Weekly Devotions

April 12, 2012

Matthew 18

New King James Version (NKJV)

18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

² Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, ³ and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. ⁵ Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.

Childish Mindset

   Do you remember when you were a child? Do you remember when any and everything was possible? If you want to fly, no one could tell you that you would not fly one day. We were super heroes, sport stars, princes and princesses, and anything that we could think of. There were no such things as dreams and goals when we were children because we could be and do anything, even if it only happened in our imagination.

   Also when we were young we knew that our parents and/or guardians had complete authority over us, even though we did not always obey them. Still we knew that if we stepped out of line or done something wrong sooner or later we would have to face our repercussions, which were handed out by our parents. This is because most of our parents had instilled in us that they were trying to guide us in life and help us for making careless mistakes. Though we may have not understood it when we were younger, we are now thankful for their diligence and discipline because without them we would be lost.

   My friends, this is want Jesus is saying to us in the passage above. It is a two part passage that you have to study to gather the truth meaning. On the outside it looks like Jesus is just answering a question asked to Him by His disciples, “Who is going to be the greatest among us in the kingdom?” While He does answer them, if you look deeper and study the words you will see that He, Jesus, is giving us the keys to entering the kingdom as well.

   First, No one with an adult spiritual mindset and/or faith will enter the kingdom of God. Before you stop reading let me try and make my point. As adult’s we rationalize everything, if we can’t see it we can truly believe in it. This is why Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29) Also as adults we have limited faith, as to say that we believe that God can change our situation from bad to good but we have difficulty believing that we can uproot a mountain and toss it into the sea with our faith.

   However, the main reason that one who has an adult spiritual mindset cannot enter the kingdom of God is because as adult we feel the need to be in charge of our own lives. This is a mindset that we developed as teenagers when we have grown tiresome of being under the authority of our parents. We all can remember saying, “I can’t wait till I grow up, ain’t nobody going to tell me what to do!”, or something like that. So when we become adult we take on that train of thought, we take over the wheel and we are not willing to share driving time with no one not even Jesus.

   This is why Jesus is telling us that in order to enter the kingdom we must be childlike in our spiritual mindset and faith. How do we do this? Well just as we relinquished authority over our lives to our parents or guardians, we must do the same thing to Jesus. Jesus has to be the one calling the shots in our lives and that means that we are to live according to His will and not our own. Only when Jesus is the Head of our lives will we find true joy and happiness. Making Jesus number one is also the only way to the kingdom. (John 6:44; 14:6)

   Lastly, we must revert back to our childhood faith because the bible tells us that All things are possible through Christ Jesus. (Matthew 19:26; Philippians 4:13) The scriptures say all things not some, several, a few, select things, or particular things but All things. I heard a preacher once say that there is nothing left after all because all is everything. So we must believe and have faith like a child to please God. It does matter what this worlds thinks is illogical if God wants it to be it will be! When we do this not only will take leaps and bounds in our spiritual lives but also in our everyday lives as well.

   Until next time, God Bless

                      James Anthony Love

Finding our way through the Wilderness

Matthew 16:24-27

New International Version (NIV)

 ²⁴ Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ²⁵ For whoever wants to save their life^[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. ²⁶ What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? ²⁷ For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

Day Forty

Take up your Cross (The Finale)

   As we end this journey as well as another Lenten season let us remember one of Jesus’ most important commandments. Jesus told us that if we are to be His disciple we must take up our cross daily and follow Him. What did Jesus mean when He said take up our cross?

   Well to understand it fully we have to examine the verses that preceded the twenty-fourth verse. Starting with verse number twenty-one, Jesus was explaining to His disciples that He must, remember that word, go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hand of the elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Now Peter pulled Jesus to the side and told Him that this could not be true and that that it could never happen. Just before this happen Peter had proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah and The Jewish people believed that the Messiah was going to be the one who came and delivered them from the Roman emperor and ushered in an age of peace ending all hatred, suffering, oppression, and disease. So you can understand why Peter thought that Jesus could not die if He was the Messiah, which Peter had already recognized Him to be. However, Jesus rebuked Peter and told him that he was a stumbling block because he did not have in mind God’s concerns only human concerns.

   This is what take up your cross daily means. We must deny ourselves and do His will daily. This is what Jesus is telling Peter in the twenty-fourth verse. In order to be a disciple of Christ we must lose life, or our way of thinking, acting, talking, and being, and then we will find our life through Him. This is a daily process as we seek God’s will and not our own.

