Tag: Gospel of John

Devotional 177: In the World, Of the Spirit

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John 18:15-18 Peter Denies Jesus

15 And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest, and went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. 16 But Peter stood at the door outside. Then the other disciple, who was known to the high prbiest, went out and spoke to her who kept the door, and brought Peter in. 17 Then the servant girl who kept the door said to Peter, “You are not also one of this Man’s disciples, are you?”

He said, “I am not.”

18 Now the servants and officers who had made a fire of coals stood there, for it was cold, and they warmed themselves. And Peter stood with them and warmed himself.

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Acts 9:36-43 Dorcas Restored to Life

36 At Joppa there was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and charitable deeds which she did. 37 But it happened in those days that she became sick and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. 38 And since Lydda was near Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent two men to him, imploring him not to delay in coming to them. 39 Then Peter arose and went with them. When he had come, they brought him to the upper room. And all the widows stood by him weeping, showing the tunics and garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them. 40 But Peter put them all out, and knelt down and prayed. And turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. 41 Then he gave her his hand and lifted her up; and when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive. 42 And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed on the Lord. 43 So it was that he stayed many days in Joppa with Simon, a tanner.

There is much in this that is parallel to Jesus’ own story. (Mark 5:35-41)

What a roller coaster of a disciple! He cursed when he promised the Lord he would die by his side, then he was found warming himself with the servants on a cold night as a sham of a trial went on for Jesus.

Later we see him boldly working a miracle on Dorcas in much the same way that Jesus put out the mourners and scoffers. Here Peter does the same as Christ did with the little girl whose parents were grieving, putting out the mourners who were showing him things she’d made for them.

There can be no distractions now, no scoffers. No deniers of those who say it’s impossible. No one who puts heavenly matters into earthly things.

For a time, Peter enjoyed the simple heat of a worldly fire, safe in deceit for the moment, denying who he was in Christ as Jesus was undergoing unholy humiliation, beginning the process of taking on our sins.

When Peter raises Dorcas from death, through faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, he is in full glory as the restored Apostle, the one who walked on water to his Lord’s side until He grew afraid and looked at his circumstances in the world, needing to know in that brief moment how Jesus must have felt being able to do it Himself.

When he raises Dorcas, he becomes the spiritual rock to whom Jesus gives the keys to Heaven, and the power to bind or loose, because the power flowing through him continued to circle back to glorify the Father.

If we have lived any length of time, there are dead things in the upper rooms of our days: dreams, plans, hopes that we tried to make fit but were not our calling, or were laid aside because we no longer sacrificed to achieve them.

Some we buried in silence and shame. Others because those who said they believed in us and would be with us no matter what, fled when the time came and betrayed us denying us and breaking their vow.

But there is a G-d in Heaven, and His Word does not return to Him void. What He has spoken, sang, and rejoiced over in you He will bring to fruition.

In these times, like Peter, let us bring a strong, bold, faith-filled witness that cuts to the heart. Let us stand in our rightful place to teach, speak boldly, and count the persecution as part of the cost when Jesus tells us the world can’t hate us because it hated Him first, testifying that its’ works are evil. (John 7:7)

Are we, as believers, ready to stand up in the midst of the assembly, and be voices crying in the wilderness? May He count us among the worthy.

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Therefore I pray:

Lord Jesus,

Your servants, on their best days, are weary, scared, and doubtful as the enemy grows increasingly loud and busy, as the world is becoming all You prophesied.

Help us to keep our eyes focused on You as our treasure, then our hearts will be there also. Help us not to look at the circumstances surrounding us, so that our hearts don’t grow faint and we fall, submerging ourselves in sin, and sighing in our spirits as we go back to the life we used to live before placing our faith in You.

Give us wisdom to discern the meanings of the times we’re in, and know what to do.

Be with us in the midst as we pray to You in one accord for our nation, our leaders, our fellow citizens, and our purposes to make You, Father, the center of all things once more.

And if we are still stiff-necked enough not to repent and receive a bounteous healing, we ask that You put aside all scoffers and raise us from the dead, alive in You, and grateful for it as we glorify G-d, now and forever.

In righteousness, peace, and joy may we honor You.

Amen.

Devotional 160: Keep My Commandments

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John 14:21

21 He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”

Our Lord’s words are never spoken lightly, for if it’s the heart of mankind that’s evil, it must be to that heart He speaks. If, as He tells us, His doctrine of grace, repentance, forgiveness, and restoration are not His (John 7:16), and if in all that He did and still does in our lives, He shows us the Father’s will and heart for us (John 14:9), how is that we neglect to keep His commandments?

The Son never presented Himself as an alternative path to G-d, separate from the Father’s plans and will. He’s been deemed worthy by the Father of judging all the nations, and if they are One in will and spirit, how much more brightly will the filthy rags of our self-proclaimed righteousness burn as it consumes the rewards we might have received walking in humility and obedience, and added to our faith as we planted its seed in others?

Our Savior tells us to keep His commandments, not follow His suggestions, or take His advice, that we might be blessed unto redemption of our souls.

If we are not to obey and humble ourselves, the rituals we perform are but for men only, and He tells us that in those things we have the praises of men as our reward, but not the Father’s blessing.

We fast, pray, and present our spotted souls to Him so that He might cleanse our sins, refresh our spirits, restore our hearts, and increase our faith, that we may follow Him more closely.

Today, let the dead faith of hearing only be resurrected by the doing of His will for us to have a more abundant life as we serve others, telling them of what we have seen and heard and know, that they might follow us along the Narrow Way to redemption, and life everlasting.

