All in Daily Devotional
"The Synergy of Devotion and Prayer" is more than a wonderful title for our devotional message this morning, it highlights how either one of them alone is only half the story. Just as our spirit of devotion reacts to prayer, prayer also reacts to our spiritual devotion. One feeds on the other as we delve deeper into God’s Word.
This coming Sunday being Palm Sunday makes today’s lesson all the more pertinent. There are three Sunday's when people attend church who don't typically come, and this is one of them. This is not a time to judge them, or look down our noses on them in pious condemnation of their faith, but to rejoice in their presence there with us, and embrace them. This is the time to open our hearts to them, and to smell the aroma of their religion and God as they are drawn back to the Church to seek, believe, and worship. May they fill the church pews, and the scent of their devotion waft over us on these holy days. They are the temple just as we, who might come to church every Sunday, are the temple… beware lest we destroy God’s Temple and destroy ourselves.
Faith and works have long been hot topics of discussion in the Church. The question is which is most important the religious works we do, or the faith we hold dear, and can we really have one without the other. Do you have them both in your life? Do you perform good works, the kind that any moral person can perform, but don’t believe in Jesus, or have faith in God? Or, do you believe and have faith in Jesus, but never demonstrate that in your works? Do you keep your faith, but are reluctant to live it outwardly?
My personal devotional reading this morning dealt with making all of the common things in our lives sacred. Pastor E.M. Bounds wrote that "It puts God not just in our praying and church-going, but in every aspect of life. The spirit of devotion makes the common things of earth sacred, and the little things great." Someone holding our hand as they pray for us, and telling us that we are going to be alright becomes priceless. A gentle touch conveys our love and caring even as the few words we speak in prayer comforts others. Touch; it seems such a small thing and yet is mentioned repeatedly in scripture. A common thing made holy by our devotion.
God performed miracles throughout the Bible, and He used various men of God and His Son Jesus to perform many of them, just as He uses men and women of faith to perform them today, but after the intense rush of faith, and the awe of that amazing moment has passed, what do we do the next day? Do we walk on, and simply let the fire of that moment die down, go to ash, and be forgotten, or is there more? Do we thank God in the moment, then recover the next day from the spiritual aftermath and hangover of it; that is left by the water that was turned to wine, or the words that God has spoken to us? Or is there “something” more?
My devotional reading on this day in 2016 was regarding the machinery of religion. E.M. Bounds used his daily lesson to speak of the heartlessness with which the machinery of our religion and church often operates. I, on the other hand, would like to speak today about the occasions when that machinery purifies itself in the word of God, and the blood of Jesus Christ; and how thus, having becoming pure and undefiled, it works wonderfully well. In this righteous state of faithfulness the product of our machine is love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness.
Sometimes when we are in a battle against the hardships of life we can become so involved in the struggle, and desperately calling upon the Lord in prayer, that even though we are saying the words, our depth of devotion and loving heart is absent from them. My devotional reading this morning warned against this, and today we will turn to a verse in Isaiah 29 to understand this further.
This morning our devotional message is one of great promise... God cares for us. He answers our prayers, shoulders our burdens, heals us, comforts us, provides for us, and is always true to His Word. We are living in a pessimistic time when men and women, even in the highest of offices, don’t seem to know the truth. Yet we are asked to put our trust in them saying things like “He/she is the lesser of two evils.” Isn’t it wonderful to be able to turn to God and Jesus Christ knowing that in them there is no compromise, and that their Word is always true?
Do you begin to pray fervently with power, but as your prayers continue do you find that your strength is waning? Praying is not only a spiritual exercise, but is also mentally, and physically demanding as well. God sent Jesus an angel to strengthen Him while He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, and He will send us help too. There are sweet prayers that we find rather easy to pray, and we can sing and whisper them, but there are also those that are like raging storms within us that we must shout in order to be heard above the gale, and that demand a great deal of effort to pray. Regardless of the nature of our prayers today, let’s not grow weary as we offer them. Have you ever had such an occurrence in your life?
I received a text message one day regarding the precarious position a close friend was in at work, and the stress this was bringing to him and his family. Hearing that his job was in danger I immediately began praying for God to intercede in his struggle. I prayed for my friend often over the coming days and then added an additional prayer for peace and prosperity to my ongoing requests regarding the safety of his job. I wasn’t praying that he would become wealthy, no, I was praying that the Lord would sustain him and take away this distraction to his faith.
This morning we will study a subject that often perplexes those who are spiritual. My devotional reading today addressed the question "why is it important to pray for my bodily health and worldly matters?" E.M. Bounds reasoned that these things, albeit lower than the spiritual, have much to do with our religion. He went on to say that worldly matters, and our health, affect how we think and this makes them subjects of prayer. Through the years I have prayed for healing many times; not just my own healing but also that of others. Although I can't remember an instance in the Bible where Jesus prayed for His own healing, He healed the bodies of others so there is precedent for this.
Today we are reminded that prayer, and God's provision, concerns itself with all things in our lives and not just the large needs we might have. He doesn’t just step in when we are overwhelmed, and leave the day to day details to us. Our devotional this morning is centered on the painstaking workmanship of God, and isn't it wonderful that there is nothing so tiny that it escapes God's attention? We have a tendency to triage our needs for prayer; placing the large issues and needs foremost in our petition to the Lord, but we are remiss if we neglect the small needs and desires of our everyday lives. Jesus expressed the level of detail in which God watches over us when taught. Listen…
Once again we are exploring the topic of devotion, but today we are asking ourselves what it means to be devout. For this purpose we will use a verse from Acts 12, the story of Saul becoming Paul, and the devotion of Ananias. The Jews who surrounded Ananias praised the devotion he showed to God by his obedience to the law, but do those who know us today look at our lives and call us devout? Ananias was given a good report because he obeyed the law, will we be called devout Christians because of the way we obey God’s commandments, follow Jesus, and love one another?
After studying Trust and how it is such an integral part of prayer, did we finally conclude that it is indeed a simple concept? So often we take something that should be viewed, and taken, as being quite simple, and by attempting to dissect and intellectually define it we transform it into something quite difficult, complex and hard to achieve. However, the Holy Spirit, and our soul, takes us where our intellect cannot, and they can reveal the simplest truth at the heart of the most overwhelmingly complicated things… such as “what is trust?”
Today I am going to share an email with you that I wrote several years ago (on March 5, 2016). I wrote it to a very dear friend, and brother in Christ, with whom I was reading a devotional book each day. I wrote this daily message just before I started sharing my devotionals beyond family and a few very close friends. Then, as he often did, my friend Chuck wrote me a note in return, and I am almost reluctantly sharing it with you because of its personal nature. However, it demonstrates the power of our testimony, and the impact it has on those around us… believers and unbelievers alike.