Category: Daily Devotionals

Continue in brotherly love.  Hebrews 13:1

God’s love is inclusive.  Mine is often not.  God’s love is instinctive, and He is quick to extend affection.  I do not love by default and often contemplate whether or not love will be demonstrated.  While ‘love one another’ sounds like an elementary message as I begin the last chapter of Hebrews, it is complicated.

This letter was written to the Jewish people who struggled to include the Gentiles in their circles.  They had understood for centuries that they were God’s chosen people and now they were being called to embrace ‘foreigners’ as fellow disciples of Christ. Treating them as brothers was difficult.  Perhaps they considered each one an add on instead of an equal.  The offense was large enough that the author of this letter to the Hebrews included this strong reminder.

If you’ve ever moved and joined a church, you remember how it felt to be a newcomer.  You came up against the old guard, perhaps, and knew that your opinions and votes didn’t matter yet.  You hadn’t put in your time.  You might have felt that the old timers were cliquish and slow to accept you.   While it shouldn’t be like this, it is.  Flawed humanity makes up the family of God.  The message in today’s scripture is clear.  We are all to continue in brotherly love.  Even to newcomers.

Biases are numerous.  They can exist in small towns as a certain resident is described as ‘someone from the wrong side of town.’  Already, love is compromised.  Biases can exist in families where marriages have crossed ethnic lines.  For the one who is different, there is nothing he can do to earn acceptance.  He is made to feel on the outside of family fellowship.  Within a region of a country, there can be prejudices.  The United States has deep fracture lines and they only seem to be getting worse as angry voices define our politics.

How readily do I embrace someone who is not like me?  Do I describe them to others with respect?  Or do I make fun of their culture?  Am I global in my vision for the spreading of the Gospel?  I need to rejoice when any unbeliever responds to the call of God’s Spirit, even those hostile to me, or my family, or my country, or to Christianity in general.  My love should not suffer.  Jonah’s did and without Holy Spirit help, mine will too.

I still love with strings attached.  Change me.  Amen

He walks upon the wings of the wind; He makes the winds His messengers, flaming fire His ministers. Psalm 104:3-4

I’m an over-achiever. I like to work hard and feel that I accomplished something. I enjoy stretching myself to learn new things. While none of these are bad traits, in ministry they can be dangerous. I can begin to believe that my efforts are what yield success. I would do well to remember that humans generate earthbound results. Only God gives rise to true spiritual outcomes.

Several years ago, I had a vivid dream.  I was mixing together three unlikely ingredients in a bowl to make something to eat.  Jesus was standing nearby so I asked Him about it. “What is this going to be, Lord?”  He answered, “It’s going to be manna for the people you’ll be feeding in my name.”  I was surprised because the ingredients were such that you’d never mix them together to create anything appetizing.  So I said, “But how will these three things produce something edible?  I don’t understand.” He laughed and replied, “The secret is in the wind.”

With that I felt a gentle breeze enter the room.  It blew over the ingredients and stirred them up so that they rose into the air to form a swirl before settling back into the bowl.  The Spirit had touched the common ingredients and transformed them into something supernatural.

Wind has always been a sign of God’s presence.  Wind and breath are often synonymous in scripture.  Jesus breathed on His disciples and filled them with a power beyond themselves.  No longer limited but Spirit filled, the Gospel message would spill out of their mouths with power and passion. Continents would never be the same as these ordinary men were transfigured into agents of heaven. Without impressive credentials, people would say of them, “We can tell they have been with Jesus.” The spiritual wind accompanied them. It disturbed the deep. The vast emptiness of people’s souls was filled with the Bread of Life.

God walks on the wind. He begs to be invited and is anxious to intersect today with the ordinary. He is passionate to alter the common things. He dreams of restoring what the Fall has eaten away. Where are you languishing? Why are you panting from self-effort to repair something in vain? The wind promises to blow across the carnage of our lives. We are meant to smell the aroma of Eden. Wherever the Spirit of God will hover today, the landscape will change. Transformation begins with an awareness of my great need.

Come, Holy Spirit, to my ordinary world.  Amen

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.  Hebrews 12:17 

Esau was called unholy because he didn’t recognize the value of his birthright.  He traded it in for a pot of stew.  It’s preposterous, isn’t it?  Such outright disregard for something of infinite worth.  The inheritance he spurned was the inheritance of Abraham, passed down to Isaac, and it was a fortune.  By then, the Israelites had become a small nation.  There were thousands of sheep, camels, goats and donkeys.  Even more valuable than any of this was the favor of God that was bestowed on the one the father blessed.  This, he exchanged.

