Monthly Archives: January 2016

Good gifts (Matthew 7:9-11) January 31, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Romans 9-10

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 7:9-11
Jesus: Think of it this way: if your son asked you for bread, would you give him a stone? Of course not—you would give him a loaf of bread. If your son asked for a fish, would you give him a snake? No, to be sure, you would give him a fish—the best fish you could find. So if you, who are sinful, know how to give your children good gifts, how much more so does your Father in heaven, who is perfect, know how to give great gifts to His children!

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

So, can we couple today’s thoughts with what Jesus said yesterday and make a case for cosmic Santa? Yesterday, we highlighted “ask and it will be given to you.” Now Jesus talks about the good gifts God gives. Is this a case for the name it and claim me gospel? Can we stand on this and just ask for a new car or a better job? Can we get that bigger house from God or a new wardrobe?

The answer is no. God is not sitting in heaven waiting to grant our every selfish desire. Let’s go back to the premise of Jesus’ comments on prayer here. We are seeking after God. We are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. We are asking for His will to be done on earth as it is being done in heaven. We are requesting the Father’s power to manifest itself through us in our activities in the same way He manifests His will through the angels that do His bidding around the throne room of heaven.

So when we ask for these things. When we ask for our daily bread, will God give us calamity? Will God give us illness? Will God give us tornados and floods and hurricanes? No. Jesus is bashing the idea prevelant among many of the day that God poured out terrible things on people. Many saw God the same way the Romans and Greeks saw their gods. Heavenly beings just playing with the lives of humanity. The God of creation is not like the false gods of the heathens surrounding the faithful Hebrews.

Jesus makes the case that God answers prayer and He answers with good gifts. When God’s children ask for things, God responds with the right gift that will benefit His children. He will give the right answer at the right time that will bring glory to Him and move His children along the path toward eternity with Him. Jesus puts the teaching in terms those around Him will clearly understand, though.

Remember, He is talking about a new covenant with God’s people. He is turning the teachings of the scribes and Pharisees upside-down. Jesus’ teachings rebel against the status quo telling these religious leaders they are not good enough to enter heaven. All their pious prayers, they magnanomous offerings, their boisterous religious pageantry means nothing to God. It’s all so much whitewash for other people to see, but it means nothing to God because He sees their heart.

What God wants is our recognition that He is God. He wants our honor, respect, and obedience. He wants us to say yes to His will. He wants us to accept the gifts He has for us and to use those gifts to carry out His will on earth, not ours. He wants to us forget about our desires are focus on His. God wants us to abandon our selfish ambitions and seek His kingdom and His righteousness. You see, we can never be good enough, but we can accept His goodness as our own through faith. That’s what Abraham did without the written law. That’s what Moses did before the law was given to Him on tablets of stone. That’s what Joel talked about when He said God would write His law on the hearts of men and women.

Jesus told the crowd that day, every good thing comes from God. Don’t blame Him for the bad that comes into your life. The bad things that happen are sometimes a consequence of your own sinful behavior. If you take drugs, they will destroy your body. It’s a natural consequence of your own actions. If you have affairs, it will destroy your family. That’s a natural consequence of your decision. Don’t blame God when you can’t fix your marriage. It’s a natural consequence of the destruction of trust between you and your spouse. Your relationship is gone and building that trust back will forever be an uphill battle for you.

If you’re the victim of a flood or tornado, it’s not God’s fault. Things just happen. Life isn’t fair. Rain falls on the just and the unjust. The physics of weather patterns were set in motions when God created the earth. You decide to live in a flood plain and the river overflows. Can you blame that on God? I don’t think so. Things just happen. Every good gift comes from God. Sometimes He will protect us from our own stupid decisions. Sometimes He doesn’t. He lets us suffer the natural consequences that come from those decisions.

But one thing is certain. When we ask our Father for something in prayer, we can be sure He answers. And when He answers, His answer is good. It might not be what we want, but it will be good. Because the Father gives good gifts to His children. 

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

The Father’s will (Matthew 7:7-8) January 30, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Matthew 11-13

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 7:7-8
Jesus: Just ask and it will be given to you; seek after it and you will find. Continue to knock and the door will be opened for you. All who ask receive. Those who seek, find what they seek. And he who knocks, will have the door opened.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Jesus moves back to the topic of prayer. He tells us to just ask, but does He mean we can get anything we want? Does He portray the Father as a cosmic Santa that will give us whatever we want? “Just ask and it will be given to you…” It might sound like it if you lift that verse out of His sermon like a lot of name it and claim preachers try to do. But go back and look at the model prayer He gives us earlier in His sermon and remember that He never contradicts Himself.

