Meditation on Luke 12:22-34

Meditation on Luke 12:22-34

Lord, save me from anxiety about my past, present, and future.  Help me accept what has been lost in my past and remember what has been by YOUR grace gained.  

Today let me see all you have provided and not focus on the things I lack.   Help me accept the struggles of today as part of a process leading to some greater good.  Give me the wisdom to now choose sin to win over my current problems.   Those things that most concern me let me release to you and let me live only in this present moment and be aware of this present moment.   Help me not put financial and physical well-being ahead of doing what is right and wise. 

Put in me today a hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Help me seek to have YOU rule over all aspects of my life.  Help me confess more, repent more, and follow more.  Transform my heart to make my priorities right.   Make my desires conform to YOUR desires.  Convert my heart to become like YOUR heart.  

Let me hand over the future to YOU.  Help me not worry about things that may never happen.  Help me live by faith and not fear.  Help me treasure YOUR kingdom more than I value wealth, popularity, or power.  Good Lord, be the treasure of my heart. 

Lord have mercy, Messiah have mercy, Lord have mercy.  Amen

Praying on Isaiah 42:1-4

Meditation on Isaiah 42:1-4

"But now, thus says the LORD, your Creator, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you. "For I am the LORD your God, The Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I have given Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in your place. "Since you are precious in My sight, Since you are honored and I love you, I will give other men in your place and other peoples in exchange for your life."  Isaiah 43:1-4

Great Creator and redeemer, let me release my fear to YOU.  Fear of rejection and failure, fill my heart and so I ask now you remind me of YOUR great redeeming and saving love.  

YOU know my name.  You are the Good Shepherd.  I belong to YOU.  When troubles flood my life and crisis seems to be ready to consume in its flames all my strength and hope, YOU get me through and there is another day after the worst of days.  

YOU living and true LORD and God, are mine and I am yours.  Forever I am YOURS!  True God of Israel, found in the Messiah Jesus the LORD, YOU are my Savior.  My trust is in YOU alone.  

I am precious to YOU.  YOU lift me up and give to me glory and honor I do not deserve.  Help me this day, recognize how much YOU love me.  

Lord, let me see YOU more clearly, that I may love YOU more dearly, and follow YOU more nearly, day by day.  Amen

Meditation on Luke 11:1-13 - Seeking, Asking and Knocking for Spiritual Renewal

11:1 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say:
“Father hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread,
4 and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
5 And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; 7 and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? 8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. 9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (ESV)

Father, of the Kingdom of heaven, eternal and unchanging in love and compassion,  may YOUR authority be acknowledged and YOUR righteous and loving kingdom rule and will be fully manifested on the earth.  

Provide for YOUR people today the physical resources we need to do YOUR will on earth this day.  Give us food on our tables and roofs over our heads.  Teach to be content with what we need rather than being consumed with our desires.  

Forgive us our sins due to the sacrifice of the Messiah Jesus, YOUR LAMB, for our sins on the cross.   In light of that great sacrifice help us become filled with mercy, grace, compassion, longsuffering, patience, and forgiveness towards those who sin against us.  Teach us to be a forgiving people. 

Holy Father, remember our weakness and frailty.  Guard us against ourselves.  Take from us the unhealthy and unholy desires that lead us to think that immoral actions rather than righteousness are the right decision to make this day.  Help us not trust in sin to save us from practical problems.  

Lord, give to us a new hunger and thirst for righteousness and for true transforming encounters with YOU.  

Lord, give us the faith to ask for healthy and holy words, actions, and attitudes.  Keep us from failing to ask because we have lost heart and doubt if YOU will answer.  Give us the trust to ask of YOU to bring YOUR kingdom to our hearts and minds. 

Teach us to seek for YOU, YOUR kingdom, and YOUR righteousness. 
Make this an inner hunger and thirst of our souls. 

Provide us the energy to knock on the door of the throne of grace and expect to gain YOUR grace in times of need.  

Daily let us keep asking, seeking, and knocking.  Grant us the perseverance to be crying out to YOU day and night for YOUR kingdom to come and will be done on earth as in heaven. 

Father, send us a great spiritual awakening and give us the power of the Holy Spirit in a new wave of effectiveness in presenting YOUR gospel to the world in love, logic, and life.  HOLY SPIRIT, now bear YOUR fruit in us!  Let us experience YOUR pouring into our hearts  YOUR love by revealing to us more and more deeply the LORD Messiah Jesus to us.  

Lord, make YOUR Church a house of prayer upon the earth.  Teach us to pray.  Help us to pray.  Fill us with a hunger to pray.  Let us trust that praying is effective because YOU hear our cries.  