Therefore I pray:

Lord Jesus,

It is not an easy thing to follow a doctrine so contrary to the human heart, living under the dominion of the enemy’s manipulation. He is the ever present serpent who tells us it is impractical, and indeed, stupid, to love and pray for your enemies, and if our lives are but a vapor, or wilting flowers, there are delights the world has to offer us that we should enjoy, if we will only bow down to him.

As trials and tribulations assail our mortal forms, the human spirit that’s disconnected from the Holy Spirit will find this almost preferable than to obey what seems to them illogical at best, and foolish at worst.

You forgave the thief next to You even as You prayed for the Father to forgive the ones who crucified You, not knowing what they did even as they gloried in Your suffering.                                                                               

Yet it is through You alone that salvation of the soul comes, and the decision to live and reign with You, suffer with You, and inherit the crowns of glory we we’ll cast at Your feet, is ours to make.

Among Your own You were rejected, and to those not of You, You call through us as we consecrate our lives to You.

We would be better servants, Lord, bringing souls with us into the harvest that were formerly lost, the seekers of Truth, the listeners, the lonely, the cut-off, the isolated.

We would be all things to all people, that we might save some.

So we keep the faith, sowing good will among the people, doing all things well, as we continue to study Your example. Help us to remain grafted in to You, watching and praying in the Spirit as You work through us by our faith in You, and the promise of what You tell us the Father says, that we may be reconciled to Him.

In righteousness, peace, and joy may we honor You.

Amen.       

Devotional 118: No More Questions

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John 16:16-24

Sorrow Will Turn to Joy

16 “A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father.”

17 Then some of His disciples said among themselves, “What is this that He says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’; and, ‘because I go to the Father’?” 18 They said therefore, “What is this that He says, ‘A little while’? We do not know what He is saying.”

19 Now Jesus knew that they desired to ask Him, and He said to them, “Are you inquiring among yourselves about what I said, ‘A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’?20 Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. 21 A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. 22 Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.

23 “And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

The Apostle Paul tells us it’s like looking at dark glass.

1 Corinthians 13:12

12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

We are told by our Savior that our faith shall be rewarded, and our sorrow turned to joy. We are told by his most ardent disciple of the day that we are shrouded here on earth from heavenly matters.

We are very like the disciples who heard Jesus say these words: confused, scared, saddened, and doubtful.

We are prone to buffeting assaults of spiritual blindness, seeking to place ourselves in the Father’s position, not professing likeness, but professing self sufficiency.

There are variations of it, but all can be summed up this way: “We can do this without a moral compass full of contradictory dogma that tells us we need a ‘god’ to know right from wrong.”

It is because they read with no understanding of what separates us from the rest of world, they read it with the intent of disproving it, they read it with the intent of ridiculing it, and they read it with no faith that what they’re reading could be true.

They read as blind people who don’t know Braille: for them it’s not a system vital to their lives to understand, but a random scattering of dots and spaces that make no sense, and so dismissed as a nonsensical return to times of superstition and ignorance.

Also, they replace the motives of G-d with the motives of men: missionaries used it to control and enslave native populations so that the plundering of their land and resources wouldn’t meet resistance, in much the way the Pharisees plundered the wealth of Israel. Feminists tell us that men have used the Bible to control and enslave women, pointing to the submission verse Paul uses without reading the verse for what it tells husbands to do for their wives.  While this is true on both counts, the Father tells us He will deal with and repay such people, but do we really believe Him?

1 John 2:19

19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.

It will indeed be a joyous day when our questions are answered, our doubts erased, our fears lifted, and out tears dried.

In the meantime, in our lifetimes we have been called to serve in faith, worship in spirit and truth, finish the kingdom work we were given to do, and love G-d with all our hearts as we edify one another, running this race together as good and faithful servants until the day we have no more questions, and the fruit of our faith is harvested in the eternal worship of Almighty G-d.

Therefore I pray:

I rejoice here on earth in the words of my Savior, that my joy shall be made full in His presence on the day I escape the power of the grave to live eternally in the Father’s kingdom, should the Son judge me worthy of the honor, by the blood of His grace.

Thank You, Lord Jesus, for revealing the Father to me, and for sending me the Comforter as a seal of my salvation.

Thank You for shielding me from the Father’s wrath, soon to be visited on His enemies as He restores Heaven and Earth as sinless vessels of purity. Creation will cry out in full vigor as a testimony to His presence.

Thank You, for on that day You tell us all: You will ask me nothing.

I ask that until then You strengthen my faith, help my unbelief, and look for me when I go astray and off the narrow road.

Give me a clean heart, a bold spirit, and a guarded tongue. Purify my eyes, the lamps of my body, with good things, that they might behold the glory of G-d in Your presence, and not let me die.

You’ve given us the way, and finished the work that will see us reconciled and free from sin. You’ve shown us the Father. You’ve told us of His love for us. You’ve told us to believe, and not be afraid.

You tell us that we will be with You in paradise.

I would not lose such a salvation, Lord, for there is no other alternative but destruction.

Hold my hand, and lift me higher. May my faith please You, and release all the good that You have for me here in the land of the living. Thank You for delivering me from my trials, and opening my eyes to the suffering we must endure to be glorified with You in heavenly places.

My heart is grateful today.

My soul will be redeemed.

My flesh will be transformed.

My joy will be made full.

My sins will be forgiven.

And now I ask, may everything I do from here on be devoted to seeing that day where my questions will be answered.

Amen