   Many people have misinterpreted this commanded as in we must endure unnecessary burdens in our lives: a bad job, a bad relationship, or physical illness. You have hear the saying, “That’s my cross to bear”. This is how we view the cross but during Jesus’ time the cross was not viewed as carrying a burden. The cross was not yet viewed as an act of atonement. The cross was viewed as one thing, death. This is the way that the Romans killed thieves, murderers, and other criminals.  So when Jesus says take up your cross follow Him, He means that we must be willing to die to follow Him. One website that I study before writing this called it dying to self.  Absolute Surrendering of one’s self to God will, this is taking up your cross. We must be willing to lose friends, family members, spouses, social status, our jobs, and even our life if we want to truly follow Jesus.

   The price to pay is a large one. However, look what Jesus says afterward. Whoever loses their life for Him shall Find it. This is not only talking about the eternal life to come but He is talking about this life as well. If we give our lives to Christ we will live more abundantly.

   Lastly, Jesus Himself showed us how to shoulder our own cross. If you look by at the twenty-first verse of Matthew chapter sixteen Jesus said that He must go and suffer these things. He said must because these were things that He knew He had to do because it was the will of the Father. Remember Jesus cried out, “My Father, My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39) So Jesus knew of the pain and agony that He was about to face and continue to walk forward because He was doing not His own will but the will of the Father. We must follow our Savior’s example and do the same thing and when we do the blessing in this life and the life to come will overflow.

   I truly thank you for joining me through this journey. It is my hope and prayer that God has spoken to you just as He has spoken to me. 

   Remember God is ready to usher you into your Promised Land, but are you ready to leave your wilderness? 

   May God Bless and Keep You All!

Finding our way through the Wilderness

1 Corinthians 5:7

New International Version (NIV)

⁷ Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Day Thirty-Nine

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday and it is the day that we reflect on Jesus’ love for us. He loved us so much that He gave His life as a ransom so that we may have eternal life. He endured pain, torture, misery, loneliness, ridicule, and death because He loves us so. However, some people still ask the question why did Jesus have to die?

The scriptures can give us the answers but first let me clear up anyone question. Who kill Jesus? No matter who you pinned the physical act of crucifying Jesus on, the fact is clear that we all, human beings, killed Jesus because of our sinful ways. We know this from reading Matthew 26: 53. Jesus said that He could have called on His Father and He would have sent Jesus more than twelve legions of angels. This means that no one could have done anything to Jesus here on earth unless the Father ordained it. Jesus had to die to eradicate our sins and mend the bridge between us and God.

When sin entered the world through the deception of Adam and Eve it caused a separation behind God and humans, whom He created. After that sin and wickedness grew and became a part of our nature, which in turn further widened the rift between God and Humans. It got so bad that God even regret creating us (Genesis 6:5-7).

Throughout the Old Testament people made sacrifices trying to atone for their sins and heal their relationship with God. However nothing was good enough to make up for the world’s sin, this is why Jesus had to come down from glory and die for our sins. Jesus was pure and perfect so He alone could bear the weight of our sins and reconnected us with our Father.

Lastly, Jesus had to die because He had to be resurrected. He had to conquer death so that He could have all power in His hands. Once Jesus was resurrected the power that sin held over us vanished, no longer could we be held down by our past sins because Jesus had paid the ultimate sacrifice. Now we have a Savior who can wash us clean by His blood and make us pure and acceptable in God’s sight.

So as we celebrate Good Friday remember what all our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had to endure just so that we could be free from the bondage of sin and rejoined with our Father!

Please join us tomorrow for our last day in what I hope has been a wonderful, educational, and pleasing journey for you as it has been for me. Until then God Bless!

Finding our way through the Wilderness

Psalm 55:22

New International Version (NIV)

 ²² Cast your cares on the LORD
              and he will sustain you;
              he will never let
               the righteous be shaken.

Day Thirty-Eight

Lay your burdens down

           I know that Jesus will never forsake me and I know that He will always be by my side. But sometimes I get so lonely and I feel that I am on my own. No one knows or cares that I hurt because I am smiling on the outside yet I am crying on the inside. In a crowd of people I feel invisible. My pain and emptiness overshadows me, blanketing the real vibrant me that I know is hidden somewhere deep in my own soul. My emotions and burdens compete against each other to weigh down my soul. Depression is a daily cloud that follows me blocking the warmth of the sun’s rays leaving me in the cold. Sleep does not equal rest because my soul is so restless that even when I close my eyes I cannot enjoy my slumber. I am lonely though I am not alone.

Who can cure my affliction?

Who can restore my joy?

 If there is an elixir for my sorrows I have yet to find it so for now I will continue to mourn my happiness.

