Thurs.'s Devo - Wisdom, Knowledge and Understanding???

Read Proverbs 1:1-6
Let's study Proverbs. Proverbs is one of my favorite books that I read daily but don't think about studying. So let's see what God will teach us.
Solomon was the wisest man in the world because he asked God for wisdom and God gave it to him in abundance. God always does things big. Wisdom means being skillful. Instruction means properly chastised; warning or reproof. Understanding means knowledge. So we are suppose to gain skill, and proper warning and be able to mentally separate knowledge by studying the words of the Proverbs. We will also receive instruction in intelligence, the right morals, a favorable verdict or sentence and the ablity to know what is straight. We will be able to guide in discretion of the foolish, and give knowledge and right counsel to the young. If we are already wise we will add to our wisdom and if we already are quick to understand, we will gain understanding from those wiser than us. This will help us understand things superior to us and understand satire and be able to figure out puzzles. Now why do we need to know how to do this? The Bible is full of satire and puzzles and mysterious symbols. We need God's mind and help to interpret what he is saying in the Bible. He speaks in mysteries so we will have to seek out the meaning. He wants to give his wisdom and secrets to those who care to dig them out. Proverbs is full of these nuggets so we are going to go gold mining!
Lord, Give us your wisdom to understand your Proverbs. May we grow to be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. (Matt. 10:16)

Wed.'s Devo - The End.

Read 2 Pe. 3:9-18
God has everything well planned out and everything is on His ordained schedule. Sometimes it seems that he has forgotten us or what he promised us but he never forgets. Time is in his hands. He has great patience because he wants everyone that he has chosen to come in to the kingdom before the end comes. God will come "like a thief in the night". He will take the heaven and the earth back. The heavens will "pass away" which means they will come near earth with a great noise or with a crash. (That sounds to me like the sun exploding). The elements of the earth will melt from the heat and be burned up. Knowing this should put our lives in a different perspective. We put such emphasis on things that are going to burn up instead of the things that won't like our relationship with Him and others.
The earth and the heavens are going to burn up but we have the promise of a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness lives. If we set our sights on this future we will be spotless and without blame, living in peace. All the suffering we have done on this earth for God will be accounted for our salvation. We have all the wisdom we need available to us in God's Word so we will not be deceived by the devil to stray from God. Instead we are to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.

Tues.'s Devo - Your Time Line

Read 2 Pe. 3:1-8
All through history there have been those who have laughed at the prophecies of God. They laughed at Noah when he warned them for years that water was going to rain down from heaven and drown the earth. They had never seen rain before so his words seemed absurd. But, whether they believed or not it happened and they were all destroyed. The world we now live in will be destroyed by fire according to the Bible and the unbelievers will be destroyed by it. Believers, like Noah will be lifted out of the world and not harmed by the fire. Then Peter dropped in a nugget of truth that is a gold mine when trying to figure out time and events. He says that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Every thousand years represents one of the days of creation. So the first thousand years is summed up in the first day. "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the eath was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness; And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." In the first thousand years it was the beginning of everything. There was God's creation of Adam and Eve and there was Satan (light and dark) Sin was introduced as dark and God was introduced as light. People lived in darkness mostly with a few bright lights like Enoch who walked with God. During this thousand years God distinguished what was sin and what was righteousness. We are in the 6th day where man is elevated to a god and the human form is highly worshiped. On the 7th day the earth will rest just as God did. The Bible calls this Millennium.
Lord, your Word is from everlasting to everlasting. Everything we need is written in these pages. It is life and our daily food. Help us to rightly divide it and eat its fruit.

Monday's Devo - The False Prophet

Read 2 Pet. 2:15-22
In Numbers 22 we find the story of Balaam and Balak. Balak was the king of the Moabites who hated the Israelites. He wanted to curse the people of Israel because he was afraid of them so Balak sent servants to hire Balaam to curse Israel. Even though Balaam was a false prophet, God spoke to him and told him not to go and curse these people because they were blessed by him. When the king got his message he sent more prestigious soldiers with greater promises to bribe Balaam to come. So, he decided he would ask God again. This time God told him to go but he could only say what God wanted him to say. On the way God got mad because he didn't obey his first word so he sent his angel to stand in the way. Only the donkey saw the angel so it veered off the path to avoid the sword of the angel. Balaam, oblivious to the angel, got mad and hit his donkey and turned her back to the path. The angel then stood in the path where there was a wall on either side and there was not room to pass. The donkey crushed Balaam's foot into the wall trying to avoid the angel again. Finally the donkey fell at the foot of the angel and Balaam got really ticked and hit her again. God then opened the mouth of the donkey and it explained to Balaam his strange behavior. Balaam's spiritual eyes were opened and he could see the angel which put the fear of God in Balaam. God would not let him speak a curse over Israel so he ended up blessing them instead.
Balaam was a false prophet who made his money being able to "see" prophetically. He used his gift to make money, not to help people. Verse 17 says that these false prophets are wells without water. They are deep in that they have a prophetic gift, but they are motivated by the wrong spirit so they can produce no life from their words. They are clouds carried by a tempest. They have been clouded by darkness and evil and are moved by the spirit of Satan. They are deceived and they deceive others with flatteries and false words of encouragement and grandeur. They can offer no hope because they live in a prison in their own mind. Their warden is the devil. If God reveals to them his power like he did to Balaam and they still go back to their ways then there end will be worse than ever. That is what happened to Balaam.
Lord, put your fear in us that we would never seek the power of the enemy and never be deceived by the power of money or false prophecy. May we seek your words alone.

