EverydayDevotions.com

Click here to read Mark 5 on BibleGateway.com

Since it’s summer, it’s only fitting that we talk about camp now and again. After all, it’s the one week a year that young people get away from their parents, spend time with God, and of course try to talk to a pretty girl in the Snack Shop. (“hey baby, i think God’s calling me to ministry. The ministry of smooch.”) Nothing draws a young person closer to God like than freezing showers, reconstituted eggs, and a round of dodge-ball.

In all seriousness, some of the times that many of us felt closest to God were at those summer Bible camps. For whatever reason, be it the focused time, the air of expectation, or just God’s divine Will, He seems to speak often at camp. More than one camper has really felt God’s presence for the first time, and what is the natural reaction? “Let’s have camp all year.”

UP UP UP IT GOES

Wanting to stay on that spiritual high point is not unique to our culture. Several times in the Bible, people experience God’s presence, and they want to just stay in that one place (Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, for example). In today’s chapter, we meet a demon-possessed man whom Jesus delivers, and his reaction is probably similar to ours: he wants to stay with Jesus.

But Jesus turns him down. Why? Is it because Jesus is leery of having a chain-breaking lunatic in his little club? Not at all. He tells the man “you should stay here and tell people what God has done for you.” It’s more important that the man’s neighbors and friends see the change in his life.

GO TELL IT OFF THE MOUNTAIN

The mountain-top experience that we have God are great, and we should cherish those moments, but we need to be careful not to be so caught up in our time with God that we miss Jesus’ command: Go into the all the world. To focus on our own time with God at the expense of others can be not only immature, but also selfish and self-destructive. If our lives are to be a reflection of Jesus, we should imitate his choices as best we can. Notice that Jesus left his position of sharing in God’s glory (in God’s literal presence) in order to share with us. Should we do any less for our fellows?

How can you share your latest mountain-top experience with someone else today?

Click here to read Jermiah 15 on BibleGateway.com

Futility. Such a great word. It almost laughs at our futile attempts at spelling or pronouncing it correctly. How many words can openly mock you with their meaning by their very existence?  It’s so universal, too. How many of us have felt the proverbial wall against our forehead as we try to explain simple concepts to the dunderheads who surround us on a daily basis? (it’s called a “turn-signal, people.)

“SMITE THEM, AND THEY SHALL BE SMOTEN”

The lives of the Old Testament prophets are often a study in futility. They try repeatedly to share God’s truth with the Israelites, and time and again the Israelites listen only long enough for God to relieve their immediate suffering before disobeying God once again. CoughSoundsFamiliarcough.  Poor Jeremiah, the futiliest of the futile in the Bible, spends so much time futilely trying to convince his fellows to follow God that we could almost put his picture in the dictionary next to “don’t even bother.”

Many times we may feel the same hopelessness. We pray and pray for that loved one, and they still refuse to come to God. We preach and preach, and the congregation just looks at their watch waiting for the game to start. We give and give, only to have someone mock us for being selfish. How do we deal with it? We may do like Jeremiah, asking God to make them listen, or somehow make Himself more clear to people.

WONDER(FUL) WALL

But notice how God answers Jeremiah in verses 19 and 20: “if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them…I will make you a wall to this people… for I am with you.” God turns it back on Jeremiah; He will not make Jeremiah’s listener’s more receptive or his task easier, but He will strengthen Jeremiah.

We often ask the same thing; we want God to make our path through life as easy as possible. We want a nice home, a fun job, well-behaved kids, a church that is enjoyable but not too challenging, and a good retirement package. Yet God repeatedly says in the Bible that an easy life is not his goal for us. Instead, he walks with us through the storms. He makes us strong to stand against mockers. He makes us as stubborn as those who reject him.

Stand firm today; Someone is right beside you.

It’s awfully tempting to take the Gospel personally.  If we preach to a crowd, and a thousand people get saved, we consider that God must really be using us (or that other evangelist). We do a little dance, maybe write an article in the denomination’s magazine, maybe start a tv show.   If we preach, and the people in the pews fall asleep, we think we have failed God.  We go hide in our home, eat a box of donuts, and start looking at truck-driver want ads.

