September 22: Open my eyes...

Isaiah 39:1-41:16

Ephesians 1:1-23

Psalm 66:1-20

Proverbs 23:25-28

Reading through today's OT and NT readings, and today's psalm, I could not help but be struck at all the reasons we are given to be joyful.  The reading from Isaiah describes a powerful, almighty God who has chosen - CHOSEN! - us...

"But you, Israel my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen...

   I took you from the ends of the earth...I have chosen you and have not rejected you."

...and who tells us what He will do for us:

"I will strengthen you and help you;

   I will uphold you with my righteous hand."

...that He will defend us:

"All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced;

   Those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish.

...Those who wage war against you will be as nothing as all.   
 For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand
   and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you."

And He doesn't just remind us of this once today...in the NT reading we read yet again of 

"the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms...For He chose us in Him...in love He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ.

...and then again:

"In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will"...

So what we have is a God, an all powerful and almighty God, who has chosen us, who loves and protects us, and who works everything out according to His will - a will guided by His love for us.   So why is it I struggle to do things by my own feeble strength, guided by my ignorant mind?  I think it is because I have not taken the psalmist's advice: I should "come and see what God has done, his awesome deeds for mankind!"  I think that if I opened my mind up to recognize His presence, through prayer and the reading of His word, then I would better come to know the God described above...and would then be able to praise Him for "he has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping...you tested us but you brought us to a place of abundance."

Help me please, to spend the time in prayer needed to open my eyes and see Your goodness and greatness.

September 21

Galatians 6:7-8  Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.  The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

 

As we come to the end of our gardening season I would like to share with you some wisdom. In fact, I would call this the first rule of gardening; plant the right seeds. A few years ago we learned this the hard way. We had purchased peppers at a local garden shop but someone had switched the labels on one of the packs. We thought we had bought all sweet Bell peppers when in actuality some of the plants were HOT peppers. After many weeks of growing, the fruit matured and was hanging there in all of its beauty. So Kathie decided to bite into one of these fine looking peppers. Her mouth immediately jumped to a 5 alarm fire. The burn was so great she actually thought about going to the emergency room.  The two pepper plants looked very similar but in the end they produced drastically different fruit. 

 

This matter of sowing is not a small matter. Every day we are either sowing to destruction or sowing to eternal life. There is nothing neutral in life, nothing. So be very careful what you plant in the garden of your life.  Samuel Smiles put it this way…  

 

"Sow a thought, and you reap an act;
Sow an act, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny."

So my prayer for all of us today is that this will be a day of sowing for eternity. Since there is a God who knows every intimate detail of my life, he knows every act and every word I will speak today. We are told that even a cup of cold water given in the name of Jesus counts for eternity. So use your words and your actions today to impact eternity. Today can be the most exciting day of life we have ever lived.

 

"Draw the Circle" Quote from Friday: If you keep sowing the right seeds, the harvest of blessing will come in God's time, in God's way.  

--

"Multiplying leaders to change the world"

9/20/14

Saturday, September 20 [by Keesha]

“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24 NIV).

Paul told his Christian brothers and sisters to crucify their sinful nature (to put [it] to death by nailing or binding [it] to a cross). He knew that if they continued to live in the sinful nature that it came with a cost, a great cost.

Paul said, “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21 NIV). No one who willfully decides to stay in these activities will inherit the kingdom of God. “And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Once we begin that process, we have to choose to live that way each day. We daily have to pick up our crosses (Luke 9:23). 

There is a lot at stake when it comes to willingly giving into our fleshly, sinful nature. Paul not only gives the Gentiles a warning, but he tells them how to be overcomers. He says in Galatians 5:16, “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.” In so many words, Paul is basically telling us to live in close relationship with the Holy Spirit and to be obedient to what He wants us to do each day.

Although trying to overcome the sinful nature for us is impossible by ourselves, Jesus says in Luke 18:27, “What is impossible with man is possible with God." Thank God that He can help us supernaturally live an overcomer’s life. We are sons and daughters of the Most High King. Due to this incredible, merciful status, we have a Father that can help us overcome anything, including sin and no matter how painful it is.

Lord, please help us to live by the Spirit. Help us to desire and to do what the Spirit wants since it is the opposite of what our sinful nature desires. Please give us the fruit of the Spirit. Help us to crucify the sinful nature with its passions and desires every day. We love You, Lord. Thank You for helping us to always do the impossible. You are amazing God. We stand in awe of You and Your goodness. Amen.