Ask and it will be given to you. Ask for what? Remember Jesus’ model prayer? Father in heaven, I ask that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek after it and you will find it. Find what? Find the Father’s will. You see, I think we get the wrong idea about what to ask for in the first place. We get ourselves mixed up into the equation and let that selfish desire poke its head up and try to grab all the attention instead of listening to what Jesus says to us in the rest of His discourse.

Remember what He told us just a few verses before this? “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” Don’t worry about all that other stuff. God knows what you need and He’ll see that all that other stuff is taken care of. Just seek Him first. Don’t let your greedy self get in the way of looking for Him. Be like David and “let your soul pant for God like a deer pants for water,” he writes.

We get too anxious to snap up this one verse and let it manipulate our selfish desires instead of putting it back into the sermon where it belongs and understanding that God must be first. Seek first God. Seek first His will. That means don’t even worry about what His will is for your life. Just find His will and then go get on board with it. You’ll find your place in the world, just by going and doing His will, not yours. Did you ever think about doing things on those terms? Jesus did.

Jesus went about not asking what God’s will was for Him, but asking what is the Father’s will and doing it. Period. Maybe it’s time we start asking that question. What is the Father’s will? Stop the question right there. Don’t add any other identifiers to it. Don’t ask what is His will for my church or my life or my organization or my family or my anything. See, when we put “my” in there, we begin to let self get into the equation and open the door for something other than God’s will.

Just ask, “God what is your will?” Then go jump on board. Do whatever you can do to further His will. Now what does Jesus’ command mean. Let’s think about it a little deeper.

Just ask for God’s will and it will be given to you, He’ll show it to you. Seek the Father’s will and you will find it. You won’t have to look hard, but you’ll need to look because Satan and the world’s clamor will try to drown it out. But look for it and you’ll find His will in His word. Continue to knock and the Father will open doors of opportunity for you to walk through so you can be a part of furthering His will on earth when you ask Him earnestly and sincerely.

All who ask Him what His will for humankind really is will know what His will is. He doesn’t hide from you. He wants you to know Him, just ask and He’ll tell you. And everyone who wants to work for Him in furthering His purposes and His plans will find doors of opportunity opened for them. All you have to do is be obedient to His voice and walk through them. But understand they are His plans, not yours. Those doors progress His purposes, not yours. The opportunities provide for His glory, not yours. The will you seek and the doors of opportunity all belong to the Father, not you.

Until you begin to operate with that frame of mind, don’t expect to find the Father acting as a cosmic Santa. He’s not. He cares about you, but He is God. We are not. It’s His will we should long for, seek out, grab hold of, spend as much energy and effort as we can muster following His will.

In that frame of mind, Christ shared His sermon. Totally sold out to the Father, Jesus made His statement. Committed wholely to His heavenly Father, Jesus tells us a truth we can stand on, “Just ask and it will be given to you; seek after it and you will find. Continue to knock and the door will be opened for you. All who ask receive. Those who seek, find what they seek. And he who knocks, will have the door opened.” Find the Father’s will, not yours.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Protect your treasures (Matthew 7:6) January 29, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Isaiah 23-28

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 7:6
Jesus: Don’t give precious things to dogs. Don’t cast your pearls before swine. If you do, the pigs will trample the pearls with their little pigs’ feet, and then they will turn back and attack you.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

We have a tendency to break up Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount by the convenient chapters and verses given to us in our current Bibles, but few today realize those chapters and verses didn’t exist until the publication of the Geneva Bible in 1560. Until then, each book ran from beginning to end as a single narrative or collection of poems, stories, etc. Just like an editor today uses page numbers and line numbers to help his staff find specific passages for his writing team, the translators of the Geneva Bible inserted chapters and verses to assist their translators, then left them there as an aid to all readers.

The problem with the chapters and verses is that sometimes they break thoughts and concepts in the wrong places. So it is with the Sermon on the Mount. Start in Chapter 5 and read through Chapter 7 to get the full effect of Jesus’ message. Here we are at Matthew 7:6, but it really references all those things Jesus has said up to this point. He has given his audience so important information about what’s really important in life and now he adds this tiny proverb into the middle of his sermon.

Don’t give precious things to dogs. Don’t cast your pearls before swine. They don’t understand the value of those things and they’ll just trample them into the ground. What does He mean putting this parable into His sermon at this point? I’ve taken it out to talk about it as a single verse today and we can use it as a stand-alone proverb. But taken together with everything He has said about attitudes, the law, offerings, thoughts and actions, real love and relationship with God and man, prayer, fasting, forgiveness, heavenly treasures, I think we can begin to see a much richer, deeper thought as Jesus shares this proverb with those on the mountain that day.

