Devotionals Archives

May 2, 2024May 1, 2024

Persistent Prayer

¹ And He told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. ²He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. ³And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ ⁴For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, ⁵yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’ ” ⁶And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. ⁷And will not God give justice to His elect, who cry to Him day and night? Will He delay long over them? ⁸I tell you, He will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” ~ Luke 18:1-8

Jesus told this parable in order to teach them the importance of persistent prayer. In the parable, the judge was not interested in giving the widow justice against her adversary. Every day she came with the same complaint: “Give me justice against my adversary.” And every day, it was the same thing: “You have no case.”

She came the very next day saying, “Give me justice,” and again, it was the same answer, “There is nothing here.” But the woman did not give up; she kept coming day after day after day. Soon, all the members of the court, even those who just came to watch the court proceeding, recognized her and knew her name. I can imagine people gathering early in the morning before court even started to place their bet. “I have ten dollars here that say Ms. Rosie ain’t coming today.” And others would jump on that, “I have twenty that say she will.” And sure enough, Ms. Rosie would show up to court to the amusement of those who bet on her. “Give me justice,” she would call out to the unjust judge.

The judge was getting weary with her coming and said to himself, “I better give her justice, or she will wear me out with her coming.” And he did give her justice.

Jesus said that if that unjust judge who neither feared God nor had respect for man would do what is right, how much more would our Heavenly Father do right by us?

It is our Father’s good will that we enjoy peace, joy, and justice. It is our Father’s good pleasure to give us good things, but we must stay persistent in prayer. We can’t come one day and not the next. We must bombard heaven with our coming. Give Him who promised no rest until we receive what we ask for. Believe me, God wants to give us good things.

What if Daniel had given up after two weeks? I suppose we would not have Daniel chapter ten to be encouraged with.

Next time a problem bombards you, you bombard heaven, and God will see that you get justice.

Heavenly Father, I ask You to help me not to give up so easily but to be persistent in my prayers. Hear me when I call on Your great Name. Thank You that You not only hear us but that You answer us as well. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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Move

¹⁹ You believe that God is one. Good! Even the demons believe — and they shudder. ²⁰ Senseless person! Are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless? ²¹ Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works in offering Isaac his son on the altar? ²² You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works, faith was made complete, ²³ and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called God’s friend. ²⁴ You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. ~ James 2:19-24 ^CSB

One of my favorite songs that I have loved since childhood is the song Dare You To Move by Switchfoot. The lyrics go:

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
Tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be, yeah
I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened

Jesus left us with this frightening thought,

⁸ … when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

Luke 18:8b

This song is all about stepping out in faith. Moving forward past your fears and your past failures. It’s asking if you are going to live in faith or not. So many of us think that the faith Jesus is looking for is faith that is strictly, “I believe Jesus is the Christ.” But that’s not it. Jesus isn’t looking for a basic faith that has no depth to it.

He’s looking for faith that moves mountains. Faith that says I don’t care what I see; I know who my God is and His plans for me. Faith that says I will dare to move regardless of my fear, past, or obstacles in my future. Faith that doesn’t speak but faith that moves.

Without this kind of faith, faith that is willing to fully trust God and follow His plan for our lives, we can’t please Him. Because if we only have the kind of faith that says I believe He is who He says He is, but I can’t trust Him in every aspect of my life, then that’s not true faith. That’s doubt. That’s a person who built their house on the sand instead of on the rock. That house will not stand in times of trouble. Even a little drizzle will shake the house off of its foundation.

Therefore, build on the rock that is immovable, unshakable, and eternal. Build on Jesus and let His Word kindle that flame inside of you so that your faith might grow.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Move.

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Be Unleavened

⁷Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. ~ 1 Corinthians 5:7-8

Paul tells us to clean out the old leaven so that we might be a new lump because that is who we really are. So often, we allow our past sins and/or sins we struggle with to label us and define who we are and who we will always be. Paul tells us to clean out the old leaven (fight and overcome our sins) because that leaven, that sin, isn’t who we are. We are a new creation in Christ Jesus.

Our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed, and the Holy Spirit now dwells inside of us. We no longer have to be slaves to our sin. We can be transformed by the renewal of our mind and the blood of the lamb.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Be Unleavened.

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Continue Praying

¹³ Moreover, keep your servant from willful sins; do not let them rule me. Then I will be blameless and cleansed from blatant rebellion. ¹⁴ May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. ~ Psalms 19:13-14^CSB

Oftentimes, when we willfully sin, shame begins to take root in our lives. It tells us lies that we should stop praying, stop seeking God, and stop reading our Bible because we’ve just disgusted God too much with our actions. Many of us believe those lies. I’m no exception. When I give into a temptation that I know I should and can overcome, but I give in anyway, the lies of shame really get to me. I feel like I have to fix myself before I can dare come before God again. This lie only separates us further from God because we can’t fix ourselves.