September 19th

September 19th

So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law. Listen! I, Paul, tell you this: If you are counting on circumcision to make you right with God, then Christ will be of no benefit to you. I'll say it again. If you are trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey every regulation in the whole law of Moses. For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God's grace. But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love. (‭Galatians‬ ‭5‬:‭1-6‬ NLT)

This is a good picture of what it means to live the Christian life. We've all been there. Trying to live our life on our own strength. Maybe we have accepted Christ but we don't really get it. Maybe we are just too stubborn to let go of control. But the truth of the matter is if we are trying to earn eternal life, then we have greatly missed the point. If we are trying to do it on our own, then we are discrediting Christ crucified. I remember when I was a kid, playing Super Mario Brothers. Now throughout the game there are different "power-ups" and every time you get to the next one without getting hurt, you get the next one better. One of the power-ups is a star, and when you get the star, you become invincible to your enemies for a while. Now if you use this as an analogy for our passage today, living under the law is like playing Mario without a star. Dodging enemies, jumping over them, battling through. But, living in the spirit is like having that star power. You can just run, and not have to worry about the enemies around you, because the star power (Christ) has already defeated them. This life is so much simpler if we lean on Christ rather than our own power. Jesus paid it all so I don't have to. We need to live like we recognize Christ paid it all, and all we have to do is trust in him. Trust in his provision.

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Thursday, September 18

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Isaiah 28:14–30:11

Galatians 3:23–4:31

Psalm 62:1–12

Proverbs 23:19–21

 

 

“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:26–29)

 

 

Paul’s letter to the Galatians addresses this church’s struggle with outside forces that threatened to re-institute the Jewish law as the vehicle for “receiving” salvation.  Paul argues that, before “this faith [in Christ] came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed.  So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.  Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.” (Galatians 3:23–25)

 

Paul explains that the law revealed our desperate need for grace and forgiveness, and, now having received this grace, the law no longer dominates.  He does not suggest that we may live a careless, devil-may-care existence; instead, we must transform our thinking from that of a slave (forced obedience) to a son (joyful fellowship).  Even with many years of Bible teaching and discipleship, the Church has consistently wrestled with this concept.  In fact, Martin Luther relied heavily on this letter in posting his 95 Theses, lending Galatians the nickname of “Luther’s book.”

 

For us today, we still cannot grasp the fullness of our sonship in the Kingdom through the merciful blood of Christ.  Many of us live to please God and others – but not out of love, but rather fear.  Our fear stems from a prideful belief that we may somehow fall short of our own lofty standards, thereby trashing our self-worth and identity.  This fear impedes our trusting God through all circumstances and urges us not to take risks.  The accompanying self-justification becomes mentally agonizing and crowds out better motivations.  Even if we achieve some measure of “success” through meeting these standards, we recognize that failure may be just around the corner and become even more vigilant.  This cycle of perfectionism leads to unfulfilled misery and distance from God.

 

As I mentioned, our full adoption as sons and “heirs according to the promise” should negate attempts at perfectionism.  Paul details that “God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights as sons.” (Galatians 4:4)  Christ’s fulfillment of the law – through His sinless life and death that brought satisfaction of God’s wrath against sin for those who have trusted in Him – is complete.  Because of His completed work, we may “approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)

 

For many of us, it may be difficult to grasp what the Fatherhood of God and our “full rights as sons” implies, due to our family background.  By God’s grace, I have two parents who deeply love me and showed this love in innumerable ways.  I may look at their great love and then extrapolate to consider God’s unfathomable and lavish love for me.  Even with these obvious facts, however, I still fall into the slave-works trap against which Paul cautions.  If you have suffered through family strife, the nature of God’s familial love may seem foreign and indiscernible.

 

I encourage you to join me in reflecting on God’s amazing fatherly love for us today.  I have found that joy may oversweep me as I reflect on God’s goodness to us:  His grace, His blessings, and His awesome power.  In this exercise, I often reflect on His amazing creation and yet His desire to speak to us through His Word and Holy Spirit.  How are you able to connect with Him and experience the full depth of His love?  Will you take some time today to reflect – and be richly encouraged?

 

With such reflections in our mind, our motivation to please God and others turns from fear to love.  We wish to lavish on others the love that God has lavished upon us and to bring glory to our great and loving Father.  The negative, vicious cycle of fear and rejection becomes replaced by a positive, virtuous cycle of love and acceptance.  May God carry us into such a positive cycle, to His honor and glory.