He shared a lot of illustrations with them to help them understand what’s really important to God in His relationship with us. He wants us to enjoy our life, but enjoyment doesn’t come with the collection of stuff. Enjoyment comes in the company of friends and family. Jesus talks about the family of God and the relationship we have with Him. The actions and the heart change, the attitude change that means real joy for the individual and the community as a whole when as a society we honor God as God instead of trying to put ourselves in His rightful place.

You say, “I would never take God’s place.” You’re right, you can’t. Ever. But we try. We try to put everything else in His place. Sometimes good legitimate things. But they are not God. And when we put any created thing above Him we practice idolatry. Idolatry doesn’t have to entail bowing to a gold or silver statue. It is any failure to honor and respect God as God and remember we are not. That’s the crux of the message Jesus has here. We so often put insignificant things in front of God and lose sight of what’s important.

We in essence throw the important to dogs. We throw pearls before swine. And after they trample our “precious treasures”, they turn around and attack us. They destroy and devour us without any thought whatsoever.

On the other hand, we can take the precious treasures God gives us, the relationships nurtured and grown with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and throw them away with the kinds of attitudes, unjust judgments, blind criticisms, and wrongs Jesus shared with His listeners. We can forget all the things He has said and just live the way we want with self on the throne of our heart and do what we want. When we do, we will lose the relationships we worked so hard to build. It takes little to destroy relationships, but years to develop them. Just like it takes little to toss your treasures at the feet of dogs and swine. How hard is to recover them from those beasts once done, though? Not so easy is it?

Recognize the treasure you hold in your hand as a child of God. Share it, but don’t throw it away. Listen to Jesus’ words and meditate on them today. What are you doing with your treasure? 

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Which measuring stick do you choose? (Matthew 7:1-5) January 28, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Job 7-8

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 7:1-5
Jesus: If you judge other people, then you will find that you, too, are being judged. Indeed, you will be judged by the very standards to which you hold other people. Why is it that you see the dust in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but you can’t see what is in your own eye? Don’t ignore the wooden plank in your eye, while you criticize the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eyelashes. That type of criticism and judgment is a sham! Remove the plank from your own eye, and then perhaps you will be able to see clearly how to help your brother flush out his sawdust.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

If I’m honest with myself, it’s easy to criticize others. It’s easy to find faults in others work, their language, their dress, the way they do anything and everything. And it’s easiest in those areas where I think I’m pretty good at something. I’ve been at this church stuff for a long time, so it’s easy to criticize others in how they do church. What kind of music they sing. How they pray. How they preach. What lessons they choose to share. If you’re honest with yourself, you can do the same thing in your areas of expertise.

Adam gave us a great system of selfish comparison when he passed down those genes to us through his progeny. We’re great at magnifying the faults of others to minimize ours. We want to make ourselves seem better than others so we don’t feel as bad about our own faults. The problem is that the things we see in others are often the very things we do ourselves but just overlook in our own behavior.

Paul talks about it in Romans when he addresses the plight of humanity. We know the law implicitly. God places it in our hearts. We fail to obey it, but criticize others for doing the same. Our hypocrisy is obvious to everyone but ourselves and Jesus points it out clearly in his admonition to those who will hear His words.

Does Jesus tell us not to provide constructive criticism to those around us? No. We should be mentors to those who come behind us. We should help our juniors on life’s journey, in whatever areas of life, through sound constructive criticism and instruction. But Jesus warns we must remove the obstacles from our own life first. Be wary of the hypocrisy He saw in the Pharisees and teachers of the law who prided themselves on their knowledge of the law, but failed to live by its precepts.

Some will tell you not to judge. Quite frankly, I’m not sure it’s possible. We will judge. But Jesus reminds us with this stern warning that we will be judged in return by the same standards. If we become critical, demeaning, out to gain glory for yourself, that same measure of judgement will be leveled against you. It will not be a pretty sight in the end. Your charade will come to an end and your fall will be great, just like that of the Pharisees as the people saw their veil ripped apart with Jesus’ words.

So what is our response to His words today? Do we sit by and let behavior go unchecked because of a misinterpreted pronouncement of “don’t judge or you’ll be judged”? No. Do we let anything go because of a fear that we cannot adequately know what is right and wrong in a world that continues to slide down a steep path of degradation and evil? No. The words Jesus shares here doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to stop bad behavior, but to first police our own behavior before we level judgements against others.

He says we must look at our own actions first. Make sure we are prayed up, in right relationship with God and man, before going to our brother to judge his actions. Know that we are doing some self-assessments and cleaning up our own act before we try to clean up the actions of those around us. It’s easy to see the bad behavior around us and announcing bad behavior for what it is doesn’t violate God’s commands or the precepts in His word. Jesus just says to also take inventory of our own lives as well.

