Ash Wednesday–Lenten Devotions

Today’s Scripture: Mark 4:26-32

“He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." (Mark 4:30-32)

O, to be like one of the disciples, to whom Jesus explained everything in private as the Gospel lesson in Mark tells us. What did he tell them about the Kingdom of God that he did not tell the crowds of ordinary people to whom he spoke through parables? Did he make God's message clearer to them? I don't know the answer to that. But what can be much clearer than the image of a tiny mustard seed growing to become a large plant or a kernel of corn growing to a plant that yields a thousand fold in the harvest? Even a child can understand these images of the Kingdom of God as a reality that expands miraculously as our faith grows. - by Barbara Dilly

  Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God at first may seem unimpressive to many who witness it, but the Kingdom of God has great potential in growing into something quite tremendous. Jesus tells those who are willing to listen that the kingdom can be compared to a tiny mustard seed which grows into a bush large enough to provide shelter for all of God’s creatures.

  To Jesus’ listeners in Palestine they would have easily recognized the comparison that Jesus is describing in the mustard seed. To a first century Jew, a grain of mustard seed stood proverbially for the smallest possible thing. In Palestine this mustard seed did grow into something very much like a tree. A traveler frequently may have seen a mustard plant which, in its height, overtopped a horse and its rider. The birds were very fond of the little black seeds of the tree and many of Jesus’ listeners would have witnessed a great gathering of birds all over a mustard plant.

  Jesus in this parable is telling us to never be discouraged by small beginnings. Faith which begins as small as a grain of mustard seed is sufficient, even the smallest conceivable amount of faith is a beginning despite its size. We may suffer moments when we believe our efforts are producing little results; but if that small effort is repeated and repeated with faith and reliance on what God can do through us that the small effort will become very great indeed.

  We often feel that for all that we can do, it is hardly worthwhile starting a thing at all. Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom must start somewhere with someone with even the smallest of faith, everything must have a beginning. Nothing emerges full grown. As a disciple of Christ our duty is to start where we are with what we have available even if small and the cumulative effect of all the small efforts can in the end produce amazing results.

  Elizabeth Fairchild writes about her first Christmas without her mother and the small beginnings she was seeking, “It was the first Sunday in Advent and my husband ... rather gingerly, brought up the subject of Christmas, knowing that I was immersed in the full bloom of grief. Mom had died on Labor Day and this was the first Christmas to be marked without her. I did not "feel" like Christmas.

Lenten Devotional – Day 32

Q. 86. What is faith in Jesus Christ?

A. Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.

“But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.” (Heb. 10:39)

Faith comes not from intellectual conviction, but from an open, trusting "yes" to God’s invitation to loving unity. Of course, without intellectual conviction, the mind will not instruct the will to say yes. Even so, faith opens one to realms that the mind cannot know. - Nuggets from the Stream of Life from "Caring for the Self, Caring for the Soul," by Philip St. Romain.

  Practice is the best evidence of faith. Because Abraham had faith in God, he left his own country. Because Moses had faith in God, he refused to stay in the luxury of Pharaoh's palace, choosing instead to suffer with God's people (Hebrews 11:25-26). Because others had faith in God, they were stoned, sawn in two, executed by the sword, mocked and tortured, thrown in prison, and forced to wander about in animal skins, poverty and torment (Hebrews 11:32-38). — Gerald R. McDermott, Seeing God: Twelve Reliable Signs of True Spirituality (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 221.

  A businessman was asked to tell what his personal faith meant to him. He reached back to his boyhood experience. He recalled walking with his father one day, having to reach up to hold on to his hand. After a while he said, "I can't hold on any longer, and you'll have to hold on to me for a while." And he remembered the moment when he felt his father's hand take over. That, he said, was the way it felt to him to have faith in God. And that was precisely an act of grace.

  It is important that Christians not let grace become a universal principle or ideology. It is the grace of God of which the Bible speaks. Not the grace of some abstract principle of justice or love or acceptance. As God's grace, and not some principle of grace, God is the one who determines what it will be and where it will go. "God ... called us with a holy calling, not according to our work, but according to his own purpose and grace" (2 Tim. 1:9 NRSV). "But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift" (Eph.4:7 NRSV).

Lenten Devotional – Day 21

Q. 32. What benefits do they that are effectually called partake of in this life?

A. They that are effectually called do in this life partake of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several benefits which, in this life, do either accompany or flow from them.

“He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." (1 Corinthians 1:30-31, NRSV)

“In printers' language to "justify" means to set type in such a way that all full lines are of equal length and are flush both left and right; in other words to put the printed lines in the right relationship with the page they're printed on and with each other. The religious sense of the word is very close to that. Being justified means being brought into right relation.” - Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (Harper & Row, 1973), 48.

  One day an individual asked a church elder, if he was a Christian. He replied, “In spots.” All of us find ourselves faced with making a similar confession. God graciously came to us in Jesus Christ, called us, gave us faith, and the gift of grace, yet we often find our faith “spotty.” We have moments of steadfast faithfulness and others where we come up short and sometimes very short of the glory of God.

