Abiding through Obedience ..... Craig Denison

 Abiding through Obedience

Craig Denison

Weekly Overview: 

The absolute, most important single act of the children of God is making space to encounter our heavenly Father in the secret place. Abiding in God is the foundation on which every other aspect of the Christian life finds success. It establishes roots which enable us to receive all that we need to bear the fruit of the Spirit. It guides us to constant refreshment and revival in God’s presence, thereby supplying and sustaining the abundant life God intends for us. My prayer is that you would be marked by wonderful, satisfying, and fulfilling encounters with the presence of God as we look at John 15:1-17 this week. Make room in your heart and mind to rest in the love of your heavenly Father as we look at the different ways we are to abide in true vine of God.

Scripture:“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.” John 15:9-10

Devotional:    

The concept of obedience has become shrouded with a connotation of negativity. When we think of obedience we normally infer a feeling of doing a task apart from a desire or longing. We associate obedience with obligation rather than fulfillment. But when Jesus walked on the earth he carried out a very different lifestyle of obedience. Jesus’ life demonstrates what obedience to our heavenly Father is meant to look like. Obedience to God is choosing to live a lifestyle of love and devotion to our God who has loved us completely.

Jesus says in John 15:9-10, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.” Too often we miss the heart of God when he calls us to obedience. Jesus illustrates here that he lived his life reciprocating the love he was shown by his Father. He lived his life in obedience to God out of the wealth of relationship he had, not out of obligation. And Jesus simply asks us to do the same. He invites us into the process of receiving and giving love as the foundation of our life that we might abide in the depth of relationship with our heavenly Father as he did.

In Luke 10:27, Jesus states the greatest commandments, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” How incredible is the heart of our God that he doesn’t call us to a lifestyle of obligation or undesired sacrifice, but a lifestyle in which we reciprocate the vast love we’ve been shown in Christ to all the earth. God doesn’t merely set rules before you but relationship as the goal. He’s after your heart totally and completely.

In a world wrapped up in a self-seeking, self-satisfying agenda, God sets us free to step outside of the burden of ourselves and frees us to live for others. In a world wrought with the weight of pride, God pours out his unceasing, selfless love which has the power to transform us into children who abide in our heavenly Father. If we will choose to abide in God’s commandments and love wholeheartedly, we will experience a satisfaction unknown to those with the attitude of selfishness and pride. We will experience the abundant life only those who abide in God can obtain.

So, abide in God’s commandments today. Choose to live a lifestyle of wholehearted love of God and others. Choose to live in obedience to God in response to his amazing love. And discover the power, purpose, and freedom that comes from ministering to others with the very love you’ve been shown in Christ.

Guided Prayer:

1. Meditate on God’s commandment for us to love him and one another. Receive the call to a lifestyle of love as you reflect on God’s word.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.” John 15:9-10

“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” 1 John 4:16

2. Spend time receiving the love of your heavenly Father. God always desires to fill you up with the knowledge of his love before he would have you love him or others in return. Our obedience is always meant to be a response to his loving nature. So take time and receive a fresh outpouring of the love he has for you today.

“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19

3. Ask the Spirit to guide you to a lifestyle of love today. Spend time allowing him to reveal different ways in which he would call you to love others. How can you love your spouse better today? How can you love your best friend, coworker, neighbor, etc.? Ask the Spirit to pour out the love of God through you today. And commit to loving others even when it goes against the tides of comfort and culture.

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” James 1:22

May we abide in the love of our heavenly Father today. May we choose to live a lifestyle of love. And may our prayer be like that of the Psalmist in Psalm 119:32-35 as we go about our days living to see God’s glory come on earth as it is in heaven:

I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart! Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. 

Extended Reading: 1 John 4

How God Gives Strength through Weakness (2 Cor 12:10)..... By Lynette Kittle

 How God Gives Strength through Weakness (2 Cor 12:10)

By Lynette Kittle

Today's Bible Verse: “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” - 2 Corinthians 12:10

Have you ever wanted to reach out to others but feel so discouraged, broken, or unqualified in your present condition, that you believe you couldn’t possibly encourage or help anyone else?

Many of us have felt that way in our lives. Yet, the Apostle Paul tells us to delight in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties because in our weaknesses, God will give us His strength.

Of course, feeling delighted by verbal attacks, powerlessness, struggles, and mistreatments is not an emotion most of us experience. In fact, most of us have quite the opposite reaction when we face these things. Instead of delight, we feel defeated, hopeless, and worthless.

It’s part of the enemy’s plan to make us feel crushed, worn down, and useless. He wants us to hesitate to reach out and help care for to one another.

How the Enemy Works to Wear Us Down

By telling us we aren’t up to it and need to get our act together before we can be of any help to anyone else, the enemy convinces us that we aren’t well enough to tell others about Him.

He tries to keep our struggles, failures, and weaknesses continually before us to cause us to believe we are in no shape to reach out and encourage others, or equipped to share God’s love with them.

Although the enemy tells us our weaknesses disqualify us from reaching out to others, God assures us that we aren’t ever supposed to be moving in our own strength and power.

Instead, we are to depend upon Him and draw our confidence from Him, rather than ourselves. When we do it’s evident to those around us, that it is God at work through us and not by our own strength.

2 Corinthians 4:7, explains, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

Our Power Source

Although we may feel like we’re just too fragile, walking around broken and beaten up, it’s not ever supposed to be about us reaching out of our own strength but of letting God be our power source.

During our weakest times, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 encourages us that even when we feel hard-pressed on every side, we aren’t crushed. How even in despair, persecution and abandonment, we are not struck down or destroyed.