For instance, it wasn’t okay to commit murder to stop the preaching of those opposed to the teaching of the Torah. Nor is it okay to burn down abortion clinics or shoot those who work there because of the right or wrong aspects of abortion. Violating God’s laws is still violating His laws. He doesn’t contradict Himself in His principles and precepts. So when you go about doing very unChristian things to prove your Christian point of view, what are you really doing? Aren’t you as guilty as those who violate those laws in the first place?

That’s the point Jesus makes here. Be careful that you don’t miss error in your own thinking and actions while looking for some misdeed in your brother. You’ll be measured with the same yardstick, so what kind of measure do you want to use? One of grace and mercy or one of wrath and anger? It’s still up to you. Choose wisely.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Don’t wait to start the hunt (Matthew 6:31-34) January 27, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Psalms 9-11

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 6:31-34
Jesus: So do not consume yourselves with questions: What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear? Outsiders make themselves frantic over such questions; they don’t realize that your heavenly Father knows exactly what you need. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all these things will be given to you too. So do not worry about tomorrow. Let tomorrow worry about itself. Living faithfully is a large enough task for today.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

What are you chasing? Is your career at the top of your list? Are you wanting a better car or a bigger house? Are you trying to prepare for retirement? Are you looking for a spouse? How about love from your kids? Are you chasing a relationship that seems to elude you? What are you spending your energy on? If someone looked at your calendar or better yet your checkbook, what would they think you are chasing?

Jesus told us not to consume ourselves with trivial questions that seem to consume the world today. All those questions that have to do with material things. He mentions questions of what will you eat or drink or wear, but it goes much further than that. These are basic necessities of life God knows every person must have for survival, yet He says don’t every worry about these. So why should we spend so much energy on things that are so much less meaningful than food, water, clothing, and shelter? Why should we listen to the world and chase the baubles society proclaims important when all of them are fleeting?

Jesus tells us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all the other things will come into place. Living faithfully is a large enough task. Just do that and you’ll do well. It takes a moment to begin the chase for God’s kingdom. A decision to live for Him. Yet it also takes a lifetime to chase after God’s kingdom. He changes us continually. He never leaves us in the state we are in. He always makes us better, more like Him as we delve into His word and learn more of Him with each conversation we have with Him.

So the question for us is, “What does it mean to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness?”

God doesn’t play hide-n-seek with us. He wants to be found. He wants a relationship with us. I think that’s the first thing we need to remember about God. But He also expects us to put some effort into our relationship with Him. He doesn’t want our relationship to be one-sided and until we accept His forgiving grace and let Him become Lord of our lives (which means continual obedience to His will), our relationship is one-sided. He puts out all the effort.

We all have a God-sized hole in us that needs filling. We try to fill it with all those things Jesus doesn’t talk about but implies in His sermon. Money. Houses. Careers. Things. Sometimes even good things like family and friends. But when they take the place of God. When they become more important than seeking after God and knowing Him, we’ve lost the battle. We don’t have to lose the war if we will come back to Him and let Him take the throne of our life, but we’ve lost those battles.

God wants first place. In fact, God wants more than first place. He wants to be the only place with nothing else coming in at even distant second. When we do that with Him, He says He will take care of all those other things. They come along with the journey if we seek God first.

How do we find Him? A good place to start is in the scriptures. It’s His word to us. It’s the written record of how He wants us to live and act and think. Pick your favorite translation. As long as the translation is true to the original manuscripts, it really doesn’t matter much which translation you choose. That’s one of the beauties about what God has done for us. As I’ve read and explored and used various translations over the last forty years of my diligent search for God (before that I wasn’t diligently searching for Him, I was just stumbling along with what others would tell me), I’ve found that every one of those translations talk the same way about what’s important to get me to heaven. Every one of them have the same formula for pleasing God. Every single one tell me that Jesus is the Son of God, born of a virgin, died on a cross for my sins and the sins of the world, rose from the tomb on the third day, sits at the right hand of the Father interceding on my behalf for all those who believe in Him for salvation. Every one of those translations tell me that Jesus will return again and all humankind will face a final judgment based first on whether Jesus is Lord of our life. Every one of them tells me that salvation comes through faith in Jesus alone. But also that faith with the subsequent demonstration of that faith by doing good works for others is not really faith, but just words.

So start with His word. Read it. Meditate on it. Let it soak into your brain. You’ll find God there if you desire to find Him. Then confess that He is God and you are not. Confess that you need His forgiveness for the wrongs you have committed against Him as laid out in His instruction book to us. Then let Him become the Director of your life. You’ll find Him. He will impart His righteousness on you. He will begin to transform you by the renewing of your mind. He will make you over again until those around you before you gave yourself to Him will barely recognize you because of your changed behavior, attitudes, demeanor, love for God and others.

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. It’s a challenge that will take you the rest of your life to complete no matter how old or how young you are today. But begin today if you haven’t started on that treasure hunt. It is so worth the effort, you won’t understand why you waited so long to start!