  One of the mistakes many of us make is that we keep trying to have a better past. Life does not work that way. Your past is never going to improve, but your future can improve if you turn loose of the past. The greatest battle in our lives, however, is not with these forces that lie beyond our control, as frightening as they may be. Our greatest battle is with ourselves. Most of our defeats come because we have not learned to fight effectively against the enemy within.

  Remember the scene at the end of Saving Private Ryan? When Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) is dying, he says to Private Ryan to make it worth it. Earlier, he had said, "He better be worth it. He better go home and cure a disease, or invent a longer-lasting light bulb."
  When the old Ryan stands before the grave of Miller, he asks his wife if he was a good man. "Tell me I have led a good life," he says.
  His wife responds: "What?"
  "Tell me I'm a good man."
  "You are," she says. Ryan, even in his old age, was not sure he had lived a life of meaning, a life that meant something - especially in light of the fact that someone had died so that he might live.

  Many of us were raised with the idea that in order to please God we have to try to be good and hope at the end our good stuff outweighs the bad. Sound familiar? Trouble is, we're never really sure how "good" good really is. Is God just sitting and watching from the heavens waiting to give us a big whack in the back of the head at the end? How do I know God is pleased with me?

Lenten Devotional–Day 19

Q. 30. How does the Spirit apply to us the redemption purchased by Christ?

A. The Spirit applies to us the redemption purchased by Christ by working faith in us, and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—“ (Eph. 2:8)

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5, NRSV)

If I had the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of John, the meekness of Moses, the strength of Samson, the obedience of Abraham, the compassion of Joseph, the tears of Jeremiah, the poetic skill of David, the prophetic voice of Elijah, the courage of Daniel, the greatness of John the Baptist, the endurance and love of Paul, I would still need redemption through Christ’s blood, the forgiveness of sin. - R. L. Wheeler

  After a 20-year struggle with drugs and a backslidden faith, this Hollywood bad boy is now squeaky clean. With a penchant for gospel music and a new lease on life, good guy Gary [Busey] is on the road back to God ....

  Baptized at the age of 12, Busey grew up as a believer, but stardom drew him to the world of drugs. In 1979, Gary received a rock of cocaine from a man who called himself "the devil," beginning the downward spiral of cocaine abuse. So bad was his addiction, Busey was charged with a $10,000 felony and a five-year jail sentence.

  Now Busey is walking the straight line, thanks to his renewed faith in Jesus Christ. "I rededicated my life to Christ, to the Promise Keepers, four years ago at Los Angeles Coliseum," says Busey.

  After experiencing a series of nosebleeds, last May Gary found out he had sinovial cell sarcoma maximal sinus cancer. The fact that his cancer was malignant could have caused Gary to waver dramatically in his faith. But Gary says faith in God was what pulled him through.

  Gary took comfort in his communion with God. "My prayer was, 'Dear Lord, I'm filled with fear at this time,' and a voice came through the back of my head - it always comes from the right and into the back - the voice said, 'Replace the word fear with faith.' So I did. And everything got okay." Gary did not exactly know what having faith meant at that time, but he knew enough to believe he would come out a winner either way. - "Gary Busey: Hollywood 'Bad Boy' turns to the gospel," CBN.com.

Lenten Devotional – Day 18

Q. 29. How are we made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ?

A. We are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ by the effectual application of it to us by his Holy Spirit.

“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7, NRSV)

The gospel life isn't something we learn ABOUT and then put together with instructions from the manufacturer; it's something we BECOME as God does his work of creation and salvation in us and as we accustom ourselves to a life of belief and obedience and prayer. - Eugene Peterson in Leap Over a Wall, quoted in Christianity Today, March 1, 1999, 64.

  Are you worried because you find it so hard to believe? No one should be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of his life where he is consciously resisting or disobeying the commandments of Jesus. Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest? Some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered. Go, rather, and be reconciled with your brother, renounce the sin which holds you fast - and then you will recover your faith! If you dismiss the word of God's command, you will not receive his word of grace. How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him? The man who disobeys cannot believe, for only he who obeys can believe. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963), 72-73.

  Faith is both a free gift of God and the free assent of our will to the whole truth that God has revealed. To live, grow, and persevere in the faith to the end, we must nourish it with the word of God. The Lord gives us his Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds that we may grow in his truth and in the knowledge of his great love for each of us. For the apostle Paul, there is an intimate connection between the Spirit and the historic/risen Jesus who is the exalted Lord. For Paul, there is no experience of Jesus apart from the Spirit. The Spirit is the “Spirit of Jesus Christ” for Paul (Phil. 1:19) for “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3)

Recommended Faith Requirements – Advent Devotional

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

Daily Scripture Reading: Micah 6:6-8

   When you buy some new software or hardware, one of the first things you need to check is, does your computer meet the minimum system requirements. If your computer meets the minimum requirements then does it exceed these by having what is recommended for optimal performance. Minimum. Recommended. This is the language used in the world of computers.

