Day 9 Matthew 2:3
I can be a child of God, be a follower of Jesus for years, and yet some days I can live as if he’s not there.
“Let this Christmas be the time when you consider the Messiah and ponder what it is to worship him.”
Category: Bible
Insights from the Bible
Day 5 Luke 2:6-7
This is my favorite advent devotional so far. Jesus did not take any detours to Calvary. “For your sake he became poor.” (2 Cor 8:9)
“Now if you would think that if God so rules the world…, he surely could have seen to it that a room was available in the inn…The Calvary road begins with a ‘No Vacancy’ sign in Bethlehem and ends with the spitting and scoffing of the cross in Jerusalem.”
Day 4 Luke 2:1-5
God moves world affairs in order to fulfill his plan in the lives of two unknown ordinary people. He can both macro manage the world and micro manage my life.
“For it is implicit in Scripture that all the mammoth political forces and all the giant industrial complexes, without them even…
I started on December 1 to meditate on a daily advent devotional, following John Piper’s plan.
Here are some of my thoughts.
Day 1 Luke 1:16-17
Focusing on Jesus is not as easy as it seems. I am too familiar with the Christmas account that it has lost some of the grandeur and awe for me. Let’s prepare our hearts to receive Jesus afresh.
You would think Jesus only got angry at evil guys, so I was pretty scared when I read this in Mark 3:5 –
“And [Jesus] looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart…”
He was angry at the Pharisees for caring more about the Sabbath laws than about a man’s life. They weren’t murderers or rapists. They were upright citizens who followed the law.
I attended the funeral of Ron D, an 80-year-old very devoted Christian man. I didn’t talk to him much when he was alive, but I sure learned a lot from him today.
One testimony stood out to me. A man said that when he was a young man, Ron told him to read the Bible. “Why would I want to read that crap?” He replied.
You can’t help but be impressed by Daniel, as in Daniel and the Lion’s Den.
His enemies could not find a fault to accuse him. He did everything with integrity and followed the law exactly.
But what should impress us more is the God who enabled him. It’s God who granted him favor, who gave him intelligence, who gave him extraordinary abilities to interpret dreams, who gave him success to rise to the top.
In the sermon at church today, I was reminded about the rich young ruler to whom Jesus spoke. Jesus looked at the young man and loved him. He could relate to the challenge that was put forth – to give up his riches and power to follow God. Jesus himself gave up heaven’s riches and the authority he had at the right hand of God. He temporarily set those aside to fulfill God’s will for him and he was asking the rich young ruler to do the same.
Read more of “Would you be willing to give up wealth and power?”
I have a friend name Iscah. I thought it’s a made up name, but yesterday I read it in the Bible.
Iscah is the daughter of Haran; Haran is Abraham’s brother, that makes Iscah Abraham’s niece. (Gen 11:29). Her brother is Lot, who traveled to Canaan with Abraham. Though she is only mentioned one time in the Bible, Iscah’s close relationship to the well-known father Abraham makes her a pretty famous as well. (Some Jewish traditions says Iscah is called Sarai, which makes her Abraham’s wife.)
The way we live may be considered “the good life” – prosperous and doing whatever we please, having a good time. We think the “gray areas” are not so bad; the ends justify the means and the means justify the ends. We are accountable to no one.