In Matthew 13, Jesus told a parable about someone finding a treasure in the field and seeing its immense value, he hid it so no one else could find it.  Then he went away to sell everything he had so that he had enough money to go back and buy it.  Jesus said that the treasure represented the kingdom of God.  “Having the omnipotent, saving reign of Christ in our lives is so valuable that, if we lose everything in order to have it, it is a joyful sacrifice.”  John Piper

God couldn’t work with Esau.  When pressure came, it took precedent over things related to the kingdom.  If he would cave to the purposes of God in order to eat a bowl of stew, how could God trust him to persevere under greater pressures?  He was not leadership material even though he was a gifted hunter and fairly responsible son.

The enemy is in the middle of getting God’s children to cave and not wait for God’s promise.  He is all about getting us to abandon the kingdom in favor of earthly solutions.  In the wilderness, He tempted Jesus in just this way.  The message was ~ “Don’t wait on God. Eat now. Enjoy power now.”  The temptations Satan offers us, even now, are temptations to get out of pain early.

Waiting on God is always the harder choice.  We want our ‘stew’.  We want justice today.  We want the love and affection that is tangible over what is intangible.  We want to see answers to prayer now.  When a counterfeit spiritual solution comes into view, our needs can easily become an obsession to the point of pushing God aside.  The lure of what Satan offers is that we can have what we want without waiting any longer.  Along with that comes insinuations that God isn’t good for His promise anyway.

Who will stand?  Who will wait?  Who will treasure the kingdom?  Who will suffer without name calling?  Who will hurt without turning their back on their faith?  How much do I treasure the kingdom of God, the sovereign rule of God, in my life?  Trading it in doesn’t just get me immediate relief.  The danger is always in what I’ve lost.  One day, the comparison will be on full display.  I’ll have embraced plastic trinkets instead of waiting for Jesus, the supreme treasure.

I’ve waited so long for some things, don’t let me cave into apathy.  It is the trinket that brings emotional relief.  You are the rewarder of faith and I will keep looking up to trust You.  Amen

Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14

People who live in an atmosphere of constant conflict often lament, “Oh, if I could just have peace!”  Made in the image of God, we crave peace and spend a lot of money to go places where peace is present.

Craving peace is understandable but striving for peace and making peace are different from each other.  Striving means that peace may not always be possible.  While Jesus promotes unity and while He came to make it possible for us to have peace with God, He also came to bring the sword of truth that would pierce men’s hearts.  Jesus was not a ‘peace at any price’ Savior.  How am I to internalize this scripture then?  Understanding begins when I acknowledge that it takes two people to have peace in a relationship.

Paul said, ‘If it is possible, live at peace.’  The ‘if’ is important to digest because it’s possible, due to people’s sinfulness, to never achieve peace.  People in marriages, families and friendships, deeply hurt another, then offer a generalized, token apology that is pretty meaningless.  “Guess I’m a bad friend.  Chalk me up to being a bad spouse.”  Some consider that an adequate apology and then want everything back to normal.  These are not grounds for peace nor are they grounds for reconciliation!

We are told to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.  We get the harmless part of the equation and cave to the pressure to gloss over things instead of being wise.  There are few truth seekers.  By nature, we weren’t born to own the truth as God defines it.  But the closer I get to Jesus, the more truth I embrace.  With that, the more spiritual sparks I feel from others around me who are repelled by Jesus.  The kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of darkness will always cause a combustible reaction.

What if there hasn’t been an offense but just a difference of opinion?  There isn’t a ‘wrong’ vs. ‘right’ but there are strong feelings attached to each position.  Jesus must show me the path I’m to take.  Is this a hill worth dying on?  Perhaps making peace to love and serve my brother would please God more than digging in my heels. Here is the pitfall. I must repent of pride for automatically assuming that I am right or know best, that I am on the side of truth.  Humility in prayer will allow God to show me what’s really going on.  Perhaps I love to be right more than I love to love others.

As Steve Brown says (the founder of Key Life), “God didn’t save you to make you right, He saved you to make you His.”  Humility becomes us as we defer but humility also clothes God’s warriors.

Lord, for those needing wisdom, grant it.  Amen

Endure suffering as discipline: God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline?  But if you are without discipline—which all receive —then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had natural fathers discipline us, and we respected them. Shouldn’t we submit even more to the Father of spirits and live?  For they disciplined us for a short time based on what seemed good to them, but He does it for our benefit, so that we can share His holiness. No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the fruit of peace and righteousness to those who have been trained by it.  Hebrews 12:7-11

Be honest.  Did you read the first sentence, sigh, and skip over the rest of it?  You’re not alone if you did.  This is the dreaded passage, especially if we have a view of God that portrays Him as angry, nit-picky, and vindictive.  Our instinctive response to a season of pain is to cry out, “All right, what is it I’ve done wrong?”  I’ve certainly voiced that and it used to be often.

