2023-02-21
Psalm 23:2 NKJV
Even when you’re living right and doing all the right things, life can still be draining. We have all received mail addressed simply to “Occupant.” Sometimes you’re drained not because you did anything wrong, but because you happen to “occupy” the planet. The combination of the world, the flesh, and the devil will suck the spiritual vitality right out of you if you let them.
You try to pray, but no words come. You know you ought to read your Bible, but when you try to, the letters on the page all run together and none of it makes sense. And you don’t want to listen to spiritual people, especially when you suspect they may be faking their positive viewpoints. You’re just going through the spiritual motions, nodding and saying amen; yet in your soul, you’re running on empty.
David, who had been a shepherd, said that God “makes” us lie down. Why? Because just like sheep, we would keep on wandering all over the place and wearing ourselves out. Note two things David says:
(1) “He makes me to lie down in green pastures.” The word “green” means “fresh.” Each day you need a fresh encounter with God through prayer and a fresh intake of His Word. Bread is not the only thing that can go stale; your spiritual life can, too.
(2) “He leads me beside the still waters” (v. 2 NKJV). The word “still” means you need times of quietness and reflection. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10 KJV). The only way to know God intimately, sense His leading, and draw on His strength is to “be still.”
Soul food: Rom 9:17-11:36; Luke 10:38-42; Ps 33:13-22; Prov 5:15-20
2023-02-20
Psalm 127:4 NLT
Our children are like arrows; they must be aimed in the right direction. When they’re aimed in the wrong direction, they can end up in violence, drugs, and destructive lifestyles. And as long as we jeer at or judge them, they will never feel comfortable turning to us for help as they go through life. Broken arrows come in all colors and forms: black, white, rich, poor. Pain isn’t prejudiced; it spares no age group or social strata.
What’s the answer? Let the strong bear the infirmities of the weak (See Romans 15:1). “Jesus… had compassion on them and healed their sick” (Matthew 14:14 NLT). Compassion is the mother of miracles! When the disciples thought they would die in the storm, they didn’t challenge Christ’s power, they challenged His compassion: “Carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 4:38 KJV). Where there is no compassion, there will be no miracle. Only when you’re moved by someone’s pain rather than turned off by their symptoms can you bring healing to them.
One author writes: “We can build all the churches we want. But if people cannot find a loving voice within our hallowed halls, they will pass through unaltered by our clichés and religious rhetoric. