Devotional Rewind For Week Ending 3/26/16

This past week I went through the Paying Ridiculous Attention to Jesus devotion plan on the Bible App. Here are the thoughts which I had while doing these devotions.

Paying Ridiculous Attention to Jesus

Sunday
(Matthew 26: 36-46)
His (Jesus’) dependent relationship with His Father fueled everything He said and did.
It strikes me that prayer is a lot bigger than I think it is. We read through the Gospels and marvel at the teachings of Christ but just as often as He was teaching, He was off by Himself praying, also. It’s become so difficult in our ADD society to take time pray. Prayer seems like doing nothing, when there are so many stimuli around us that we could be interacting with. But to pray, we would be purposely ignoring those. Maybe we need prayer more than any other group of people in history. Maybe unplugging and focusing on God is so much more important because there’s so much more to unplug from. I’m not saying that’s definitely the case, but it’s something to think about.

Monday
(Matthew 11:16-19)
Jesus loved celebrations and enjoyed himself so much that at one point the religious rule-keepers accused him of gluttony and drunkenness.
We spend so much time thinking of Jesus as the guy in the stories teaching His disciples and the multitudes about love and life that we very often forget that He was a person just like us, and that He liked to have a good time.

Tuesday
(Matthew 5:10-12)
Jesus is simply not intimidated by confrontation and conflict.
Were supposed to be happy when people insult, persecute and defame us because of Jesus. How many times have you ever been happy because somebody is being antagonistic toward you? And I’m not talking about the type of person who gets their jollies out of confrontation; I’m talking about feeling close to Yeshua because you know you’re doing something He would’ve done. I think it would be a lot easier to face persecution if I knew I was actually being righteous. So often I feel persecuted, but is it because of Jesus? Or, is it just because I’ve done something wrong? I guess there’s another option: am I even being persecuted, or do we as a society just feel persecuted when anything doesn’t go our way? Every day our battle cry should be, “JESUS!” When we wake up, the first thing want to do should be to thirst for better understanding of Yeshua. And the same when we go to bed. Do we really love Him? Have we really given our lives over to Him? What are we waiting on?

Wednesday
(Matthew 23:25-28)
Sometimes these status updates, videos, and photos reflect our true hearts and lives; other times they reflect only what we WANT people to think about our hearts and lives.
Our lives are, seemingly, so out in the open. So many people post every portion of their life on Facebook, or Instagram, or Twitter, but most people are only posting what they want other people to see. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – a lot of times it is the responsible thing to do – but we need to remember that Jesus sees the heart of all of the things we do. We get so used to editing our actions for status updates that we oftentimes don’t bother thinking about changing our actions since it’s so easy to just tell people only what we want them to know. When do we take the opportunity to actually change what we doing instead of just editing it for public consumption?

Thursday
(Matthew 6:19-24)
Whether it’s counting likes on our status update or dollars in our ban account, Jesus’ message is the same: seek a different type of wealth.
We always get so caught up in how much money we make, or how much attention we get from others. It takes a complete restructuring of priorities to see things the way they are seen in the Kingdom. I know that I’m constantly worried about how much money I make on each paycheck. Is it enough for the bills I have to pay? Is it what I deserve to be making? The truth is: none of that matters. I have enough to pay my bills, and if I don’t then God will provide. And as far as if it’s what I deserve to be making, the only thing that I deserve in this world is death, but Jesus came and gave His life for me so that I can live freely. Outside of that, live every day like it’s an opportunity to show the world Yeshua’s love for us.

Friday
(Matthew 5:13-16)
Jesus told his followers to plunge themselves into the mainstream culture like a lamp in a dark room or salt added to a recipe.
Today’s devotion asked to take a minute to reflect on where my life intersects with mainstream culture. Here goes: Work, Facebook, When I’m around my friends.
I need to be more of a light. I need to go out of my comfort zone more often. If the love of Yeshua is truly as life transforming as I’m claiming it to be, why am I not trying to get more people to see the light?

