January 2010 DEVOTIONALS Main Devotional Page January 1 Jesus grows up and hangs out at the Temple Read Luke 12:41-52 Every generation has its teenage hero. Today it is Harry Potter, the wizard kid trapped between two worlds – Hogwarts and his uncle and aunt’s house. Turn back the clock a few years and it was Ferris Bueller taking his infamous day off from school. A decade earlier it was the Fonz hitting the juke box just right and never needing to comb his hair. Whatever your image of the acne-beating, nerd-defying teen-hero, we certainly don’t ever place Jesus into that category. For starts there is only one story of his entire childhood found in the canonical Gospels. And Luke brings it to us today, sponsored by chocolate malted milks and anti-acne cream. Jesus and his parents have made their annual pilgrimage. As his family begins to head home, Jesus is presumed to be with his family’s traveling group. Oh the whipping we expect him to get when his parents, after frantically searching the city over, find him at the temple. Ah, but this is Jesus – the forerunner to the Fonz and Ferris Bueller. Jesus can do no wrong. He one-ups his parents in a way they can’t be mad at. “Of course I’m at my Father’s house – what did you think? I was hanging out at Wrigley Field, jumping into the middle of the local festival parade to sing an amazing rendition of Twist and Shout.” Jesus may not be the typical teenage hero, but his teenage rebellion points us to God’s house and what God is up to in the world. So typical of Jesus, pointing us to God’s house and what God is up to in the world. Today is a feast day: it is a day to celebrate the Name of Jesus <back to top> January 2 Person of Interest: Johann Konrad Wilhelm Loehe, renewer of the church, died 1872 <back to top> January 3 No Devotional <back to top> January 4 Hebrews 11:1 Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. Growing up, there was a magnet on my refrigerator that had this verse on it. Seeing this verse every day, it quickly became one of my favorite verses. For starters, I had it memorized. But this verse also helped me to understand something about why I believe. See, we are finishing up the Christmas season, the time of year we promote one of the greatest myths of our time. A man named Santa, who lives at the North Pole, flies around the entire world on one night giving toys to all good boys and girls. Along the way he slides down and up chimney’s eats cookies and drinks milk, and his lead reindeer has a red glowing nose leading the way. It is a comforting myth. As adults passing on this story helps us to keep the mystery of Christmas alive in our hearts as we watch the wonder on our own kids faces as they see all the gifts under the tree. But this is a myth. As we grow up, we learn that Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy are all myths perpetuated by our parents. Naturally, if Santa isn’t real, the question that follows is “Is God real?” Faith is a funny thing, in that it cannot be proven. We can prove there is no bunny bringing eggs; we can prove no lady mystically appears at our bedside ready to collect teeth in exchange for money. But we can neither prove nor disprove the Bible and its testimony about God and what God has done for us in Jesus. It simply takes faith. Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to explore this concept of faith and learn how to simply trust that confidence faith gives us in what God has promised. <back to top> January 5 Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our lord has done for us. St. Paul wrote a lot on the topic of faith. Faith is important. Faith is our response to what God has done in the world. Faith is putting our believing in God into words and actions that reflect changes in our life. And St. Paul wrote all of this on the matter of faith because he was taking apart myths of his own day. In ancient Israel, it was taught that in order for God to be satisfied, and for God to love his people, the people had to fulfill a very complex system of sacrifices. For one type of sin, God would require a turtledove; for another type of sin, God might require an ox. Generally speaking this system worked on a basic premise that is the bigger the sin, the bigger the animal that was required to be sacrificed. The problem wasn’t so much the sacrificial system, but the way the sacrificial system was being abused. Why care about our relationship with God, if it only takes an animal or two to satisfy God. Many leaders with in the Jewish religion were abusing the system; many leaders were in cahoots with the Roman leadership and again, abusing the sacrificial system in order to keep themselves in positions of authority. St. Paul’s letters talking about faith is a message that needs to be heard clearly then and today. God starts with us at the level of faith. God doesn’t care what animals we sacrifice, he doesn’t need another killed goat. God wants us to believe. God wants us to believe that God loves us. God wants us to believe that his Son Jesus is our Savior, who opens the way to everlasting life. When we start with the pure and simple faith, we have a clean slate with God. When we begin with faith, God knows he can mold us into the people God wants us to become. It all starts with our faith.<back to top> January 6 Epiphany of our Lord Habakkuk 2:4 Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked. But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God. A friend of mine joined his college’s basketball team. He told me there was a code of conduct he had to sign, it was a long list of behaviors that were unacceptable, and laid out for the players the ruled by which they had to live by as representatives of the team. Some things on the list were quite normal, my friend said. The list identified what the dress code was when the team was traveling. But my friend was really annoyed that the list identified a curfew – when lights had to be out, and the team had to be sleeping. He was wondering if he was a college man or still at home with his mother. We all have experienced a code to live by in one form or another. These lists of rules are easily passed down, clearly written out, and which help us to define good choices from bad choices. In the Bible, the most famous example of this is the Ten Commandments. Ten clear rules that tell us how we are to live to be right with God – honor God, honor our parents, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet (just a few). But for some reason, despite all the passing on of these rules, people still didn’t always get it right. The message God began passing on already even in the Old Testament shifts us away from a God who rules by rules – and therefore reward/punishment system – to a God who governs our hearts by faith. Do we live by faith? Do we live believing that God is truly God? Do we trust God will provide our daily needs? Do we trust God will help us work out our differences with other people? When we live by faith, everything else falls into line. When we live by faith, we are saying God is number one, we are respecting our parents and authorities, we are not murdering other people, or stealing what isn’t ours. Living by faith doesn’t mean we can care less about our decision making skills, or that we toss out all the rules. Living by faith means we know our priorities, and we know God is shaping us, as we live in his ways.<back to top> January 7 Psalm 116:6 The LORD protects those of childlike faith; I was facing death, and he saved me. The faith we are called to have is the childlike faith. Having children of my own, I now more than ever understand what a child like faith is. Children believe everything you tell them. Once, Heide asked me why there were cracks in the street along which we were walking. I told her it was from when the dinosaurs walked there. For the longest time she believed me. Of course, then she got into school, learned about dinosaurs and realized I had sold her a line of nonsense. In this light, we are called to have a childlike faith. To believe in God’s promises no matter what we experience. Having this childlike faith does not mean we will not encounter bad things like natural disaster, health crises, or economic challenges. Having this childlike faith means that we trust God’s promises through everything just like a young child can believe cracks on the street were made by dinosaurs. God promises we are his children. God promises that sin and all its effects in this world will not be the end of us. This is why God sent Jesus, so we can be protected by God’s promises through our faith in a way that obeying the law just doesn’t do. If we tried to simply obey the law, we always come up short. If we simply have faith, we will always be protected by the promise of God. Keeping faith isn’t always that easy, which is why God’s faithfulness to us is ultimately not dependent on our own actions or our own belief. God’s faithfulness to us is dependent on Jesus. Jesus was willing to die on the cross, so that God’s faithfulness would be guaranteed to all. When we have faith in that truth, the simple childlike faith in that one Gospel nugget, we will discover God protecting us in ways we never imagined.<back to top> January 8 Isaiah 26:2 Open the gates to all who are righteous; allow the faithful to enter. Growing up I was friends with the boy who lived in the house behind ours. We started getting together every day after school to do whatever it is boys do at that age. The problem was there was a chain link fence between our yards. No problem, for us anyway, we just hopped over the fence back and forth to get our soccer balls back, or give their Frisbees back, or just to get together. The problem was for our parents who were increasingly getting frustrated with our destroying the fence. So, they solved the problem – they put a gate in the fence, so our families could get together more easily without ruining the nice fence. There is a fence that separates us from God. God did not put this fence there; it is a result of our human sin. Sin is what we do or don’t do that pulls us away from trusting God fully. God gave his covenant to the people of Israel to break through this fence. The 10 Commandments were a sign of this covenant – when the people lived according to the law, the fence would open up and the separation with God would end. But what happened was the law ended up showing just how hard it is for us to enter God’s presence by our own efforts. So God created a new covenant, a covenant of faith, based on the death and resurrection of Jesus. When we believe, simply believe, the gate opens and we are able to enter the full presence of God. God welcomes us into his presence and promises to shape us and guides us to live as God desires. We do not need to hop over the fence of sin. We do not need to straighten out our life first. We simply need to have faith in God, who opens the gate for all who are faithful. <back to top> January 9 No Devotional <back to top> January 10 No Devotional <back to top> January 11 Genesis 15:6 And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith. We cannot begin listing people of faith in the Bible without starting with Abraham and Sarah. Here’s the summary of their story – at the age of 75 and without any children, God called this couple to leave their homeland and go to a place he would show them. Along the way, God renews his covenant with Abraham and Sarah and promises them an heir and that they will be parents of a great multitude. They were faithful in that they did indeed follow the call to move. And God followed with his faithfulness to them, giving Abraham a son, Isaac, to carry forth the blessings of God. Along the way, Abraham and Sarah had their moments of not trusting God fully. In Egypt, Abraham thought he would protect his wife by saying she was his sister. He may have spared their lives with that little lie, but when the Egyptian officer took Sarah into his home and later learned she was already married, the truth nearly cost Abraham everything. And then Sarah laughed when the messenger from God told them they would have a baby, she was going on 100 at the time. Abraham’s story is important for us because it shows us that God is faithful because of what God says and promises; God’s promises do not rely on our own actions or ability to always be faithful. God’s faithfulness to us is based on God’s love to us and God’s desire to be faithful to us.<back to top> January 12 1 Samuel 23:16 And Jonathon went to find David and encouraged him to stay strong in his faith in God. David is considered to be the greatest King of Israel. He and his son Solomon built Jerusalem into the amazing capital city of Israel. David built the King’s palace and Solomon built the first Temple for the God of Israel, Yahweh. Together, they expanded the territory of Israel and amassed a huge wealth. God had chosen David to become king of Israel. And when God chose him, David was a young boy, who hadn’t done anything yet. He hadn’t beaten Goliath yet, he hadn’t stood up to the King of Israel Saul, he hadn’t had his affair with Bathsheba yet. A lot hadn’t happened yet, but God chose David already for this position. And God solidified this relationship by establishing a covenant with David that there would always be an heir of David on the throne of Israel. From this covenant, we discover a baby born in obscure Bethlehem, the City of David, who would become King of All through his death and resurrection. This is the baby Jesus. This covenant did not end when David was unfaithful. In fact, David had many moments of unfaithfulness. And yet, as we found in the Abraham story, God’s faithfulness was not based on David’s perfect faithfulness. God’s faithfulness is solely dependent on God’s promise that it will be so.<back to top> January 13 Daniel 6:4 then the other administrators and high officers began searching for some fault in the way Daniel was handling government affairs, but they couldn’t find anything to criticize or condemn. He was faithful, always responsible, and completely trustworthy. Daniel lived during a time when his nation, Israel, was conquered and he was taken into captivity by the Babylonians. The Babylonians were smart captors. They decided that to help their new slaves, the Israelites, acclimate to life in Babylon that a few of the brightest Israelites would be given positions of authority. Daniel was one of those brightest of Israel. It was the hope of the Babylonians that Daniel and his friends in positions of authority would show the Israelites that it was okay to be in Babylon and that worshipping and living like the Babylonians was good. Daniel, however, chose to remain faithful to God while he served his position. Even after laws were passed to make Daniel worship Babylonian gods, Daniel remained faithful to God. When he and his friends survived the fiery furnace, the king of Babylon changed the law and offered praise to Yahweh, the God of Israel and Daniel. This story is important to us today because sometimes we think we can only live faithfully when we are gathered at church or with our church friends, and that when we are at work or with people who don’t go to church, that we need to live like them , tell crude jokes like them, and do whatever is necessary to be liked. But we are called to always be faithful, even when the people around us don’t understand why we are being faithful. <back to top> January 14 Matthew 9:22 Jesus turned around, and when he saw her he said, “Daughter, be encouraged! Your faith has made you well.” And the woman was healed at that moment. In the Gospels, there are a lot of named people. And there are a lot of unnamed people. What is interesting is that the people who question, doubt, or do not live faithfully are often named while the people who live by faith, as this woman in today’s verse, are not named. I am not yet quite sure of the significance of that, but it does point us to something important about faith. We should not be faithful because it brings us fame or fortune. We should not be faithful simply for the sake of being faithful. Being faithful is a worthy enough reason to be faithful. When we are faithful, we are not afraid to approach Jesus and ask for what we need. When we are faithful, we know Jesus is working in our life, healing us and bringing us to new life. Being faithful does not mean we will always be healed instantly like this woman was. Being faithful means our ultimate trust for healing must be in God – not the doctors, wonder drugs, or experimental therapies. <back to top> January 15 Acts 11:24 Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith. And many people were brought to the Lord. Barnabas is mentioned in Acts. He is a traveling companion of Paul on Paul’s first couple of missionary trips. He is described simply as being a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith. Barnabas is in many ways the precursor to the person who brought you to faith. When we think of those who inspired us in faith, do we not use these similar words? One mentor I had was my 4th Grade teacher. We developed a friendship, after I had moved on into my later grades. And when I was old enough, I worked with his summer house painting company. It was there on the job that I learned what a faithful man he is and how strong in faith he was. His kindness and support and prayers helped me during my difficult teen years and he is one man I consider to be a faith mentor. When we live like Barnabas, people see our faith and want to discover the faith that leads us. Our faith produces joy in life, a joy that doesn’t come from amassing wealth or material stuff. Our faith produces peace in life, a peace that is not secured by military force. Our faith produces hope in our life, hope that is not in some flash-the-pan earthly guru. When people see our faith, they will want to have that same faith, and God will bring many people to faith through us. Person of Interest: Martin Luther King, Jr, renewer of society, martyr, died 1968 <back to top> January 16 No Devotional <back to top> January 17 People of Interest: Antony of Egypt, renewer of the church, died around 356 Pachomius, renewer of the church, died around 346 <back to top> January 18 Confession of Peter, week of prayer for Christian Unity begins Ephesians 6:18 Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere. Every year a special week focusing on prayer for Christian Unity begins on the day we remember Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah (Matthew 16:16). This week ends with the day we remember the conversion of Paul (Acts 9). The purpose of this week is to give all Christians a chance to focus on one specific prayer concern that all Christians come together and worship together the one true Lord. Prayer is our means of talking to and listening to God. It is, according to one author, the rails by which God’s will happens in the world. Prayer ultimately should change us because we are listening to God’s way, and God’s way is changing our way to match God’s way. This happens because prayer should not be about us and our needs, prayer should be about what God wants. As followers of Jesus, we will always have a few different ideas of how best to follow Jesus, how best to serve Jesus, how best to interpret his words. That is okay. What God is seeking is for Christians to behave the way his Son behaved – to love, to not judge, and to allow for the dialogue about how best to follow, serve, and interpret Jesus’ words, to happen in openness and love. So let us begin this week of prayer for Christian unity with St. Paul’s guidance. Let us pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Let us stay alert and be persistent in our prayers for all believers everywhere. If God thinks we need to pray for one another – then let us hear his word and truly pray for one another. <back to top> January 19 James 5:13-16 Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. When we pray, we are making a simple statement of faith. That statement is this: “I believe and trust entirely in you, God.” By simply opening ourselves to God in word through prayer, you demonstrate this trust, and you will see how God is working in your life. Ultimately, prayer leads us to see how God is working in our life. When we are dealing with hardships, prayer helps us see God holding us through that hardship. When we are happy, prayer helps us to see God celebrating with us. And so forth. Take time today and open yourself to prayer. Ask God to show how God is actively working in your life. You might be amazed to see the many different ways God is working in your life. Person of Interest: Henry, Bishop of Uppsala, martyr, died 1156 <back to top> January 20 1 Timothy 2:1-4 I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. One of the most important forms of prayer is intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer is where we pray to God on behalf of another. When we have our prayers on Sunday morning and we pray for those who are sick and for all the other things we list, that is intercessory prayer. Praying for others helps us to keep the focus off of our own self. Praying for others reminds us that we are to Love God first, and Love our neighbor as much as we love our self. Prayer for others doesn’t just mean we place it into God’s hands and let it go. Praying for others means we hear from God what he wants us to do about it. If someone is sick, are we visiting them? If someone is dealing with financial struggles, are we helping them? If we ask God for peace in the world, are we working to accomplish that peace? Intercessory prayer doesn’t end with us lifting prayers up; it ends with us hearing from God what God wants us to do about our prayer concerns and then we go and do it. This is how prayer is an example of us trusting God and being shaped by God. The old adage goes something like this: pray for patience and God will give you more opportunities to demonstrate your patience. I don’t know if prayer works exactly like that old adage. But I know the ultimate purpose of prayer is not to reshape God, but to have God reshape us.<back to top> January 21 Luke 11:1-4 Once Jesus was in a certain place praying. As he finished, one of his disciples came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” Jesus said, “This is how you should pray: Father, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. Give us each day the food we need, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. And don’t let us yield to temptation.” Here is the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus really did teach this prayer. In this prayer, we name everything we need. And through this prayer, we learn how God is shaping us. Every time we pray this prayer, a different expression becomes more important. In the context of this week of prayer for Christian unity, perhaps the line “May your Kingdom come soon” becomes the most important. We are asking for God’s will to happen on earth as it is done in heaven. Martin Luther writes in his Small Catechism that this happens like this: “God’s will is done when he hinders and defeats every evil scheme and evil purpose of the devil, the world, and our sinful self, which would prevent us from keeping his name holy and would oppose the coming of his kingdom. And his will is done when he strengthens our faith and keeps us firm in his Word as long as we live. This is his gracious and good will.” Imagine what the world would look like if all Christians united in praying for God’s will to be done, and as we all unite praying, we are all shaped to work to see that evil