This is all pertinent to me right now as our family has sustained a year of one painful thing after another.  It’s been so intense that there has been no choice but to internalize and embrace this passage.  Let me personalize it and perhaps we’ll both love this scripture more than we did an hour ago.

The word discipline can be a trigger.  Overly harsh parents, punishments that were doled out in anger, things said to kids like, “I’m doing this for your own good,” set us up view God’s face as our parent’s faces. That’s a tragedy.  Discipline does not mean punishment.  It means training and instruction.  There must be a lot at stake to learn too, and good things at that, if God permits seasons of suffering. He wants nothing but good for us.  He knows how internally blessed we will be if we learn to think and feel like Jesus.  The pathway to that is oh so arduous.

God is not the schoolmarm who wields a yardstick and threatens, “Now, I’ll teach you.”  This is training that, while hard to bear, comes from unfathomable love and patience.  It is just as often whispered as it is heard in the claps of thunder.  I know that the longer I resist the voice of God in my suffering, the longer the suffering might last.  Not because He is cruel but because He loves me so much that He doesn’t want me to miss it.

The end of the passage promises that trials will yield the fruit of peace and righteousness.  What does that look like?  Here are some things I’m learning.  It’s peace that doesn’t need a pity party.  Peace that doesn’t strive with God to question what He’s doing.  Peace that submits, like a child, and urges me to climb into the shelter of His embrace.  It’s also righteousness.  A kind that learns to think, by default, the kinds of things Jesus thought when His life got hard.  It is a kind that sees suffering as a pathway to service and not something to resent.  It is a kind that breaks all addictions to things outside of God, even people.  That’s leads to joy, not torment.

Peace and righteousness.  This is the design of all suffering whether it is because of the consequences of my sin or whether it is just the kind permitted by God for my sanctification.  Either way, if I accept it and let Jesus share my tears and love Him through it, blessing awaits me and here’s the thing ~ it’s even possible to know both while the flames roar.

Thank you for the lessons.  This is heartfelt but this is also said in faith, Lord.  Amen

 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, so that you won’t grow weary and lose heart.  Hebrews 12:3

This devotional may only be for a fraction of you who are reading it.  If you are one of the few who are being pursued by an enemy, this will hopefully be water in the desert.  You are someone’s target.  You know that war has been declared for no other reason than because you are God’s child.  You hear the roar of the lion in your spirit.  You smell sulfur.

God wants to put iron in your soul. First, know that Jesus endured more hostility than you and I will ever sustain.  He responded in unfathomable mercy but also with justice that will eternally prevail.  We couldn’t have predicted his responses back then, so today it is ever more necessary not to try to guess how we should respond.  We cannot take matters into our own hands.  We must take the hatred that is directed toward us, along with the people who sent it, and leave all of it in God’s hands.  He rules righteously with both justice and mercy.  He will defend us as well as rule righteously.  Both are possible but only within the mind of God.  When up to us, we’ll choose one over the other.

 “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Colossians 2:15  Jesus, through His death, dealt with the strategic levels of authority in the demonic kingdom.  He, publicly, humiliated Satan.  The word ‘triumph’ paints a picture of an official public celebration. A triumph is not the same thing as a victory.  Victory means that a battle has been won.  Triumph is the party thrown after the victory.

How did Jesus celebrate the victory won over his enemy at Calvary?  Perhaps the answer is found contextually by reviewing the customs of ancient Rome.  The victor was placed in a chariot drawn by a white horse and then paraded through the streets of the city.  Citizens of Rome applauded him as he passed by.  Behind him, his conquered ones were led in chains and made to endure the shame of defeat.  With this picture applied, Christ was in the chariot, having defeated his foe through the cross.  His enemies were quite a spectacle behind Him as they were paraded in public defeat and subjugation.  This event was reviewed by all spiritual realms.

The enemies against us may be flesh and blood but the origin of the war is not of the ‘flesh and blood’ kind.  The attacks are conceived and fueled by the evil ones who wage war against Christ.  Spiritual foes want us to believe they still have all the power.  They want us to fear that the cross was not a defining moment in their fate.  But these enemies have been defeated and have been shamed before heaven.  Jesus dealt with them once at Calvary and He will deal with them again before casting them into the lake of fire.  They already know their end.  Suddenly they shouted, “What have You to do with us, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?”  Matthew 8:29

Until then, while experiencing the hostility of others, we can find strength in the knowledge that He deals with our enemies even now, both human and spiritual, with infinite wisdom.

The cross before me.  The cross behind me.  You rule in victory and I trust You.  Amen