God doesn’t want us to do it alone; He just wants us to be willing to fight for righteousness. Look at how David prayed. He prayed that God would keep him from blatant intentional sins and that God wouldn’t let them rule him. He went on to pray for his mouth and his heart. What we meditate on is what will soon be our words and our actions. This is the reason shame tells us not to pray, seek God, or read our Bibles. If we meditate on the Word of God and spend time in prayer and worship seeking the face of God, those temptations that we gave into in the past will no longer be the temptations we succumb to in the future.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Continue Praying.

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Leave The Defilement

³⁹They defiled themselves by what they did; by their deeds they prostituted themselves. ~ Psalms 106:39^NIV

Acts and deeds are synonymous with actions. Actions are thoughts performed, and our thoughts are words spoken to ourselves.

We thought, therefore, we acted.

We think or imagine evil, then we turn those imaginations into actions, and when those actions are performed, they lead to separation from our God and eventually to death. We, in our own rebellion, willingly separate ourselves from our Creator. He could have easily and justifiably left us in our defiled state; after all, it wasn’t He who defiled us, but we ourselves did it. We sought it and fought for it. Schemed and planned in order to do it.

Yet that rebellion didn’t stop God’s love for us. It didn’t stop Him from building a path for us to be able to return to Him. It didn’t stop Him from chasing us down to bring us back to a place of safety. Even though our sin is our own fault, He took the sin upon Himself and canceled the great debt that stood before us.

We don’t have to remain in rebellion. We no longer have to remain separated and a far off from God, for God has made a way for each and every willing soul to come to Him. He loves you and desires a relationship with you.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Leave The Defilement.

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Clean The Inside

³⁷While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked Him to dine with Him, so He went in and reclined at table. ³⁸The Pharisee was astonished to see that He did not first wash before dinner. ³⁹And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. ⁴⁰You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? ⁴¹But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.” ~ Luke 11:37-41

The majority of us have two versions of ourselves. The version that others see and the version that’s alone. More times than not, instead of cleaning out the filth inside of our hearts, we create a persona that seems like we have it all together. We clean the outside before others, but so often, we don’t clean out our inside. This was Jesus’ problem with the Pharisees.

They looked really religious. They could quote, discuss, and debate the Scriptures, but when it came down to the condition of their hearts, there was no evidence that they had ever read the Scriptures. It’s good to read the Word of God. In fact, we all need to read the Bible daily, but not surface-level reading. Not reading just for reading’s sake. We should be meditating on the Word of God so that it’s no longer just words in a book we read but the living Word of God that changes us.

When our heart begins to change, the rest of our body will follow suit. The mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart. The body acts from the thoughts of the heart. Everything that we are is rooted in our heart. Don’t let the role we play in public even deceive us. Unless we change from the inside out, there is no actual change.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Clean The Inside.

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Deep Within Me

¹² Who perceives his unintentional sins? Cleanse me from my hidden faults. ¹³ Moreover, keep your servant from willful sins; do not let them rule me. Then I will be blameless and cleansed from blatant rebellion. ¹⁴ May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. ~ Psalms 19:12-14^CSB

David, though he was a man after God’s own heart, prayed to the LORD about his heart. David didn’t just pray about sins he knew he struggled with; he prayed specifically about sins within him that he didn’t even know about. Secret sins hiding within his heart.

David didn’t just look at the speck in his brother’s eye and ignore the log in his. He sought God desperately to show him the log in his own eye. The log that was blinding to him.

Each and every one of us has sin in us. We each have sin that we’re battling that we are well aware of, but we also have hidden sin that we don’t even recognize.

David yearned to be cleansed by God. He yearned to be close to God. So what did David do? He watched his mouth and his heart. In other words, David didn’t allow filth to flow out of his lips. To ensure that he didn’t meditate on or continuously think about filth. He did his best to control his thoughts, for the mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart.

Dear LORD, thank You for making a way for me to approach the Throne of Grace without fear but with confidence. Thank You that even the tongue is the hardest member to control and the heart is the most deceitful, You have given me tools to overcome their faults. You purchased me with Your own blood and washed me clean so that I might be able to overcome the world through You. So that I might be able to hold every thought captive to the obedience of Christ and be transformed by the renewal of my mind. Thank You, LORD, for such a great work You are doing in me and all that You will do in me. Please cleanse my heart from all unrighteousness and open my eyes to the faults within me that I don’t even know are there. Show the log in my own eye so that I might better help my brother. Please continue to pull at my heart that it may always desire You. Let my soul pant for You as a deer pants for the water. Because You, oh God, are the only everlasting water. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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Remove The Leaven

¹⁸ You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib, for in the month Abib you came out from Egypt. ~ Exodus 34:18

The Israelites were not allowed to eat any bread with leaven in it during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Matter-of-fact, no leaven was to be seen or found within their borders. They had to completely get rid of all of the leaven from their homes and out of their land. They were to celebrate the feast for seven days.