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

How will you fill the empty spot? (Matthew 6:25-30) January 26, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Joshua 16-20

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 6:25-30
Jesus: Here is the bottom line: do not worry about your life. Don’t worry about what you will eat or what you will drink. Don’t worry about how you clothe your body. Living is about more than merely eating, and the body is about more than dressing up. Look at the birds in the sky. They do not store food for winter. They don’t plant gardens. They do not sow or reap—and yet, they are always fed because your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are even more precious to Him than a beautiful bird. If He looks after them, of course He will look after you. Worrying does not do any good; who here can claim to add even an hour to his life by worrying?
Nor should you worry about clothes. Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow. They do not work or weave or sew, and yet their garments are stunning. Even King Solomon, dressed in his most regal garb, was not as lovely as these lilies. And think about grassy fields—the grasses are here now, but they will be dead by winter. And yet God adorns them so radiantly. How much more will He clothe you, you of little faith, you who have no trust?

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Here are some eight-year old statistics for you, the latest comprehensive statistics I could find quickly:
* In 2007, about 27 million adults, or 11.8 percent of adults ages 18 and older reported receiving treatment for anxiety and mood disorders.
* Medical spending to treat anxiety and mood disorders totaled $36.8 billion in 2007.
* Half of these expenditures ($18.4 billion) were in the form of prescription medications used to treat anxiety and mood disorders in adults.
* Annual expenditures on anxiety and mood disorders for those with an expense related to these disorders averaged $1,374 per adult.

Some reports I’ve seen since then show as many as 67% of Americans will seek treatment for mood disorders in their lifetime. 27% of Americans are in current active treatment for mood disorders of some kind. What does that tell you about how much we worry about tomorrow? About what we eat? Or what we wear? How much do we let things get to us today instead of trusting God to get us through life with Him? How much do we worry about things that just don’t really matter in the long run?

I mentioned my 95% Rule on the 21st of January if you want to go back and listen to the end of that podcast. In essence, it says 95% of everything that happens to us everyday just doesn’t matter. No one will remember tomorrow or the next day. Think about it. Can you recall the events of December 14th without looking back at a journal or diary? No one cares about what happened except as it pertained to your relationship with God and other people.

Can you understand what Jesus is trying to tell us? Don’t worry about the things the world tells you are so important because they’re not. Just like He tells us to lay up treasures that don’t rust and corrode, treasures that theives can’t break in and steal, He tells us to focus on the things that really matter, heavenly things, things of God. Throughout His sermon, Jesus bends our attention away from the material things of life and tells us to look inward. Look at our attitudes. How do we feel about others? How do we use the material things we have to help those in need? Do we hold those things as if they belong to us? Or do we realize they are God’s to use as He directs?

Will we hold the things of this life loosely so God can use us the way He wants? That the real message Jesus has for us. Don’t worry about the things you put on. Fashion changes to fast to keep up, anyway. And have you seen the stuff models wear? Who wants to go out in public with what comes down the fashion runway? Sometimes I think the designers have contests to see who can come up with the most comic, outrageous outfits. I’ve never seen any of those things on the streets of any city anywhere. Some of it looks like Sci-fi, fifty-first century trash.

And what should we eat? We get so caught up in the latest fad diets, butter is bad, not it’s good for you, no the report says maybe. Greens stop cancer, but wait, they might cause cancer, but only if there grown in Peoria under a blue moon. We get so tied up in what’s right and what’s wrong. The truth is, if we stick to a moderate diet of what God created, real vegetables, real meat, real fish and foul. We’d stay pretty healthy. It’s just hard to find stuff that is real now days. Everything is processed and fortified for our “health.”

Maybe God got it right in the first place. After all, He tells us not to worry about what to eat, doesn’t He? I think He probably knows what’s best if we would eat what He creates instead of what we recreate. Just a thought. What God really wants us to spend our time thinking about, meditating on is not what we will put in our mouths, or put on our bodies, but how will we fill that empty place in our soul? How will we satisfy that God sized empty spot in your soul? Will we try to satisfy it with the things of this world or with Him? That’s the question. Only you know your answer. What will it be? 

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Commitment, what happened to it? (Matthew 6:24) January 25, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Genesis 12-15

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 6:24
Jesus: No one can serve two masters. If you try, you will wind up loving the first master and hating the second, or vice versa. People try to serve both God and money—but you can’t. You must choose one or the other.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Commitment:1. the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc. 2. an engagement or obligation that restricts freedom of action. Commitment, a word that disappeared from our vocabulary somewhere along the line except when it comes to commitment to ourselves. We want what we want and that’s it. But seldom will we use the word to dedicate or obligate ourselves to anything else. But that’s exactly what God demands of us.