  In today's scripture, Micah is talking about the language of faithful living. If you want to excel as a Christian - not just with Microsoft Excel - you need to know the minimum and recommended requirements.

   Paul in Galatians, tells us a person is made right with God "not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ" (2:16). The minimum Christian system requirement is faith. This means that we enter into a saving relationship with God through our willingness to trust Jesus, to rely on him to be our Lord and Savior. We are saved through faith, and Paul assures us that there is "no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1).

  Faith is the minimum system requirement. Then we might say that for optimal performance, we recommend you “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

  Recommended requirement one: Do justice. The recommendation to do justice applies to every aspect of life - it means treating others with fairness, equality and showing concern for people who are weak, powerless and exploited. "Do justice," says Micah. Not simply "support justice." It's a high-commitment, hands-on, everyday activity.

  Recommended requirement two: Love kindness. The English word "kindness" is actually a weak translation of the Hebrew word hesed, which means love, loyalty and faithfulness. You might say, you are to “love love” or “love loyalty” or “love faithfulness.” It lies at the heart of healthy relationships, whether the bonds are marriages, close friendships or the relationship between God and his people. To "love kindness" is to keep this loyalty and faithfulness at the heart of all your relationships.

  Recommended requirement three: Walk humbly with your God. If we are going to excel as Christians, we must travel with God over the course of life. Faith may begin with a momentary decision, but it matures through a long journey of following God over many ups and downs, through mountaintop experiences and valleys of deep darkness. Along this path, we are challenged to walk humbly, knowing that God is - and always remains - ahead of us leading the way.

   When Jesus describes himself as "the way, and the truth and the life" (John 14:6), he is echoing this image of a journey. Jesus is our way, showing us exactly how we are to walk with God. When he first calls his disciples, he doesn't say, "Agree to these fine points of theology." Instead, he says, "Follow me" (Matt. 4:19).

  In the life of faith, unlike the world of computers, we should never be satisfied with the bare minimum. To have the strongest possible relationship with God and with each other, it is important to reach for the recommended system requirements: Doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly in our journey with Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.

So Your Love May Overflow - Advent Devotional

"And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” (Phil. 1:9-11)

Daily Scripture Reading:   Philippians 1:3-11

  There is a story told about St. Francis of Assisi. One day as he was digging in the garden, Francis was asked, "If Jesus were to return to earth today, what would you do?" Without hesitating, Francis answered, "I would continue gardening."

  Would we be so calm if we heard Jesus was coming back today? Or would we be desperately scrambling to get our lives in order? Confident enough that he was ready to meet the King, Francis would peacefully keep on about his business until Jesus' arrival.

  In today's text, the apostle Paul expresses a similar confidence in the people in Philippi. Seeing all the good that God had begun in them, he was certain that God would continue bringing it to completion until "the day of Christ Jesus." (1:6) or also called in other scripture passages, “the day of the Lord.”

  As we take this journey again toward Christmas and we recall the events surrounding the first coming of Emmanuel, we need to remember: "God is with us!" We must prepare our hearts and minds to humbly welcome Jesus into our lives today and each and everyday.

  No place is this understanding more important than in the matter of our faith. Many of us may have grown up in the church. During this time we might have one or many defining moments of faith or as some might say a mountaintop spiritual experience. A high point of faith where God's presence was made more clear and real to us, perhaps it was at summer church camp, a youth retreat, a mission trip, Bible study, etc. Whenever it was, it stood out as a spiritual mountaintop experience. We were excited about our faith and may have made our most important commitments to follow Jesus Christ as a disciple.

  But later, we were likely disappointed when we discovered that the peak of spiritual emotion we felt doesn’t last. We went from a mountaintop spiritual experience and then had to return to the valley to live out our lives and we found the excitement of conversion or commitment dissipates. What followed may have been the exact opposite, a spiritual low point when our faith seemed as dry as dust and our commitments seemed a little foolish.

  In time, if we persevere in following Jesus, we come to understand that neither the highs nor the lows describe what the ongoing life of faith is. Some of us may see only despair in the cyclical nature of our emotions and faith, but to paraphrase the psalmist, they saw hope in it: “Okay, I’m down today, but God constantly renews life. I will be up again.”

  Advent can help to renew and refresh our faith and show us that God is always present in our lives during the highs and the lows. I find my faith renewed each and everyday by simple acts of worship, singing hymns, taking time in prayer, reading scripture, and being in fellowship with others in the life of the church. Even if your faith has reached a low and we have distanced ourselves from others in the church, we can make the decision to get re-involved because God is compassionately, tenderly and lovingly waiting for us to return. I share with Paul this same sentiment during these day of Advent:

"And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” (Phil. 1:9-1)