We deserve nothing but defeat and shame, but now in YOUR love and compassion give us victory and glory.  Lift up YOUR people and let us effectively be light and salt in this generation bringing truth and loving holiness into the middle of this age.  

Let us be better than the church has ever been in all history.  Make us mature in our faith, balanced in our thinking, and beautiful in our lives.  

That YOU may be glorified, that we may gain good from YOU and that we may be of some good to those we touch.  

We are in a desperate time.  Good Father, awaken us, renew us, restore us, revive us, and reform us.  

Drown us with YOUR gifts of conviction and repentance.  Humble us that we may be lifted up.  Take from us our pride and provide for us a reality check, about our spiritual state.  

Lord have mercy now and help us now!

Amen

1 Peter 2:4-8

LORD, let me come to YOU this day.  Help me seek YOUR presence and power.   Life is more difficult and confusing than I could ever imagine.   So I seek YOU now to be in YOUR presence and find YOUR peace. 

LORD Jesus, you are the cornerstone.  All the weight of God's plan is fully on YOU.  You are alive and real.  YOU are rebuilding the temple.  YOU are the temple. 

YOU have made me a living part of God's temple as well.  I am part of the spiritual house in which YOU are worshiped in Spirit and Truth.  Help me see that I am a priest.  

Receive my praise and thanksgiving as a spiritual offering this day through the perfect work of redemption YOU accomplished on the cross and resurrection.  

YOU, Lord, are good
YOU, Lord, are great
YOU, Lord, are full of grace

I stand in awe of who you are. 

I thank you for your promise that you will never leave me or forsake me.   I have immense gratitude for your commitment to having every painful thing I have ever felt be used for ultimate good. 

All that has happened has been planned and prophesied by Moses and the prophets long ago.  YOUR redemption of believers to become both temple and priests was in YOUR mind forever.  

Our destiny is to worship YOU in the promises of YOUR gospel forever and ever.   

Help me to act consistently with the reality that I am both a holy priest set apart to live and serve YOU.  

Grant me the grace to fulfill this calling in my life.  Let me make known your greatness, goodness, and grace  Reflect in me the reality of the great redemption YOU have brought to us.  

LORD, be praised forever in the light of YOUR glory.  Amen

Meditation on 1 Peter 2:1-3

1 Peter 2:1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Lord, you have given to us the living and enduring word of YOUR love found in the wonder of YOUR death on the cross for our sins and resurrection from the dead proving our hope in YOU has a good reason.  In the light of that truth about YOUR love and involvement in our lives.  Help us now respond.  

In the light of YOUR love, help us to look inward.  Let me look inward.  Show to me my hidden faults.  

Help me to put away the anger, desire for revenge, self-righteousness, the lies I tell myself, the false impressions that I give others, the two-faced nature of so many aspects of my life, my desire for what others have, with the feeling that I deserve more than what I do have, and save me from the judgment of others and the demeaning of them instead of confession of my own shortcomings.  

Lord, save us from the darkness that is in us. 

Good loving Savior and King, give to us a hunger and thirst for the gospel that we may grow strong in the work of deliverance YOU have provided for us.  Let us cry out for YOUR word and see our need of YOUR word deep inside of us.  Put in us a passion for growing, into spiritual maturity.  

LORD, YOU are good, great, and full of grace.  YOU have allowed us to see, feel, experience this reality.  We could never have attained to an awareness of it without YOUR revelation by the HOLY SPIRIT.  Help us remember the times when the reality of the gospel was most real in our lives.   Let these memories fuel a fresh desire for YOU this day. 

LORD send to us a revival, renewal, and reformation to YOUR people now!  We need fresh wind and fire that only you can provide.  

Awaken the children born in YOUR covenant who have strayed from having faith, love, and hope in YOU.  Take what they were taught as children and allow them now to become a living reality to them as adults.  Remember them and the hopes of their parents.  Have mercy.  Revive them first.  

Come now and work in our generation. 

Lord, we need YOU now.  Act NOW.  Amen

Trusting the LORD during the storm

Isaiah 4:5 Then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy. 6 There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat, and for a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain. (ESV)

Lord, we are afraid of storms.  They remind us how powerless we are and unable to even predict what will happen next.  All of our wisdom flees us as we try to determine the future and plan for it, knowing that our plans are powerless against what will really happen.  

Storms remind us of our ignorance and the fragile nature of our efforts to control things.  We are left vulnerable.  Aware that if we have only ourselves to rely upon that there is only a little strength that we can muster in comparison to the strength of the storm.  