Whereas the world tells us we have to be strong and ruthless to survive on this earth, it's in our weaknesses where we really find the strength and power we need to face each day.

Philippians 4:13, urges us when feeling defeated and disqualified, to remember we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

When we feel powerless and without resources of our own to reach out to those around us, Ephesians 6:10 urges us to look beyond ourselves and find our power in the Lord.

“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Of Fish and Faith ..... by John UpChurch

 Of Fish and Faith

by John UpChurch

“So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.” - Romans 12:1 (MSG)

My stint manning the meat counter at the Fresh Market lasted half a day. I needed a job; they needed someone to wrap up fish. Seemed like a good match.

It wasn’t.

By way of an interview, the manager glanced at my résumé and then scowled at me. I could weigh meat and smile. That got me in the apron and behind the salmon. Still, it was a job, and I was hyped. For about an hour.

My training consisted of a fellow worker—a kid a few years younger than me at the time—pointing out the scales and the paper and telling me when breaks were. Needless to say, I floundered with the flounder, my chuck looked chucked, and my meat wrapping wasn’t so meaty.

By lunch, I’d completely lost my appetite thanks to the ground beef, snarling manager, and disgusted looks from customers. I didn’t let the door hit me on the way out.

Sometimes, I live my faith like that as well, minus the fish smell, of course. I get pumped at the start—on Sunday—and even during the week by diving into the action-movie known as Mark’s gospel or Luke’s adventure stories. I’m ready to kung-fu chop the world with some gospel awesomeness.

But when the meat hits the scales, when my everyday life comes crowding in, my gospel skills suddenly get messy. Not literally. I simply fail to speak when someone talks about a general faith in something; I don’t bother to help everyone who really needs help; I don’t show love because I’m too caught up in my own not-enough-sleep-Monday blah.

I just don’t live what I believe all the time. It’s hard, so I too often let it go.

Intersecting Faith and Life: It’s easy to think of people in the Bible as “heroes” with a life filled with derring-do, but that’s only somewhat true. They had flashes of awesome, when God showed up and broke armies, smashed walls, and shoved back the waves. But we mainly just see the highlights in Scripture, the big moments when monumental things happened. It’s God’s story, after all. And He does big stuff.

But those “heroes” also had moments of normal—lots of them. Moments when they wondered why they were stuck herding sheep, moments when they wondered if God cared about their same-ol’-same-ol’ routine, moments when they wondered if God even heard their prayers, moments when they just wanted something to happen.

You see, normal moments—those times when we’re not charged up and ready to march around our office building like Jericho—are the very moments that our faith is being shaped. When we’re excited about a sermon, that’s great, and fire seems to be flattening all resistance. But when we’re faced with monotony, that’s when our faith life really comes out, our true nature. We have to live our faith in those moments most of all because those are the times when it’s hardest to shine.

For Further Reading

Romans 12

A Prayer for When Your Spirit Starts to Fade..... By: Maggie Meadows Cooper

 A Prayer for When Your Spirit Starts to Fade

By: Maggie Meadows Cooper

"The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord stands forever."  - Isaiah 40:8

Last summer my family went and picked up leftover pieces of sod for our backyard from a local sod farm. We put the pieces together like a puzzle: a little brown, a little yellow, and some bright green mixed in for good measure. And as I sat admiring our work, the Lord showed me something.

Each of those grass squares, when cut off from their lifeline-roots and water, are left to die in the scorching heat. Some of the pieces that had just been cut were still green and damp. Those cut a little earlier were yellowing and dry, and those cut the longest ago were brown and brittle. The ladies at the farm assured me that the yellow pieces could be brought back to life with water and care...that their roots would grow and bring vibrant life back to them. And, y'all, as I thought about it, I realized that I have felt like one of those yellowing pieces recently.

This is so like our walk with the Lord. When we are rooted and grounded in the Word, spending quality time in fellowship and prayer, we are filled with Living Water, green and bright and vibrant. And even if we pull up roots for a time...we can stay green and full for a little while...we can fake it ‘til we make it. But the longer we are away from the Word, we start to yellow a little. We begin to fade in areas, maybe, where others can't see, but we can behind closed doors. Our joy, our peace, our love, our kindness and gentleness... even our faith can start to fade.

But here's the beauty...we can get all of that bright vibrant joyful, hope-filled abundance back, y'all! We just have to take care with what we sow. We have to grow our roots down deep by sticking close to those who are close to the Lord, who will speak truth and lift us up and away from the things of this world! We need to drink up the Living Water and not hold back. We need to be patient in the waiting of reaping a harvest. We can't give up, no matter what this world or the people of it throw at us.

I share this for all of you who may be in this place. You may have been cut off...you may not be full. You may be in a really dry, hard place. But I am here to tell you that the Lord is there with you, urging you to come back to Him and let Him be your fulfillment in this world. He sees you and knows right where you are. Look for Him and He will be there. If you are green and bright and in an amazing place with the Lord right now, come alongside your friends and offer His love and comfort and encouragement for those who need it, because one day you may need them to return the favor.

Check in on your people. Pray for the Lord to give you wisdom and discernment for those who may be fading right before your eyes. Dig in the Word. And drink up the Living Water that only He can give.

"I rejoice in your Word like one who discovers a great treasure." - Psalm 119:162

Dear Lord,

Forgive me for wandering from you and your Word. Draw me back to you and the Life that only you can give. Help me to resist the things of this world and keep my focus on you alone.

In Your Mighty Name,
Amen