Saturday
(Matthew 28:18-20)
Jesus told his disciples that joining him in his redemptive mission would require us to put our “skin in the game” – our personal investment of risk and hard work is conjoined with his own to advance his Kingdom.
Jesus never pulled His punches so why do we often assume that we need to pull our punches. Certainly, we need to make sure that what we say is grounded in the Word of God but, outside of that, speak the truth and speak it boldly. We so often think that by sugar coating the effects of sin on the world that we will not offend those we are hoping to bring to Messiah, but it is never our words or our decisions that bring other to Christ, it is the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus. It has nothing to do with us. Speak boldly in love, but speak boldly.

Devotional Rewind for the week ending 3/19/16

I'm still doing the Bible in One Year plan, I just chose to highlight this great devotional series. This one was really refreshing and thought provoking. I would suggest this one to anyone.

Through the Eyes of a Lion

Sunday
(Proverbs 6:22, 2 Corinthian 6:14, Ephesians 5:3, Matthew 5:39, Psalms 37:4)
Perhaps it’s (God’s calling for your life) less about what you do and more about how well you do whatever you do.
So often we get caught up wondering what it is that God wants us to do with our lives, that we forget that we’re doing something right now. Is the thing you’re doing right now the thing that you’ll be doing for the rest of your life? Maybe, maybe not. But one thing that’s certain is that God does want you to make a difference in whatever it is you’re doing at the moment, even if He is going to move you on to something else later.

Monday
(2 Timothy 1:10, Hebrews 2:14)
Satan can still pull the trigger, but there are only blanks in the chamber.
This is reminiscent of that saying, “you can’t kill a Christian, you can only change his address.” What does anything in this world mean? Nothing. But… we’re going to be living in the presence of Yahweh for eternity… so why not live for Him now, so that we can show others the joy that He can bring them. And if we’re persecuted, that doesn’t affect our eternal soul.

Tuesday
(Philippians 2:27, 2 Corinthians 12:2-4, Philippians 1:21, 2 Corinthians 5:8)
Expecting someone to bounce back as some sort of benchmark of holiness is kind of like asking a person who has had an arm amputated if he is over it yet.
It’s okay to not be okay. But we can know that Jesus went through very similar things to all that we’re going through. He can understand our hurts and fears. There’s nothing that says that we’re not allowed to cry when we experience loss. Sometimes it feels like we’re supposed to embrace our piety and turn hurt into happiness, but this isn’t the case. We can feel sad, we just need to not embrace our sadness. We need to see sadness for what it is and not for what it can make us.

Wednesday
(Psalms 34:18, John 12:32, Acts 9:15-16, Daniel 12:3, Revelation 1:6)
There’s perhaps no time you are as powerful as when you minister in the midst of pain.
Remembering that there’s a spiritual realm all around us where angels are fighting wars for us against agents of evil is difficult when you’re hurting or feeling persecuted. I guess the trick is to use your anguish for good. That’s not quite embracing pain, but accepting it as a tool for you to accomplish the will of God. If we can trust in Yahweh even when our world is crashing down around us, we are walking down the right path. That being said, seeking out a crashing world doesn’t sound like a good idea.

Thursday
(Hebrews 6:19-20, Proverbs 10:25, Matthew 6:21)
In times of overwhelming sadness, your anchor should strengthen you, but you should also be encouraged by the chain.
Hope is the anchor of the soul, but the Holy Spirit is the chain that attaches the anchor to us. We can have the biggest hope in the world, but if we aren’t connected to it, it does no good at all. How are we fostering our relationship with the Holy Spirit in order to strengthen that chain?