schemes are put away, whether personal schemes or global schemes. And if we are all praying, our faith is being strengthened. And then the world can live as one. Oh sorry, went a bit John Lennon there. John Lennon isn’t the only one with a dream about what this world can be like. But while the former Beatles leader took God out of the equation to bring about his dream, we as Christians know that God’s dream is our dream, and as we pray for it to happen, we learn that we are being shaped to become the instruments that make God’s dream a reality. Person of Interest: Agnes, martyr, died around 304 <back to top> January 22 1st Thessalonians 5:16-18 Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. One difficult aspect to being Christian is all these disciplines that we need to develop and keep going each day. Paul encourages us again to never stop praying. I can’t keep my kitchen clean and the laundry done each week, and Paul wants me to add to my already hectic life a consistent prayer routine? Did Paul not have a life that he could always be praying? I am sure many of you have a similar hectic life. Praying constantly does not mean we are constantly on our knees. Praying constantly does not mean before we say anything, we pause and raise our hands and ask for God’s blessing on what we next say. I just need to get those misperceptions out of the way. Praying unceasingly does mean that we find ourselves always aware of God interacting with our life. It does mean developing a personal discipline which suits our hectic life and pushes us spiritually. But it also simply means we are constantly aware of how God is present with the everyday ordinariness of our life. God is already present, whether we pray for it or not. God is already at work in our life, whether we acknowledge it or not. Let us follow Paul’s advice, and never stop praying, that is, never stop being aware that God is already present and at work in our life. <back to top> January 23 No Devotional <back to top> January 24 No Devotional <back to top> January 25 Conversion of Paul, Week of prayer for Christian Unity ends John 17:20-21 [Jesus said,] “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.” When it comes to baseball, Chicago is a divided town. The north side and the south side each have a team to root for, and each side finds ways to rub in the misfortunes of the other side. When it came to the US Civil War, Abe Lincoln is reported to have said that a house divided cannot stand, Abe was quoting from Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel. When it comes to wedding ceremonies, a powerful symbol of the unity being formed is the Unity candle, two tapers whose individual light comes together to light one central candle. Unity is an amazing force that we constantly seek, but hardly ever find. Jesus once said, where two or three are gathered, he is present. A cynic once spun that proverb to say “where two or three are gathered, there is politics.” We are constantly finding ways to break unity. Distrust and need for self-gain are just two causes for broken unity. Throughout Christian history, there has rarely been true unity. The early evangelist Paul was an outsider to the remaining disciples in Jerusalem. While the Jerusalem leadership was converting Jews and believing one had to be a Jew first, Paul was off converting Gentiles and not requiring them to be Jews first. Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, ended up brokering the compromise after he had a vision and an experience with a Gentile named Cornelius. We often think of early Christian history as one big happy united family until Martin Luther broke up the party. But really, unity has always been hard to come by. The early church did create a few statements to help with unity. These statements included the official list of books in the Bible and the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds. But even these lists and creeds spawned more discord than unity. The purpose of Christian Unity is not so we all are one same church organization. The purpose of Christian unity is so that the world may believe that God sent Jesus. This is the heart of the message of Jesus’ prayer. This prayer was spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper with the disciples, just before he was betrayed and eventually crucified. God’s ultimate desire for the world is that we all believe and trust that God has everything under his power. God will bring us through this time on earth into a great future where his creating acts are complete. Jesus’ prayer reminds us, that for all the fighting and breaking up of discord, there will be a day we will all be one with Jesus, just as Jesus is one with the Father. Until that day, we can live in unity – only by our faith. <back to top> January 26 James 2:26 Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works. Throughout January, we have been exploring faith, with a short excursion to prayer. Faith over and over again has been about our believing in something that cannot be proven. This something is what the Bible calls the Good News, that God sent his son Jesus to be our Savior from our sins. But if faith was only about believing, and not about doing, then we are sorely missing the point. The 20th Century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called faith without works, “Cheap grace”. That is that we want the benefits of our faith without doing what faith ultimately requires. If we say we believe that God is up to something good in the world through Jesus, then naturally we should be compelled to be a part of that movement. And that is why there is the church – to give us an organized way to go about doing what we believe. The Salvation Army is a church that is definitely about working toward what God is doing in the world. And our own congregation has a great service oriented heart as every few months we volunteer at Hesed