MAYBE IT’S NOT ABOUT US

Could is be that whether or not people accept the Gospel is not our responsibility?  After all, not even everybody who listened to Jesus became a follower, and he was probably pretty familiar with the Gospel.  The Bible says several times that “some believed.”  In other words, people heard the same message, and some accepted and some didn’t.

In today’s chapter, we see the apostles also had trouble, despite having a good reputation. Notice that the disciples and believers were held in high regard in the early days, and still people did not “dare” to join them.  Why is that?  If they were so well-regarded, why not join in?  The problem is that the leaders were against Jesus and his followers, and association could be embarrassing or even dangerous.  People were reluctant to give up their lifestyles to become a follower of Christ.

Maybe things aren’t so different now.  There was a recent study showing that professing Christians were less likely to be hired in certain professions.  Would you be wiling to give up your job to publicly declare yourself a Christian, or would it be easier to just stay quiet?  Follow Jesus quietly in your home?  After all, shouldn’t religion be a “private” matter? Isn’t it easier to be “open-minded” than to take a stand?  After all, who wants to be laughed at or yelled at?

THEN AGAIN…

Don’t misunderstand, sometimes people have good reason for disliking us, and it’s not always because of Jesus.  Perhaps we’re arrogant, perhaps we’re condescending, perhaps we’re a little disconnected from reality, perhaps we like t0 consider ourselves martyrs or missionaries on par with the heroes of the faith, perhaps we’re just plain ole jerks.  Not every time somebody dislikes us can be traced to Jesus.

However, let’s not completely discount it either.  Jesus was pretty clear that people will hate us because of Him.  In reality, this is a spiritual world, and the darkness can’t stand the light.  It is what it is.  We need to accept that if we proclaim Jesus, certain people will not like us for that very reason, even if they don’t exactly know what the reason is.  Are we ready to give up popularity, a good job, friends, or advancement for Jesus? Are we willing to be made “foolish” in the eyes of the world?  Are we willing to submit our desires, our lifestyles, our every act and thought to the Lord of Creation?

We must never lose sight that it’s really all about Him.

Click here to read Joshua 24 on BibleGateway.com

Ignorance can be bliss. If you don’t know exactly how a twinkie is made, you can just sit back and eat a dozen with no thought for what exactly you’re putting in you gullet. If you don’t know about tetanus, you can play in that deserted junkyard all day without a care in the world. If you don’t know Leia is Luke’s sister, you can avoid that slightly creepy feeling when she smooches him before swinging across that pointless chasm in the Death Star.

Unfortunately, once we gain knowledge, then we are held responsible for it. Once we know what’s true, we can’t pretend not to know anymore. Not only that, it seems in the Bible that God is actually willing to cut people slack for ignorance, but once they commit to serving Him, his standards go way up.

THINK CAREFULLY

It’s kind of ironic in our age of…oh, let’s saying begging… people to come to God, that Joshua actually almost flat-out tells the Israelites not to commit to serving God. Why? Because he knows they won’t be able to, and they will bring judgement on themselves if they commit now. It seems a far cry from our “raise your hand with no one looking” type of mentality.

It seems that we have a very light view of commitment in our modern world. If we have a bad day at work, we just quit. If we don’t pass a test, we drop out of school. If we have a fight with the spouse, we call a divorce attorney, or get an online lawyer, navigate here for more. If something is hard, we just figure it’s time to move on to something that’s a little less stressful.

DO OR DO NOT

Joshua tells the Israelites to carefully consider the promises they make. If they have no intention of serving God, they shouldn’t commit to serving him. We should follow the same advice. If you have no intention of being faithful to your spouse, don’t go down the aisle. You will have days that you consider it a terrible mistake; be prepared to stick it out through those days. If you have no intention of working hard, don’t apply for that job. You will have days when it seems the boss has an intellect rivaled only by garden tools; follow his authority anyway.

If you have no intention of submitting to God, don’t call yourself a Christian. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that a one-time hand raise is the same as serving Jesus as your Lord. Jesus said no one who looks back is worthy of being his disciple. It’s a serious thing, and should not be undertaken simply because an emotional moment. God will hold us to that promise; are we ready for that commitment?

What commitments are you taking lightly today?