People flit from one job to another, from one relationship to another, from one spouse to another, and think nothing of it. Loyalty and commitment are just meaningless words in our society, today. But God doesn’t work that way. He gave us His all and that’s the only thing He accepts in return. When we come to Him, it’s all or nothing. He knows we cannot serve two masters, just as Jesus articulated to the crowd on the hillside that day in Galilee.

No one can ride the fence in spiritual matters. God is either on the throne of your life or He is not. I either let Him have control of my decisions and actions or I don’t. It’s that simple. If I let Christ have control of my decisions and I consistently, say “yes” to His commands and demands on my time, talents, and treasures, He is Lord of my life and I others can call me a Christian, His follower. If I don’t say “yes” to His commands, if I say “no” to Him, He is not Lord. I might call myself a Christian, but I am not. It’s just a meaningless title.

It’s like calling myself a neurosurgeon. I used to recruit them for a time when I was in the Army. I know what they do. I know what it takes to become one. I know how long they go to school and the courses they take. I know the training they endure and the surgeries they must perform to certify as a neurosugeon. I know even know which residency programs are highly rated by the medical community and which the rest of the neurosurgeons look down on. But just because I know that much about neurosurgery doesn’t mean you want me to open your skull and take out a brain tumor.

There are a lot of people in the world today, I would even dare to say in your church, that call themselves Christian, that are as much Christian as I am a neurosurgeon. Like my illustration, they know a lot about what it means to hold the title. They know what being a Christian is about. They know it’s about believing in Jesus as the Son of God, that He was born of a virgin, He lived, and died for our sins. He rose from the grave and intercedes for us. They know He will return to take us to live with Him. They know there will be a final judgment at which Christ will separate the wicked from the redeemed and the redeemed will live with Him throughout eternity.

But just because they know all those things and believe all those things are true, Satan knows all those things are true as well. Jesus tells us even the demons believe in Him. That’s not enough to be called a Christian. To carry the authenticity of the title means to say “yes” to His commands. Always. Not letting “no” enter your vocabulary in response to His will. Carrying the name Christian means commitment, real commitment, putting that word back into your vacabulary and living it each day with Jesus as the center of your life. God as your master, Lord, director, leader, guide, your everything! Commitment, bring the word back to life in you.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Put filters on your windows (Matthew 6:22-23) January 24, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Romans 7-8

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 6:22-23
Jesus: The eye is the lamp of the body. You draw light into your body through your eyes, and light shines out to the world through your eyes. So if your eye is well and shows you what is true, then your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is clouded or evil, then your body will be filled with evil and dark clouds. And the darkness that takes over the body of a child of God who has gone astray—that is the deepest, darkest darkness there is.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Educators spend lots of time and research figuring out what how people learn. They talk about kinetic learners, auditory learners, visual learners, and so forth, but the truth is we are all more visual learners than we think. Jesus understood that when He said, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” Unless you have some visual impairment, more than 75% of your learning comes as a result of what you see, researchers tell us. Even for the most gifted auditory and kinetic learners.

It’s easy to understand the truth of this reasoning when you think about it. We live in a visual world. Our brain takes in everything around us through our vision. It’s true we have five physical senses, but the one we use the most is by far linked to what we see. The window of our eyes brings more information into our brain than all the other senses combined. The millions of rods and cones on the back of our eyeball gathers signals light signals from the time we wake until the time we fall asleep and pour that information into the most miraculous computer every conceived, our brain.

Our eyes take in everything around us without us even thinking about it. We see things we don’t even notice, but they somehow find their way into our brain. Advertisers learned about subliminal messages that can be buried into pictures and flashed into screens so quickly they don’t register in our conscious mind, but over time twist our subconscious to make us bend toward a certain product or elicit a particular mood. All because we see something for a split second.

So these two windows we have that impact us so heavily, these two eyes that sit in the front of our face, how do we protect what goes into them to shield the mind from short-circuiting and self-destructing from evil? Jeremiah says our thoughts are continually evil, but can we get away from that by stopping the evil input and training our minds with good? How do we do that in today’s culture?

I think about what changes we allow in our culture and the degradation that evil brings as we let our eyes continue to remain open to anything and everything. Just look at the change in television since it began in the 1950’s. As a kid, I remember watching “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and “Gunsmoke.” “Gunsmoke” was the violent show of the time. That was the television show that had some killing and gore. No show depicted sleeping around or pre-marital sexual experimentation. Drugs weren’t a topic in any scene. Cigarette smoking was the big vice. Beaver learned lying was bad because every time he did, bad things happened. Main characters were good to others and helped their neighbors.