Now, as I mentioned before, leaven represents sin and it also represents false teaching. Therefore, this is a picture of God’s plan for Christians. Once we have accepted Jesus as LORD and Savior, we must remove the leaven from our lives. In other words, stop purposefully or willfully sinning.

Have you ever noticed some people who are in a desperate situation? The first thing they do is to turn to God and make all kinds of promises and all kinds of vows to God if He would only help them? They are in church every time the doors are open. They are praying and reading their Bibles and living like they have really taken the leaven out of their lives. When He does answer, and they are back on their feet again, they forget their promises and forget their vows. Church sees them less and less, and soon, they are right back where they were before the crisis. The leaven has been mixed into the batch again.

This is not how Jesus wants us to live. He wants us to take even the very appearance of leaven out of our lives. He wants us to seek Him. To seek holiness and chase after righteousness. He wants us to show love and mercy to our fellow citizens of the world, especially to our fellow Christians. This Passover/Feast of Unleavened Bread, let us make an effort to live like Jesus wants and expects us to live.

Heavenly Father, please forgive our lukewarm actions and help us to live wholly for You. Provide for our needs and give us the strength and the desire to live like You have called us to live and to love like You love; in Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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Stay Under The Blood

²¹Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. ²²Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. ~ Exodus 12:21-22

Moses told the elders of Israel to go and select the Passover lamb and then to slaughter it. They were to take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the basin where they had caught some of the blood of the sacrifice and then paint it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of their homes. Then he says,

None of you shall go out the door of his house until the morning.

Why was that?

Because the blood represented the blood of Jesus, even though He had not been crucified as yet, God had a plan to redeem us through the righteous and spotless blood of His Son. The blood represented protection from God’s wrath and from God’s judgment as long as they stayed under it by not going outside.

What they did with the blood of the sacrificial lamb on Passover is the same thing we must do today with Jesus’ blood since He is our Passover Lamb. We must apply it to our lives, the door of our hearts, our eyes, the windows to our souls. How do we do that? By accepting Jesus as LORD and Savior of our lives. Once we have accepted Jesus as LORD and Savior, then we remain in Him, and He in us.

That is what the statement ‘no one is to go outside until the morning’ represented. If they came out from under the blood by going outside, then they would suffer death just like the Egyptians or anyone else who did not have the blood on their doors because they came out from under the protection of the blood.

It is the same with us. If we are going to make it through the night, the night being this time that we are living in, and the morning being the Second Coming of Jesus, then we must stay under the blood by keeping the commandments that Jesus gave us to keep. We must love the LORD our God. We must love each other. We must live like we are living in the days of Unleavened Bread when no leaven, which is sin, was to be found anywhere in their borders. We must remove sin from our own lives and live a life worthy of being called Christians, not in and out of sin, which is represented by going out the door before morning.

Heavenly Father, teach us to number our days and to keep Your commandments so that we might find ourselves in Your good and perfect will. May we stay under the blood and inside of Your love and protection until You come back for us. In Jesus’ name, we pray, amen.

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The Victorious Life

¹ Observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. ~ Deuteronomy 16:1

The Passover is the foreshadowing of Jesus dying on the cross for all mankind. He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world according to John the Baptist in John 1:29. In other words, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Passover. We do not need to sacrifice goats, or sheep, or bulls, or lambs any longer, because we have Jesus as our Passover Lamb according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:7. Jesus died for the sins of the whole world.

Passover was to be celebrated in the first month, which is in the Spring. Spring speaks of new life, new hope, new dreams, new beginnings, and that is exactly what Jesus did for us. He came that we would have life and have life more abundantly (John 10:10), meaning, that we can have all that was listed earlier, a new life, a new beginning etc. All we have to do is to accept Jesus as our personal LORD and Savior.

Then Egypt is indicative of sin. Just like God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, the land of slavery, Jesus has delivered everyone who believes in Him out of slavery to sin. You don’t have to be burdened down with a load of care. The Scriptures say to cast your burdens and cares upon Him, for He cares for us (Psalms 55:22 and 1 Peter 5:7).

Everything you need for a victorious life in Jesus is bought and paid for for you. There is no good thing that He will withhold from you. Trust Him today, He has your best interest in heart.

Father, thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus Christ, to the earth to die for me. I accept your free gift of life. Help me to serve You and trust You wholeheartedly. Right now, I give You all my cares and all of my burdens. I give You all the things that concern me right now, and I lay them all down at Your feet. Help me to turn them all over to You and leave them all there with You. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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