Click here to read Matthew 26 on BibleGateway.com

Is there anything that fills the common man with a sense of drunken power more than knowing a secret about somebody else? Let’s say you know that Bob in Cubicle A113 is going to be fired on Friday, and he doesn’t know yet. Doesn’t that give you the feeling of an omnipotent deity? We stroll around the office, “burdened by our terrible knowledge.” We are dying for someone to ask us why we are suddenly so mature-looking with our majestic countenance, just so we can sadly shake our heads as if to say “oh poor pathetic mortal; I would not dream to cast such a heavy weight upon thy shoulders.”

Have you ever kept a secret? Not about your wife’s birthday present, but about yourself. Do you keep that one activity under wraps? Do you make sure to watch that TV show after everyone else is in bed, with the volume turned way down? Do you clear your browser history after visiting that one site? If we find ourselves keeping secrets, one of the questions that we try to avoid is exactly Why are we doing it.  Do we really think God is fooled?

A SECRET PLOT IS A FOOT

Notice that the Pharisees in today’s passage started “plotting in secret.” Why? If they were doing what was right for the whole people (as they claimed), if they were doing “God’s Work,” why would it be necessary to keep it a secret? Perhaps they should have taken a few minutes and asked themselves Why it was necessary to meet at night?

Secrets make us feel powerful. They make us feel that we are in control of what people know about us, that we are the ones with ultimate authority. Yet ask yourself, when was the last time somebody told you a secret that really surprised you? Isn’t the normal reaction “yeah, i kinda figured something like that was going on.” Perhaps people know more about us than we really think. Maybe keeping secrets isn’t so much giving us power, as taking away the strength and comfort that we might in another.

GO INTO THE LIGHT

We need to ask ourselves the reason for keeping the secrets that we do. Is it to protect someone else? There may be some legitimately valid reasons to keep a secret. Is it to spare ourselves embarrassment? Maybe others would say “yes, I deal with the same thing.” Is it to keep on doing the things we know we shouldn’t do? The bible says that evil loves the dark; perhaps we keep secrets for the same reason?

What secrets are you keeping today? Are you willing to bring them into the light?

There’s always a bit of tension between God’s blessings and our own work.  Jesus tells us that we should not worry about the future because God will provide all our needs, yet he also tells us to be wise with money. Will God bless us or does it all depend on us? How do we reconcile these two seemingly dissimilar ideas?

Imagine with me, if you will, a wee lil puppy (warning: shameless attempt at cutess in the illustration). If one is teaching a puppy to trust his owner, do you just fill a giant tub up with dog food and throw the dog in so he knows his needs are met? The answer is no; even if you tried it a bunch of times. Hypothetically. In order to teach a puppy to trust, you put the food in a dish on the floor, and the puppy wags and wiggles his little way over to the smorgsabord.

“BUT THAT HILL IS SO FAR AWAY”

In the book of Joshua, the descendants of Joseph faced a similar quandry. After the conquest of Canaan, they were all given a certain piece of land, but the Manassites (joseph’s decendants) felt that they had gotten ripped off with a parcel that was too small for them, and they asked Joshua for more land. Joshua answers “sure, you can have all the land over that hill over there, just go get it.” But the people said, “umm…there’s other people there. and they have cool rides. Can’t we just have land right here from one of the other Israelites?”

See the problem? God was providing a blessing for them, but they had to go take it. They had to put forth the effort and trust that God would give them victory; God did not just hand it to them.

BEHOLD, I AM THE GREAT GENIE OF THE LAMP

What is it about us that wants God to just provide our needs without any effort? We seem to have this idea that if God loves us, he should give us money to get out of debt; He should give us a new car (doesn’t he know how bad it stinks?); he should take care of that boss (doesn’t he know what a jerk he is and how much better we could run the company?). Would you give your children any and every thing they wanted? Is that what a loving father teaches his children?

Perhaps our concept of God’s Love needs a little rethinking.  Maybe He’s asking us to go take the hill with Him, instead of giving us the easy life in the plain.  Sometimes the best lessons come with a little struggle. Maybe He’s not so interested in granting our every wish and desire as helping us mature and, gasp, learn to trust Him more.

Are you willing to put forth the effort to find out?