Lord, help us in the storms we face.  Some may be physical, some emotional. some intellectual, some in our relationships with those we love, and some in our relationship with YOU.  

You have promised a day when all the storms of this "East of Eden" life will end.  Your kingdom will come.  Your glory revealed.  YOUR presence will be so revealed to us that YOU will be our shade and shelter.  No storm can touch us when we are under YOUR full manifestation of grace and love. 

Help us now, in this present moment, remember YOUR promises and love.  Be our shelter from the storm this day.  Lift us up.  Guide us now.  Amen

Devotions on Ephesians 1:3-11

Read Ephesians 1:3-11

"(3) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, (4) just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love (5) He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, (6) to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (7) In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace (8) which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight (9) He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him (10) with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him (11) also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will," [Ephesians 1:3-11 NASB]

What truths are set forth in this passage?

What feelings do you feel when you read this passage?

What questions come to your mind when you read this passage?

How could you use this passage in a practical way in your life?  

Pray the passage back to God.

Meditation on Ephesians 1:3-14

Lord, I desire YOU to be glorified, seen as YOU really are fully appreciated in my life and in the life of YOUR people universally.  Make of us a community that worships YOU in spirit and truth.  I desire YOU to be pleased by seeing YOUR work in us.  

YOU Infinite ONE, dwell in eternity and also in our hearts.  How great YOU are!

IN the Messiah Jesus, YOU have poured out good upon us freely that we do not deserve.  Giving to us every spiritual treasure and good thing that any creature could desire from YOU.   YOU have put us in the Kingdom of heaven having chosen us in eternity to become separated to YOU in an intimate relationship in which we reflect YOUR goodness fully and are without flaw in how we reflect YOUR image. 

LORD, I thank YOU for such a great gift.  It is hard for me to understand how YOU were thinking of me and planning for me before I even existed.  I have forever been an object of YOUR interest, concern, and love.  YOU are radically and forever for me.  

LORD of Love and Promises, in choosing us eternally YOU have adopted us as your dearly beloved children in the Messiah Jesus.  The sonship of the LORD Jesus, HE now has shared with us as now we are YOUR sons as well.  All of our blessings come to us in the beloved LORD Jesus.  HE is our blessing. 

LORD, open my heart to respond to YOUR great love for me in the Messiah Jesus.  Help me feel secure in YOUR perfect plan for my life.  

LORD, YOU have bought us out of slavery to sin, death due to our wickedness, from futility, from the rebellious culture we live in, and from the domination of the dark lord in our lives by the sacrifice and  suffering YOU poured out with YOUR blood so that our salvation may be bought for and we can be forgiven all our moral transgressions.  All of this was undeserved and unearned.  YOU have suffered for our sins motivated solely by YOUR love and commitment to us.  

Lord, when I think of the forgiveness of my sins, it is a marvel to me.  Why would YOU forgive and at such great price for me to be free to have relationship with YOU.   My transgressions so terrible and YOUR tribulation so great upon the cross; how can this be?  I thank YOU Lord for YOUR forgiving me and washing me clean from all my moral filth.  

LORD, YOU have bankrupted heaven to pour on us in such great abundance and flood into our lives every great good in the Messiah Jesus to where we are drowning in the great wealth of YOUR love.  All of this was in accord with your eternal plan and purpose centered in the Messiah to bring back Eden on steroids to all of creation fully and perfectly reflecting YOUR wise reign.  LORD, now let your kingdom come to earth as it is in heaven.  

LORD, open my eyes to see more clearly the wonder of your gospel mystery revealed in Messiah Jesus.  Let me see that all things are now united in the Messiah Jesus because of HIS resurrection and ascension to the throne.  I praise YOU for your wild and wonderful purpose to save YOUR creation from rebellion and bring to it the kingdom of righteousness.  

LORD, YOU have allowed us now to freely and fully gain the inheritance of YOUR kingdom.  Heaven is ours!  All the good of the LORD Jesus we now have.  YOU have made us who were homeless and helpless; royal heirs.  We who were paupers have now become princesses and princes.  

I find myself in wonder at all YOU have said YOU have done for me.  I forget all so easily that I am rich and feel impoverished instead every day.  Open the eyes of my heart LORD that I may see more clearly the greatness and goodness of who YOU are and what YOU have done for me.   Let me see more and more clearly the depth of YOUR grace towards me.  In this pour out YOUR love through the Holy Spirit into the deepest parts of my soul.  Fill me with your love.  That the fruit that I would bear would be more and more nearly, follow YOU in my words, actions, and attitudes.   

Bless be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.  Amen