Today, it’s hard to find any program, any program without a gay couple in it. Lying, cheating, getting the best of others to gain the upper hand and come out on top for yourself, these are the themes today. Reality shows. Come on, there’s nothing real about the reality shows. It’s television, scripted, edited, made to entertain and make money for the producers and sponsors. The boob tube now has so few wholesome shows on it, it would probably do us all good to not just turn them off, but throw them out and save the space and electricity they consume in our home.

The same is true with most of our movies, books, magazines. The culture today floods us with things that will try to turn us away from what is good. And I really get concerned about Jesus’ last words in this part of His discourse. Listen again. He said, “And the darkness that takes over the body of a child of God who has gone astray—that is the deepest, darkest darkness there is.”

I know what darkness is. I dropped my light spelunking once in a cave in Tennessee and it went out when if fell. It took me about five minutes to find it in the dark. It seemed like five hours. The dark in a cave deep under the earth makes you appreciate light. I could not see. Period. The black nothingness closed around me like a glove, even though I knew the walls of the cavern were forty feet away. My breath quicken and started to come in short gasps as I felt around me on the dark cavern floor. I longed for even the tiniest bit of light, but there was none. I think about that day when I read this verse. As a child of God, I do not want to go astray.

How do we stay on track? Watch what comes into the windows of your body, your mind, your soul. Filter the things you can filter. I know the culture will expose you to things you cannot help but see. Billboards are everywhere and we cannot avoid them. Magazine covers hit you in the face at checkout lines. But we do not have to keep our eyes glued to those things. We don’t have to dwell on what the world puts in front of us. We have the power to avert our gaze. We can, with God’s help, filter the things that we focus on. We can do what Paul admonishes us to do. “Finally, brothers and sisters, fill your minds with beauty and truth. Meditate on whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good, whatever is virtuous and praiseworthy.”

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Put your treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21) January 23, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Matthew 8-10

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 6:19-21
Jesus: Some people store up treasures in their homes here on earth. This is a shortsighted practice—don’t undertake it. Moths and rust will eat up any treasure you may store here. Thieves may break into your homes and steal your precious trinkets. Instead, put up your treasures in heaven where moths do not attack, where rust does not corrode, and where thieves are barred at the door. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Well, to see if Jesus words hold true, I took a look at the stock markets from a year ago today. Google is up from a year ago. That’s good news if you have stock in Google. Almost everything else is down from a year ago today. Over the last couple of weeks, everything has taken a nose dive. It’s only a drop of five or six percent, but that represents trillions of dollars of investments for people who planned their retirements or some big windfall on the continuing rise of the stock market. So much for storing up your treasures in stocks. In the long run, it just doesn’t work. It finally runs out and you can’t take it with you.

How about gold and silver and precious gems? Well, it sounds good, but someone has to buy it, right? So if you have a few pounds of gold sitting around your house it sounds like a great investment. But what happens if the economy really crashes? Do you think your local grocer will accept a hunk of gold for your groceries? He might, but probably not. I doubt if he wants to worry about figuring out the purity of the gold, weighing it, storing it, figuring out how much it’s worth, and providing security for it. Gold is really a pain to have on hand in any quantity. Ask Fort Knox!

When the economy goes kapluey, who’s going to buy your gold, anyway? Who can afford it? What will it be worth? You’re stuck with a lump of gold that you’d happily give away for a scrap of food if someone would give it to you. But ask the Argentinians who a few years ago went through run away inflation what gold was worth to them. Those things will be meaningless to you.

So if gold and silver and stocks and priceless jewels and all those earthly treasures are meaningless, what are we to store up? What treasures can Jesus be talking about when He says to store them in heaven?

If we back up to the beginning of His discourse on the mountain, I think we begin to understand His meaning. Jesus has talked about attitudes being right. He’s talked about thoughts set on goodness and love. He’s talked about keeping your mind out of the gutter and instead offering simple meaningful praise to God. He’s talked about giving to others generously without fanfare. He’s talked about faithfulness to spouses, friends, even enemies. Jesus talked about a new lifestyle from that seen in most circles of society.

From the previous sixty verses Jesus has already laid out a kind of living that turned the general thinking of the religious community upside-down. He has already said enough to cause the Pharisees to hate Him and want His blood. Jesus has already declared their practices shallow, vain, and worthless. He tells those who will listen to His sermon that God has a better plan for them. God has ushered in a new covenant with all humankind. Salvation has arrived, not from doing good deeds. It didn’t come from obeying all the rules. Salvation didn’t come from being religious.

Salvation comes from a change in attitude. It comes from our relationship with God and particularly our relationship with His Son, Jesus the Christ. Through these sixty verses, Jesus has talked about things that affect our relationship with God and others. God wants a vibrant, living relationship with us. He wants our attention. Just like your spouse or your best friend wants your attention to keep your relationship strong, so does God. He wants to talk to you through His word and He wants you to talk to Him through prayer. God wants to communicate with you so you learn of Him, not just about Him.