 

 

Lord God, thank You for making it possible for us to approach You as sons through the completed work of Christ on the cross.  We are amazingly blessed to know You and experience the eternal life that You desired for us, even now as sons and heirs.  Help us to become so overwhelmed by Your fatherly love that we may deeply love and compassionately care for those around us.  Bring to mind today images of Your deep and amazing love and cast out our wrong notions that make us slaves to fear.  Bring the freedom as sons that You have always desired for us.  In Jesus’s Name, amen.

 

 

“How Deep the Father’s Love for Us”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV2zMZ-nZ7k

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September 15: The curious diet of some animals...

Isaiah 19:1-21:17
Galatians 2:1-16
Psalm 59:1-17
Proverbs 23:13-14

13 Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you punish them with the rod, they will not die.
14 Punish them with the rod
and save them from death.

I've been a parent for almost 17 years, and each day I grow in my appreciation for how difficult, oftentimes how frustrating it must have been for my parents to raise me. Growing up, I gave them frequent, almost daily reason to abide by the proverb above - yes, I was that much trouble. They are still waiting for me to get payback from my own children, and can only gaze in slightly irritated wonder at how much better behaved, how much less trouble my three kids are to me combined than I was to them.

Despite how much better behaved, how much less trouble my children are, I still struggle with the need for discipline. There are days I swing wildly from the one extreme - of exasperation, surrender and abdication, to the other - of fear and desperation; from giving up on them, to clamping down on them like an alligator's jaws and shaking some sense into them. And every time that happens, I have to remind myself discipline is to be found somewhere in between, cloaked in the love that wants to "save them from death". It is that judiciousness, that wisdom that I pray for, living in a society that increasingly finds everything permissible, even ideal; a society that eschews and abhors the very concept of discipline - self discipline in particular.

It is when society demands that we conform to its gradual, inexorable deemphasis on discipline that we are fortunate to have the example of Paul who, faced with Cephas's hypocrisy and transgression, did not hesitate to call him out, to correct him, that he and others might not be led astray. I cannot imagine that that made him popular, but it was the right thing to do, and Peter found the balance between frustrated abdication and fearful control.

My parents tell me they are proud of how I turned out. I can only say that I am the way I am because they, too, persisted in finding the balance Paul did, and persisted in disciplining me - despite, I am sure, the many occasions I demonstrated to them why some animals eat their young.

Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Saturday BlogPost (9/13/14)

Saturday, September 13, 2014 [by Keesha Sullivan]

“Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed,” (Psalm 57:1). 

These words are similar to the ones that a woman cried out that was going through unfathomable grief. She had two boys, a great husband, and a beautiful home. She had gotten to know Jesus a few months prior to the event that would forever change her life. She had been listening on the radio to Kathryn Kuhlman and she had spoken to this mother of two about how Jesus would perform miracles for those that asked. She had also spoken about the power of the Holy Spirit seeing us through life.

On that snowy fateful day, this mother had her sons go into the backyard to play as she cooked dinner. She could hear their laughter and joyful screams as she prepped the food. She noticed other voices at the front of the house and figured her boys would soon join the group of kids playing in the street. The voices of her boys and the other kids seemed to get farther and farther away, but she did not worry about it. They lived in a safe neighborhood and her boys looked out for each other. Just ten minutes later a little boy from the neighborhood ran to her house and began pounding as hard as he could on the door. The fear in his eyes made her heart jump into her throat. She followed him to her boys. One of her son’s had climbed onto the icy lake near their house to get a ball that the kids had thrown onto it. The ice broke and he went under. Her older son immediately went to his rescue only to fall in to the lake as well.

As I read this true story, my adrenaline rose and I prayed and hoped that the miracle would be her sons coming back to life or being okay once the police and firemen came to the rescue. That wasn’t the case. This mother of two lost both of her boys in one day. The miracle that she wrote about was “God [having] mercy on [her], for in [Him her] soul [took] refuge. [She] took refuge in the shadow of His wings,” and grieved the loss of her only two children. Going through the process of grief with Jesus kept her mind in tack. It enabled her to minister to her unbelieving husband that was close to committing suicide and went into a deep depression. It allowed her to still say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” I cried and cried and cried some more. It was one of the greatest miracles I have ever encountered. God sustained her and had mercy on her through one of the most horrific tragedies that she would ever encounter.

Lord, have mercy on us. Help us to take refuge in you during this journey called life. Help us to take refuge in the shadow of your wings as the disaster lingers and until its passing. Help us to lean upon You and Your Word in this broken, fallen world. Help us to trust You for miracles and for Your incredible Power to sustain us. We love You, Jesus. Amen

Kenny Sullivan

Grace EFC | Stamford, CT

C: 203-803-7478

O: 203-323-6737 ext. 12

soli Deo gloria