Friday
(1 John 3:3, Hebrews 11:13-14, Hebrews 11:8-10)
The more passionate you are about setting your soul to heaven’s time zone, the more progress you will make in you calling here on earth.
There’s a fine line between legalism and doing a thing because it’s the right thing to do. That truly is a matter of the heart. But, the trick is that we can’t rely on the heart to tell us what the right thing to do is; we still have to rely on what the Word of God (the law) says. So how do we avoid falling victim to legalism? We try, every day, to understand Jesus. He followed the law to perfection, but He did it for the right reasons, and ended up looking a lot more loving than those who were the most pious and had, seemingly, made the law their god. If we know the law, but also know Jesus, we will rightly understand the law and we will follow it for the right reasons.

Saturday
(Esther 4:14, John 9:4, James 4:14, 2 Corinthians 5:10-11)
He (the devil) won’t try to talk you out of doing the thing you are intended to he’ll simply tell you to put it off.
Why don’t we (I) feel the urgency to live outrageously for Messiah? So often I pull punches on what I say or do, but why? Am I scared? To borrow a lyric from a Christian song from the 90’s, am I scared of being seen as a Jesus freak? Or, am I scared of offending people? The love of Jesus can offend, but it’s not done in an offensive way? Am I too preoccupied with trying to let the light shine correctly? And, who am I to decide which way is correct? If my life isn’t pointing people to Christ, it’s not the correct way.

Where Did We Come From... Where Do We Go...

Genesis 6:1-4, Deuteronomy 32:8-9, John 1:1, 1 Samuel 3:1-21, Matthew 7:21-23

There seems to a bunch of us who have “grown up” in this “fringe” community. For me it seems that all I used to want to look into was Nephilim and aliens. I think that was the conspiracy carrot that God put on a stick in front of me. I kept following that carrot anywhere that it’d go. It led me into deeper study than I had ever known, and I had led church small groups before. And that is what led me understand the thing I had always been looking for, anyway: Jesus. That statement needs some unpacking but before I do that I want to say that I am by no means “perfect”. I still lose my temper for idiotic reasons. I still cuss when I’m in a bad mood, or even sometimes when I’m in a good mood. I still go through the same struggles any other human being goes through. The difference between me now and me 5 years ago is that while I may not be Jesus, I’m hanging out with Him a lot more.

So let’s unpack a little of what I meant when I said that I found Jesus. I have “always” been a Christian and I have had a decent understanding of what Christianity is (or, what it has become). And even though I had read all of the Gospels, and I had read Paul’s letters, and from time to time I would read the Old Testament and be able to connect Joseph to Jesus, or something like that, I don’t necessarily believe that I knew Jesus. Truthfully, I don’t really even know him yet. We all have people who we hang out with, but how many of those people know you? I have a lot of friends but I don’t have a lot of friends who truly know me. And that’s how I want to know Jesus.

So how would somebody get to know you that way? They would have to not just hang out with you all the time, they would have to know your story. They would have to know where you came from and how you got to where you are.

How would you go about doing that for Jesus? Well, we learn in the book of John that Jesus is the Word. There’s a silly Greek tradition that says that “The Word” is a Greek philosophical concept, and that’s what John was talking about.

You know what, let’s stop there for a second. That is a perfect example of what I’m getting at. We are 2,000 years removed from the time of Messiah. And we are 4,000 years removed from Abraham and the birth of the Israelite religion. And we’re 6,000 years removed from the birth of the context of it all. And for the last 2,000 years we have been trying to fit the Hebrew peg into the Greek hole. It’s never going to fit, but we keep pretending that it does. When John wrote down, “In the beginning was the Word,” he wasn’t talking about a mystical Greek concept. John was a Jew and was raised as a Jew, not a Greek. In fact, his name wasn’t even John, it was Yohanan. But I don’t want to make this about using Hebrew names. Jesus was/IS a Jew and you’re not going to KNOW Him if you think of Him as thinking with a Greek mindset.