House with our time and our dollars. But these efforts in the church are only the beginning. They are meant to teach us that every day, every moment of our life, we are to be living our faith. Living our faith means we have an honest work ethic, and we do not cheat customers or co-workers. Living our faith means we refrain from jokes that hurt other people, and find ways to lift people up who have been hurt. Living our faith means so much more. If we are not living our faith in these ways, our faith is dead. God’s promise isn’t dead, our faith is. God will still be faithful to us, even when we are not faithful to God. God was faithful to Abraham, God was faithful to David, God was faithful to Peter and James and John and all the others who abandoned Jesus. God will be faithful to us. But God being faithful to us is a call for us to be faithful in our living toward God. People of Interest: Timothy, Titus, and Silas, missionaries <back to top> January 27 Micah 6:8 No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Preparing for college, there is the long list of what is required. The student is required to have a certain grade point average and to be involved with a variety of extra-curricular activities. We follow these requirements perfectly, so we can get into the college of our choice. When preparing to purchase a house, there is an even longer list of what is required. Financial statements from two previous months, a credit check, an employment check, at one point I even joked with my banker that I felt like I needed to sign away my 4th born child (it was a joke, because I only have 3 children). When it comes to something we can tangibly benefit from, we are willing to follow almost any list of requirements. So, should it surprise us that God has a few requirements too? Now perhaps you think you already know the requirements – go ahead, try to name all ten of them. In the end, the prophet Micah gives us an even simpler list. Do what is right. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God. Can it get any more simple than that? Yet we so often do what is not right. We despise it when the court shows mercy to a criminal, or when a friend asks for forgiveness we often hold a grudge instead. And walking humbly with God would mean we have to walk with God to begin with. Faithful living looks like this. It looks like God shaping us to become the people he wants us to be. And as we live by faith, those good works James was talking about, and these simple expressions of faith from Micah all come naturally. People of Interest: Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe, witnesses to the faith <back to top> January 28 Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus replied, “’You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” If it is beginning to sound like a broken record, don’t blame me the writer of the devotions. This is the testimony of scripture. That living a life of faith leads to something – a change in our very being and a turn in the way we live our life. God loves us more than we can ever know. So in turn, God asks us to love him back. And God says he will know we love him back when we love our neighbor as ourselves. This sounds easier said than done, especially if you have a neighbor whose dog makes a mess on your front lawn every day. Of course, Jesus is going grander than just the person next door with the loud music blaring through the night. Jesus is referring to our general love and concern for all people everywhere. Mother Theresa left her estate and wealth behind in England to go love her neighbors, the poorest of India. If each of us loved God so much as she, poverty and hunger and illness could be wiped out. So we are not all Mother Theresa. We are all called to be God’s children, and to live the life God leads us in. We are right here in the far western suburbs of Chicago. We have neighbors right here who need to be loved, and who need to know God loves them. Living faithfully does not mean we see great examples of people who love their neighbor, feel the shame of not being that person, and then give up trying. Living faithfully means we are inspired by those who have answered a higher calling, we are inspired to do something right here – where we are called to be. Person of Interest: Thomas Aquinas, teacher, died 1274 <back to top> January 29 2 Peter 1:5-7 In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. Our conversation on faith during this month of January started with a simple premise: Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. We believe what Scripture tells us, not because it can be proven, but simply because God has spoken and we believe. Along the way, we learned about heroes of faith from the Bible. These persons were not perfect, they often had big flaws, and yet God remained faithful to them. This assures us that even if we are not always faithful, God will always be faithful to us. And being faithful leads us to a new way of living. Instead of being only about our own concerns, we learn by faith to love God and to love others, to do what is right, to love mercy, and that along the way we can strengthen our faith. The entire conversation of faith would be remiss if not for this next quote from 2nd Peter Chapter 1, verse 3. “By his divine power, God has given us everything we need or living a godly life.” Faith is ultimately a gift from God. Why did God choose Abraham, David, you or me? Because God has a reason that is coming to fruition as we speak. We know God is acting in our life by the very faith we have been given. We also know how to respond to God who has given us such great faith by living faithfully every step. Let us always remember God is faithful to us first and foremost, and let us take that knowledge and be inspired to live as faithfully as we can. <back to top> January 30 No Devotional <back to top> January 31 No Devotional <back to top> | 