Sat.'s Devo - Don't Give Up!

I am always humbled and thankful by how quickly God disciplines me. I found myself judging a situation that happened this week and thinking of what these people should have done instead of impulsively reacting the way they did. They should have prayed about it first. Well, I didn't even get one day down the road till a similar situation happened in my life and I impulsively did what I thought was the right thing. It was the right thing to do I just failed to do one little thing first that made the difference of offending someone or preparing them. So after praying about it I saw my mistake and had to go back and seek forgiveness. God graciously gave it and so did the person but the damage has been done. I hate these kind of things because the only thing gained is a good lesson of what not to do next time. So I learned first, don't judge someone else's life, then don't be so prideful to think I don't need to pray first when you have a situation.
The good thing about this week is that I was able to minister to many people who needed a touch from God. It is so easy to stop and swim in self-pity and condemnation once you blow it, but this is not what God wants us to do. He wants us to get right back up and start again with more of His power than before.
Lord, thank you for your forgiving power and your power to mend and make new. Renew us in your spirit and give us wings to fly.

Fri.'s Devo - Walking After the Flesh 4-23-10

Read 2 Pe. 2:10-14
We are given a picture of what a person looks like that walks after the flesh. First of all, they despise government. In other words, they hate authority or anyone telling them what to do. I once heard a great definition of rebellion: doing your own thing. That is why submitting to God's will is so humbling because we have no say so in the matter. Next, they are presumptuous which means they are daring and bold about their sins. Next, they are selfwilled (arrogant) and aren't afraid to speak bad about their authorities whether it is their boss or the President of the US. If even the angels that are greater in power than them don't speak against authority, who are we to do that? The Bible says that ALL authority is put there by him. These ungodly people are like the animals God made; they don't understand the things of God; they were made for destruction. They love to indulge in sin while they disgrace and find fault with others. They are totally deceived and are driven to adultery and sin. They trap people who have not made up their minds who they are going to serve. They practice evil and even despise children which is why there is so much abortion in our land.
Father, forgive us for speaking evil against the people that you have put in authority over us. Forgive us of all the unborn babies we have murdered in our land. Cleanse our hearts and let us walk upright in an unright society. May we be lights to the darkness.

Thurs.'s Devo - Not Deceived! 4-22-10
Read 2 Pe. 2:1-9
Talking about false prophets used to scare me because I didn't want to be one. I thought that if I proclaimed something I thought God told me and it didn't come to pass then I would be labeled by God a false prophet. But that is not true. A false prophet means a pretended foreteller; a religious impostor. So either they know full well what they are doing or they are so deceived they don't realize what they are doing. Either way they have strayed from the fundamental truths of the Bible and they now believe a lie. There is no way to do this if you stay grounded in the Word of God and surround yourself with fellow believers who hold you accountable to truth. False prophets deny that Jesus bought them with the price of his blood which opens them to the enemy who kills, steals, and destroys. It is always surprising to us that people follow these false leaders with their crazy doctrines but they do because they have rejected truth and this false prophet offers them things that feed their desires. They don't realize till it is too late that the cult they have joined is really a prison and not the freedom they were looking for. Their end is damnation just like the angels that rebelled with Satan. They were cast down to hell and locked up in chains waiting their final judgment. Also, the people of the days of Noah were destroyed because they chose not to believe in God. Only Noah and his family were saved. God totally burned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha because of their evil lives and spared only Lot and his two daughters. Verse 7 says that Lot was vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked. We could write a whole blog on that. "Vexed" means tortured; harassed; oppressed. God delivered Lot from this and can deliver us from temptation too, even if he has to remove it from us. We are promised that one day the ungodly will receive their punishment and judgment.
Lord, may we be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the gospel of Jesus Christ.