What John was talking about was the “Word of God”. The very same thing that had been talked about all throughout the Tanakh. The Word is a person, and always has been. But what does this all mean? Before the rabbit trail goes too far, let’s circle back. If you want to know Jesus the way only your best friends in all of the world know you, you have to understand the Jewishness of Him. And you have to understand the references to the Word in the Old Testament. And you have to understand the Hebrew culture, since it was God who had taken them as His own. And, even though I’ve really moved away from a lot of the Genesis 6 stuff (not that I don’t get excited about it anymore, I’ve just expanded my field of study to its logical conclusion… Jesus), you really have to understand “the war of the seed” in order to get the history of where Jesus came from.

So how did it all happen that I moved from one station to the next? Well, the obvious answer is that it was a movement of God. I had always believed in the supernatural. And I had always believed that there were other gods, but none of them were God (there are many elohim, but only one of them is Yahweh). And I had always believed that understanding the Jewish nature of Christianity was important. And so, with that base, it only seems natural to move into all that I’ve talked about.

What’s the point of all of this anyway? What’s the point of me harping on getting to know Jesus the way that only my best friends know me? Well, maybe this is just me but if you know Jesus, that’s when He knows you, too. And, in the end, isn’t that what we’re all really trying to do?

I'll leave you with a teaching from Michael Heiser that gives an explanation of the many names of Jesus throughout the Old Testament. So, when you have 3 1/2 hours, give this a watch...

Devotional Rewind for Monday thru Thursday

Monday and Tuesday

1 Year Bible Plan
(Psalms 31:9-18, Proverbs 6:30-35, Mark 14:17-72, Leviticus 17-20)
Remember, when everything seems to be going against you, the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
                                                         - Henry Ford
Psalms – We all go through hardships. We should expect the hardships. In fact, if we’re not going through hardships, we’re probably not doing it right. The trick is in how we react to the hardships.
Proverbs – It’s the heart of the sin that is at question. What leads us to do the evil that we do. We can stop doing these things but if we don’t get rid of the reason we did it, we won’t have changed in God’s eyes.
Mark – We need to be in prayer at all times (the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak). Why is it so difficult for me to remember to pray? Is there some sort of block which the enemy has put up that is preventing me from living a prayerful life? I don’t want to give the enemy more power than he has, so is it a wall that I have put up? I try and I try, but the steps are slow and the distance traveled doesn’t seem to be far at all. I need to readjust. I need to be more mindful of the things I say and the things I do, and the things which I let happen around me.
How do I, in my actions, deny Jesus? I mean, when I act in a way which doesn’t glorify Messiah, aren’t I denying the wonderful work He has done for me?
Leviticus – It’s all about holiness. I admit, I’m having trouble getting through Leviticus, but I keep reminding myself that this whole thing is about setting ourselves apart for Yahweh.

Wedneday
(Psalms 31:19-24, Mark 15:1-32, Leviticus 21-22)
I did this plan but on Wednesday my computer was acting up and I didn’t take any notes on it. I can say that I am exciting to be getting through Leviticus. I love the Law of Yahweh, but it’s also difficult to get through. That’s even more reason to be thankful to the grace provided to us by the sacrifice of Messiah. When I read Leviticus, I need to always be thankful for Yeshua’s life, death and resurrection.

Thursday

I’m going to start a new plan today. I have been holding off for a while and just doing the 1 Year Plan, but I may as well start another one. So I’ve decided to start a free plan on the Bible App called “Through the Eyes of a Lion” Here goes:

Through the Eyes of a Lion
(2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
“Trust me when I say this: the issue isn’t whether your life is going well or falling apart; the question is, what makes you so sure you can tell the difference?
It's only the first day but I am loving this devotional plan.
2 Corinthians – I’m sure I’ve read this passage before but I’ve never looked at it in this light before. This life, is something bigger than what we see. Everything that happens, we need to look deeper. We need to see the machinations behind what we are first seeing. What if it’s all redirection? What if our turmoil is an angel in the road, just like for Balaam and his ass?