Everything Jesus tells us to this point leads us toward building our treasure in heaven. It’s not brownie points of doing good, but rather it’s loving God with your all your strength, mind, soul, and spirit. It’s loving your neighbor as yourself. It’s building relationships with others. It’s sharing God’s love with everyone you meet. It’s telling others what God does in your life, witnessing to His amazing grace. That’s your real treasure. Everyone of those people you introduce to God’s kingdom, those are the real treasures you put away in heaven. Eternal friends and family. Those relationships will go on forever.

So, like Jesus says, “Instead, put up your treasures in heaven where moths do not attack, where rust does not corrode, and where thieves are barred at the door. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Fasting, wear His joy (Matthew 6:16-18) January 22, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Isaiah 18-22

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 6:16-18
Jesus: And when you fast, do not look miserable as the actors and hypocrites do when they are fasting—they walk around town putting on airs about their suffering and weakness, complaining about how hungry they are. So everyone will know they are fasting, they don’t wash or anoint themselves with oil, pink their cheeks, or wear comfortable shoes. Those who show off their piety, they have already received their reward. When you fast, wash your face and beautify yourself with oil, so no one who looks at you will know about your discipline. Only your Father, who is unseen, will see your fast. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Jesus talked about the disciplines of giving and prayer earlier in His sermon. Now He talks about fasting. We don’t hear much about fasting anymore, but Jesus assumed those who followed Him observed the practice, His concern dealt with how they observed the discipline. As today, many will wear their piety on their shoulder. You can see how religious a person seems to be. Please don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way. There is nothing right or wrong with the attire or hair style of any group.

But wearing ankle length skirts and long hair doesn’t make a woman more saintly than another. Wearing beards trimmed in a particular way and distinctive headgear in public doesn’t make a man holier than another. Neither does wearing shorts and flip-flops in the sanctuary make a person less holy than another. Jesus didn’t look at a person’s dress to determine their status before God. We are all sinners. Period. None of us meet God’s standard of holiness. We all fall short and clothes or special words or the style of our hair or jewelry or lack thereof really doesn’t matter to God.

God cares about what’s on the inside. He cares about our heart. Which means He cares about why we fast. No one knows the answer to that question but me and you, individually. Even if I fast in secret, only I know the answer as to why I fast. Do I fast to try to earn God’s favor? It probably won’t work. Do I fast as a payment for something I want from Him? I can’t pay enough for His blessings, so I might as well not fast. Do I fast to identify with Christ? Maybe I’m getting closer.

Fasting is about spending time with God to get to really know Him. Fasting in both Old and New Testament times mean sacrificing the time normally spent preparing and eating a meal and spending it in prayer and meditation. We kind of understand that, but not really. You see we forget what it means to prepare and eat a meal like they did in Old and New Testament times. Let’s take a look at preparing a meal for your family.

Start with a simple meal of roasted goat, potatoes, carrots, and bread. Sounds like a simple enough meal for an agrarian family with a small settlement, doesn’t it? How long does it take to prepare a goat? Ever kill one, slaughter it, then roast enough for a meal? In the military, I used to train veterinary units as they prepared for deployments and one of the tasks they performed was food inspection. On occasion, we would have the unit “prepare” a wild boar we captured within the training area and roast it as part of their training. The task usually started about seven in the morning and often the pig wasn’t done until the next morning.

Granted, the unit took it’s time and didn’t slaught animals very often. They weren’t exactly skilled at the task, so an experienced father and son, or a couple of neighbors could probably slaughter one faster. But the time to roast an animal until it’s done doesn’t change much over an open fire. It just takes time. Minimum time in the Old and New Testament from start to finish? Probably twelve to sixteen hours to prepare the meat. And if they bought the meat from the corner store (or open market in those days), it’s still four hours just to prepare and cook the meat until it’s done, whether in a stew, cut into strips and baked, roasted whole, or whatever. Time is spent either in preparation, in cooking, or a combination of the two.

The vegetables, that’s the short part. Like today, get the water boiling or roast the vegetables under the coals and veggies are done in about an hour. But how about the bread. Start to finish, five hours to mix, knead, rise, and bake. So there is the time spent in fasting just one meal. Five hours in prayer and meditation. Time given to God to get to know Him. Time to focus only on Him and build your relationship with Him.

So when is the last time you exercised the Christian discipline of fasting? When is the last time you spent that “meal preparation” time, four or five hours alone with God. See it’s not about skipping a meal. We can all afford to do that every once in a while just to keep a pound or two off our frame, but can you spend quality time, real time with your Father to really get to know Him? That’s what Jesus is asking us to do. When you spend that kind of time. I guarantee you won’t look sad and weak and forlorn. You will have been in the presence of God and you’ll wear His joy on your face.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.