As I began to write today’s topic I realized that I was feeling down and lonely. So instead of writing something that I wasn’t feeling I wrote what I felt. The words from above accurately describe how I am feeling as I write these words. I used to think that I should be ashamed to feel this way because I am so blessed however I came to realized that just like there is an up there is also a down. Sometimes you can get in a bad mood and it doesn’t necessarily mean that your faith has grown weaker or that you have a strain in your relationship with God, you could just be feeling down. It is better to get it out than to hold it in. Besides God is ominous meaning that He already knows how you are feeling and He wants you to bring your burdens unto Him so that He can give you relief (Matthew 11:28).

When we tried and conceal our feelings from God we give the enemy a foothold to cause confusion within our souls. He will tell us lies and try to deceive us into thinking that God has abandoned us. He does so to create a separation between us and God so we can be more accessible to his attacks. However when we bring our cares and worries to the Lord the enemy falls out of the equation.

So that is the message today, don’t be afraid to take your problems to the Lord. He will give your soul rest. He will remind you that He is a healer of any affliction. He will lead you to the elixir for your sorrows, His Word. He will restore you joy with the kind of joy that only He can provide. All you have to do is cast your worries to Him. He says come to him and take His yoke upon you and learn from Him, for He is gentle and humble in heart, He says that we will find the rest that our souls seek. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. No matter the problems He can and will handle it when we call on Him.

So has I finish writing my soul is already lifted because through His word I know that He never rejects His people (1^st Samuel 12:22). He will never leave my side so I can always trust in Him (John 14:1, John 14:18). I know that in times of trouble He only is my refuge (Deuteronomy 33:27, Psalm 46:1). When I lonely He can heal my broken heart (Psalm 147:3). And most of all He loves and cares for me (1^st Peter 5:7).  

So again whatever your affliction may be bring it to the Lord. The moment you do you will instantly feel the pressure being lifted away from you. All you have to do is try Him and I guarantee He will make you a believer.

God Bless

Finding our way through the Wilderness

Joshua 1:8

New International Version (NIV)

⁸ Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Day Thirty- Seven

Keys to Victory

Everyone’s ultimate goal in life is to be successful and victorious. However not everyone is willing to do what it takes to achieve that goal. To be victorious you have to work hard, be prepared, be diligent, be focused, and believe in yourself.

However, even all of those things can only take you so far.  Mark 8:36 says, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” The bible teaches us that the only way that we can be truly victorious and successful is if we combine the things from above with reading, studying, and meditating on the word of God. You can have all the money and power in the world and without God you will not have anything.

This is what sometimes keeps us lost in their wilderness even if we are not aware of it. Everything can be going fine we can have a good job, great family, bank account can be full, a nice car, and the house of our dreams and still feel empty. This is because of the absent of God in our lives. On the other hand we can have a dead end job, dysfunctional family, a banking account that is flirting with the minuses, no car, and barely have a roof over our heads and still have joy because God is number one in our lives. These are examples of two extremes, however the point is that with God we are victorious and without Him we are not.

The bible gives us several scriptures on how we can be victorious. They are our keys to victory. Our text above is a prime example of the Word teaching us how to prosper. It tells us to keep the word of God on our lips, which means that when we speak we do so in accordance to His word i.e. no vulgar words, slander, or malicious towards anyone.  The Word tells us to avoid such things (Psalm 34:12-14, Proverbs 10:20, 10:31) so we should avoid them. The scripture goes on to say meditate on the Word day and night so that we may be careful to do everything that is in it and then we will be prosperous and successful.

Psalm 3:8 simply says, “Victory comes from you Lord, may you bless your people.” The words may be few but the message is powerful. Victory comes from the Lord not anywhere else.

We learn from 1^st John 5:4 that everyone that becomes born again overcomes the world because Christ has already had victory over the world and since we are born again through Him we can share in that victory. We inherit this victory by proclaiming the Jesus is our lord and Savior and that He died for our sins. We also inherit this victory by following and keeping His commandments.

  

We that are in Christ are more than conquerors and we have gained surpassing victory through Jesus Christ who loved us (Romans 8:31-32). So we are victorious when we are rich and victorious when we are poor. We are victorious through sickness and through health. We are victorious when we are loved and victorious when we are hated. We are victorious inside of our wilderness and victorious inside of our promise land.  We are always victorious because we serve, follow, and obey a God who does not know defeat!

This topic is written to prepare us for our entry into our promised land. Remember your promised land can be anything. It can be starting your own new ministry. It can be going back to school to finish your degree. It can be becoming a better husband or wife. It can be anything that causes you to live a happier and more abundant life. Remember this is God promise to us if we put him first and let Him take control of the wheel. All we have to do is remain steadfast while we read, study, and meditate on His word and He will drive us to victory. He has the keys.

Join us tomorrow. God Bless!