1 Year Plan
(Psalms 32, Mark 15:33-47, Leviticus 23-24)
Is it really so easy for God to forgive us? I mean, He’s God, so what isn’t easy… But is the process as cut and dry as we think? When we forgive people, it’s not usually the easiest thing in the world. God is so much bigger and more… MORE than us, but is it possible that forgiveness takes something from God, too? If this were the case, would we be more careful with our actions?
Psalms – We are blessed because our sins have been forgiven. How much of a blessing can WE be if we forgive those around us? Isn’t that us showing the love of Christ to our world? If Jesus died so that God could forgive our sins, isn’t it our job, too, to forgive people who have done things to injure us?
Mark – Jesus died so that our sins could be forgiven. This doesn’t mean that we should go on sinning just because we have the freedom, too. The God of the universe came down to earth and became a person, and He died so that we could enter into His presence. If we can be forgiven after that, shouldn’t it be easier to forgive those who we feel have slighted us?
Leviticus – Forgiveness isn’t something that we earn. It’s something that is given to us. All of the sacrifices all come down to Yahweh giving us forgiveness. So long as we have an understanding of what is right and what is wrong, we can see how sinful we are. We should never compare ourselves to anyone but Jesus. Since even one sin makes us sinful, who cares if you look good compared to Hitler; what do you look like compared to Messiah?

Devotional Rewind for Friday thru Sunday

Friday

1 Year Bible Plan
(Proverbs 6:20-29, Mark 12:28-44, Leviticus 13)
Proverbs – There’s a lot of talk in the book of Proverbs about obeying the wisdom of you parents, but inherent in this advice is that the parents are giving good advice. This is a heavy burden for parents. Train your kids in a Godly manner and they have the opportunity to become upright adults. If you neglect your duties, there are far reaching consequences. Thankfully, my parents held up their end of the bargain!
Mark – The entire Torah, boiled down to 2 sentences. Sure, there’s 5 books worth of meaning in those 2 sentences, but that’s what this is.
Leviticus – All of this is about an attitude of the heart. Becoming a person who takes the law seriously is only important if you’re doing it for the right reasons. If you’re doing it because, legally, that’s what has to be done, then you’re doing it for the wrong reason. The whole point is to set yourself apart for Yahweh so that you can be holy and be able to enter into His presence. God wants to be with us, but our sin separates us from Him. It’s our job to make ourselves clean in His sight.

Saturday

1 Year Bible Plan
(Psalms 30:8-12, Mark 13:1-31, Leviticus 14)
Psalms – Even at our end, it should be all about praising God. Even our death should be cause to praise Yahweh. If there is anything in our life that we’re doing which isn’t praising Yahweh, we need to reassess what we’re doing and make sure that we do that thing in a way that is a prayer to God. And if it is not a thing that can be turned into praise, we don’t need to be doing it.
Mark – Here we have Yeshua explaining what the end times will look like. He is telling His followers (Christians) that they will see the abomination of desolation, and that they will see the tribulation, and that after that tribulation they will see the sun and moon darkened and they will see the Son of Man arriving in the clouds at the end. How someone can read this and still believe that they will be raptured away before all of these things astounds me. In order to believe that, they would have to explain away the very words of Messiah.
Leviticus – It’s amazing to me just how much blood it took to atone for our sins before the sacrifice of Yeshua. There was so much blood. The New Testament doesn’t really go into what day-to-day life was like in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. It was written by people who were not only there, but they had an understanding of the Torah and all of the offerings which needed to be done. Without understanding what sacrifices were needed to atone for ones sins we can never understand what Jesus did for us when He died on that cross.

