All in Daily Devotion

When we are young we have a certain amount of confidence in our bodies, and lean more on their ability to perform, but as we age our faith in them wanes, and our trust shifts more and more towards God. When we are sick and have access to a doctor our confidence is in the practice of medicine, but when we do not, then our cry is to God. The challenge for the young is to have the faith of the old, and the hardship of the patient in hospital is to deliver the prayer of the poor and unfortunate. Is your hope and faith in God strong... always?

Every day I begin my prayers with an expression of love for God, then a plea for my forgiveness of sin, followed by my thanks for His many blessings, and next I ask for three things I would like to talk about today... wisdom, knowledge, and intelligence. Do you ask the Lord for these things? Not that you should receive them in a worldly sense, but more-so in a spiritual sense... Do you desire supernatural enlightenment in understanding God’s will for you this day?

Are you purified as a Heavenly thing? Do you acknowledge in communion that the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed you of sin, but also that it purified you in preparation for a heavenly existence? How often do we take communion and casually remember Jesus? Even worse, how many times do we take communion without thinking at all? This is the danger of repetition, but if repetition is performed with the proper preparation, it strengthens our memory, and makes an act so natural to us that we can perform it, believe it, perfectly each time.

Is God’s Word at work in you? This is a question that challenges us because inevitably we ask ourselves, “what does that actually mean?” Does it mean that we ask, and the work is in His giving? Does it mean that His Word is an expression of His will, and that the work is our striving to complete it? Is His Word a promise to us, and the work how that promise comes alive? Or perhaps His Word is a lesson in life, and the work is in it being taught us. Each of these are examples of God giving His Word and it working with and in us. Do you believe His Word is His Bond? Do you believe?

We hear the story of Peter denying Jesus three times before the cock crowed, and we think to ourselves that this man was weak of character, but do we ever look at our own lives and count our own denials? Denying can be blatant like in the case of Peter, or it can be subtle. Do you speak up when the subject of faith comes up in a group, or do you deny Him in your silence? When you are at a social event and someone belittles Jesus do you defend Him or walk away... denying Him? How about the witness you didn’t give someone when the opportunity arose, and you were afraid? Denial comes in many forms, can we overcome it?

How do you face the trials and hardships that you are in the midst of, or that you see coming? How do you pray each day when you enter your secret place? When you pray with your family do your words encourage them to let God take control of that one day, and not to fret over His provision for tomorrow? Trust is our strength in Him. Having faith that He is sufficient for this day is enough.

It is Holy Saturday, and on this day Jesus lay in His tomb, but for us it is a time of waiting, of anticipation. Are you one who is comfortable in waiting, or does it cause you to toss and turn in the night? In our relationship with God we often find ourselves waiting for Him... do you settle in, or pace the floor? Let the Lord give you peace as you wait, because there is untold blessing in the waiting.

Do you seek out the will of the Father as you go about living each and every day? Do you say that you do the things which Jesus taught, and yet neglect to ask, seek, and knock on the door of God in search of His Holy will? If this is true then you are in dire straights, and Jesus will know you not when you stand in judgement. Nothing was more important to Him than to do His Father’s will.

What does the sabbath mean to you, is it simply a day of rest, a day off from work, or is there much more to this day than sleeping a little longer than usual, and going to church for a couple of hours? The Sabbath is the only day of the week that is called holy. God blessed it, and set it apart from all the rest, but did you know that there were three sabbaths celebrated during the first Holy Week of Passover?

Do you read the Bible each day, diligently adhere to the commandments, and perform acts of mercy as a mater of daily routine? Do you pray that God forgive you of your sins as you prepare to walk out the door in the morning, and place a check beside that on your list of righteous things to do? Well all these things are good, but God doesn’t want to be reduced to a checklist; he wants to be your closest friend, your most trusted confidant, the one you come to with every thing that excites you in life... he wants a relationship that places Him at the true center of your life... your BFF. We can’t do this without constant prayer.

When you are serving God do you seek to further perfect what He has given you to do? If He tells you to build a neighborhood church do you build a parsonage as well? We hear the voice of God, we hear what He would have us do, and then presume we know what comes next. Have you been guilty of this? Did it seem innocent as you placed words in the mouth of God?

What do you think of during communion? What was happening on that day of the first communion in which Jesus offered the bread of His body and the cup of His blood to the disciples? On that day they were celebrating the Passover feast, eating the Seder meal, and it has a certain order and meaning to all of its parts. Every movement, every food, each cup of wine has meaning and timing. When did Jesus offer Himself to His disciples? What did it imply?

Do you win souls to Jesus Christ, and by doing so fill the nets of heaven for God Himself? What did it take for you to follow Jesus once you heard His voice calling you? Did you drop whatever you were doing and follow Him, or did you look away and think about it for a while? When Jesus calls us, His presence is so overpowering that we abandon our old life and begin our journey with Him at once, but at that moment... do we really know who He is?

How do you view holiness? Are you a humble and holy person? Are you this because you say you are, or because others see it in you and say “this person is humble, and holy indeed”? If you think you have achieved a certain degree of humility and holiness before God do you use it to separate yourself from those who have not? In Isaiah 65 we hear God speaking of such actions and He calls them rebellious.