is like a generous grandpa who is supposed to give us what we wish for without asking too many questions. And so those kind of prayers go unanswered they give up and assume God isn’t real because he didn’t clean up the mess they made. It’s not a prayer aimed at Heaven, it’s not a prayer centered on God’s glory rather it’s focused and motivated on an exchange. “I pray, you give.” It’s how a consumer mindset hijacks prayer. It’s also arrogant because we assume that this is how God operates. We don’t consult him. We don’t go to his book. We don’t seek him out. We simply make demands. We’re like children accusing our parents of unusual cruelty because we’ve been ordered to eat our green beans or even worse we’ve taken a gun and blown a hole in our leg and complain to the surgeon that it’s his fault that we are in so much pain.

Isaiah lived in a society that had experienced decent economic growth for its time. Then when the king died he saw a vision of God in the temple and all he could utter in his presence was:

Isaiah 6:5 ESV “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

The first thing he could utter from his mouth wasn’t, “Man this is awesome!” but a very real prophet of God all he could think was that his mouth had not done justice to the holiness, the glory, the worthiness of God. I wonder if we were to truly grasp the glory of God if we would not have the same utterance. It’s not like Isaiah cussed. He was a prophet and he had treated the name of God casually and when we saw a very real manifestation of the presence of God he couldn’t help but utter a curse on his own head.

Does it surprise you that God cares so much about his name? I mean you care about your name right? I’m fortunate to have one of those simple names that almost anyone can say, but I remember this one time when my wife and I had started dating we went to go see her grandmother. And for the life of me, she could not get my name right. She kept calling me “Jeremy.” At this point a little back story is helpful. Jeremy was the name of one of her’s Ex-boyfriends. Every time this sweet lady said Jeremy part of me was very offended. I had to take a moment to calculate whether or not she was doing it on purpose or if she was truly a forgetful woman. (Now that I know her, there is a very good chance that she did it on purpose).

If you and I can get that way over our name being misrepresented, pronounced wrong, or forgotten, how do you suppose God ought to be over his name that is to be the most highly respected name in the whole universe? Do you think he’s glorified when we let his name slide like a curse word? Is he honored when we use his name to mock others? Especially the name of Jesus when the bible says that at His name every knee will bow and that there is no salvation in any other name.

One of the joys of my job is that I get to coach students on how to impact their campus with the gospel. I’m at three or four schools each week. One week I was at one of our local schools and a student was in the club and he was saying things like, “Oh my G___” and using Jesus’ name as a cuss word. We quickly jumped into a conversation about what it means to “Not use the Lord’s name in vain.” Which is also one of the ten commandments. This particular day was a leadership meeting and we were meeting to establish which students would lead in prayer, and the other various aspects of the club. This student wanted to pray. And we quickly got caught up on the Model Prayer. I said, “Man you can pray, but only if you are repent of how you use have used God’s name. When Jesus teaches us to pray the very first thing we are supposed to ask God for is that his name would be glorified and I don’t see how you can do that while using his name as a cuss word.”

True Prayer Is Aimed At Heaven

On By pastorjonathanIn DevotionalLeave a comment

This is one of those things that may be difficult to grasp because technically God is spirit and has the capacity to be everywhere at once. He is not limited to space-time as you and I are. He is an unlimited being, yet he has limited himself for our sake. Heaven is his abode. The place where he resides, but if we know our Old Testament we know that God created Heaven and Earth together (Gen.1:1). He used to walk on the Earth with Adam and Eve in a paradise known as the Garden of Eden. But when Adam and Eve sinned against God they were expelled from the Garden and the presence of God.

Our sin has caused God to separate himself from us. The world that God created and blessed has become infected with sin. Darkness cannot exist in the presence of light and so too sin cannot exist in the full presence of God. Moses spoke with God face-to-face, but in a limited way (Ex 33:11) . Much like the world experienced when Jesus became a man and took on flesh (Phil 2:6-7). When Moses asked to see God in all His glory, God said it couldn’t be done without killing Moses (Ex 33:20, John 1:18, 1 John 4:12). So in a sense what we see and experience of God is a veiled experience. We have yet to fully experience Him. Hold on, we will. There will be a new Heaven and a new Earth and God himself will be the shining light. Sin will be dealt with once and for all and we will all be in the full presence of God (Rev. 21:23, 22:3-5, IS. 60:19-22). Until that time there is a separation. We pray to God in Heaven because Heaven has yet to come down to earth.

Think of it this way. In WWII the Germans advanced on France and took it fairly quickly. France was under German occupation. However, there were still several men and women, boys and girls who operated as the French resistance. Resisting the German occupation and working to get information to the Allies. They had a vision of seeing their country liberated. The reality was that their country was overrun by Germany and so they were living in a German state, but they took bold risks and sacrificed everything to see their liberty restored.

Earth is a seized state. It has been given over the prince of the power of the air, aka Satan or the Devil (Eph 2:1-2, Mat 4:8-9). But Christ has come to liberate us from the tyranny of sin. Once we have been set free, we still live among a sinful people. Christ has given us the mission to share the good news of liberation with the world. The Earth will become a truly free state once again.

Our Prayers now are offered up as a message from behind enemy lines. They help to focus us in on the mission. They line us up with where God is working. They empower us to see a better day. They give us opportunity to offer hope. It’s a phone call to the liberating force. We don’t have the power to free ourselves, but we know who does.

We come to God in prayer simply, relationally, in community, and with a view toward Heaven. This is completely different than how the Pharisee/ hypocrites of the day were praying. They were praying profoundly, non-relationally, in a fashion designed to show that they were superior to others and for personal benefit. Their prayers weren’t heard by God because they never fully intended them to be.

I’m a Guest Blogger Today Over At…

On By pastorjonathanIn DevotionalLeave a comment

hey readers I’ve joined with some online partners in blogging through Galatians. Today my second post “Apostle Aproved” is up over at http://www.practicalbibleteaching.com

Go check it out!