Sunday

1 Year Bible Plan
(Psalms 31:1-8, Mark 13:32-14:16, Leviticus 15-16)
Psalms – All too often I forget to give my praises to God. It’s so inspiring to read of David praising Yahweh in his distress. It’s like I need an alarm every hour to remind me to focus on praising God.
Mark – Imminence is drawn from this passage (and a few others like it). Does this verse override the entire chapter before it where Jesus says you have to get through the tribulation?
Leviticus – The more I read Leviticus, the more I wonder if there was ever anybody who was actually clean.
In chapter 16 will have the instructions for the Day of Atonement. We have the goat for Yahweh and the vote for Azazel. With Azazel being the mention as opposite in this way, what does that say about him? Is he the serpent in the garden? Or, since rabbinic tradition places him as one of the watchers who came down to take human women, and rabbinic tradition is also that the evil of the world is blamed on the sons of God from Gen 6, is this where they get that the evil of the world is a sons-of-God/Nephilim thing? The belief, as I understand it, is that sin entered the world in the garden of eden, but evil entered the world in Genesis 6.

Devotional Rewind for Wednesday and Thursday

VOTD
(Romans 8:35)
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? (Rom 8:35 ESV)
We may get separated, or even try to separate ourselves, from Christ, but we will never be able to be separated from the love of Christ. What He did He did for all of humanity. For whomever would come to Him. On the flipside, we need to focus on love. When we are being persecuted, focus on His love. When we are hungry, focus on His love. When we are in danger, focus on His love.
(John 6:37)
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. (Jhn 6:37 ESV)
There are a few warnings here. We should be secure in the fact that if you have accepted Messiah as Lord and Savior that He will never cast you out, but we should also remember that Jesus said that there will be many who say that they prophesied in His name, and cast out demons in His name, and did many miracles in His name, and yet He will tell them to go away because He never knew them. So what’s the catch? Have you not just said some prayer that you were led to say, but change your life and actually make Jesus/Yeshua LORD of your life? Do you go out of your way to not sin, because you know how much God hates sin? You can’t live in sin, and call on the grace given you as an excuse to remain in sin. Through Messiah’s blood we have the grace to be free from our sinful past/heritage, but that doesn’t mean that we are free to continue living in sin. If we feel no urgency to remove ourselves from sin, have we really been “saved” from sin?

1 Year Bible Plan
(Psalms 29-30:7, Mark 11:27-12:27, Leviticus 9-12)
Psalms – Psalm 29 is very obviously directed at the fallen sons of God who have been given rule over the nations. It’s a reminder (though I doubt it was heeded) that even they need to give Yahweh praise, because it was Yahweh who allowed them any standing they had. To Yahweh goes all of them praise and glory. Forever and ever, amen!
Mark – The Pharisees ask Yeshua by what authority He performs these miracles and because they won’t admit that John the Baptist was a prophet of God and that they killed him, He won’t blatantly tell them by what Authority He does these miracles. But… the very next parable that He tells gives them the exact information that they’re looking for. He is sent by the Father, Himself.
Leviticus – Just think about how much blood there would’ve been. This was an extreme case, but there were sacrifices every day. Blood was shed every day to Yahweh. And these animals which were sacrificed were the choice animals. How much did the people of Israel trust in Yahweh to do this? We, today, rarely sacrifice anything. At first I thought that you would have to have more faith in order to sacrifice that way, but now I’m thinking that you get more faith when you give up more and you still have enough to live.

Devotional Rewind for Sunday through Tuesday

Sunday

VOTD
(Galatians 5:24)
And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Gal 5:24 ESV)
I wish there was a way to better remember this as I walk through each day. Galatians 2:20 is another one: I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20 ESV). All of the debate that comes out of the book of Galatians over the law is important, but the most important thing is that we, with Jesus, our bodies have died on that cross and, right now, if we are truly believers in Jesus, we are no longer the ones the Father sees because He sees the blood of His Son sanctifying us. And we need to remember every minute of every day so that we can live our lives in a way which mirrors the life of Messiah.

1 Year Bible Plan
(Psalm 27:7-14, Mark 10:13-31, Leviticus 4-5:13)
Psalms – This is how we should go about every day: with the expectance of the wonderful grace and mercy of God. Yeah, we’re going to face hardships but we can choose to dwell in them or we can choose to remember that our redeemer lives and that our next step is a step into a new world where we are children of the Living God.
Mark – Persecution will come. In America we claim there is a war on Christianity because Christians are forced to watch unchristian acts. But throughout the world, there is a persecution that is very different. In other places if you are a Christian, you may lose your life. How thin skinned are we that we complain over our lot? That’s not to say that we shouldn’t stand up for righteousness, but let’s recognize that our “persecution” would be welcomed by most of the world. In fact, we should welcome it here as it gives us an opportunity to show the reason for our hope.
Leviticus – Forgiveness does not come without atonement for sin and without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness. It may seem strange but Leviticus may be the book with the most ties to the life and work of Jesus.

Monday

VOTD
(Romans 4:7)
"Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; (Rom 4:7 ESV)
As I’m also reading through Leviticus right now, forgiveness for lawlessness by covering with blood is a huge thing! And as to the second part of this verse (“and whose sins are covered”) we learn in 1 John 3:4 that sin IS transgression of the law. So, through the loving sacrifice of our Savior we no longer have to make all of those sacrifices for our sins, because they are all already covered by the blood of Jesus. But it should never be forgotten that we are called to holiness. I once saw someone justify their continued sin by quoting Rom 5:20 (“but where sin abounded, grace abounded more”). This is a complete misreading of this verse. We are called to be a royal priesthood and a holy (set apart) nation (1 Peter 2:9). And the kicker comes from Romans 6:15 when Paul says, “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!” So let’s praise God for his grace and remember what are lawless deeds are, so that we can do them no more.

1 Year Bible Plan
(Proverbs 6:12-19, Mark 10:32-52, Leviticus 5:14-7:10)
Proverbs – For everyone who holds fast to God hating the sin but loving the sinner, Proverbs 6:19 says that God hate a false witness who breathes lies and sends out discord between brothers. Be sure not to be someone who God hates.
Mark – When you lead, lead with a servant’s heart. To truly make the impact that we are to make in this world, we must serve those around us.
Leviticus – One of the things which becomes evident, especially in these chapters, is that even if you unknowingly sin, you are still guilty of that sin. It’s not a valid excuse to say that you didn’t know you were sinning so you should be held responsible for that sin. If you do something and then find out later that you did something wrong, you still need to repent of that sin. And repent means more than just saying “I’m sorry”.

Tuesday
I finished the Verse of the Day plan yesterday and I haven’t picked a new one yet, so I’m just going to continue on with this one, until I pick another one.

VOTD
(Psalms 105:1)
Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! (Psa 105:1 ESV)
What has Yahweh done for you today? Shout it from the rooftop! We often accept the good and cry out to God with the bad, but we do we not cry out with the good?

1 Year Bible Plan
(Psalms 28, Mark 11:1-25, Leviticus 7:11-8:36)
Psalms – I’m constantly still amazed at David’s ability to call for justice to his enemies while he holds up his righteousness. I mean, yeah, the dude had his faults, but he was also a man after God’s own heart. How sure of myself would I have to be to call of the justice of my enemies because of my righteous actions? It’s something to shoot for!
Mark – I said this back in Matthew, but those disciple who got the donkey really were risking being seen as crazy. “Why are you taking that donkey? “Oh, because God needs it.” Imagine if someone did that today…
Leviticus – As we should do with every book in the Old Testament, especially the book of Leviticus, let’s ask how this points to Yeshua/Jesus. This whole portion of Leviticus is all about consecrating Aaron as high priest. But Aaron still had to make sacrifice for his own sins. Right now we have a high priest in heaven who is fighting for us (Hebrews 4:14-16). In view of this, how much different is the priesthood of Jesus when compared to the Aaronic priesthood!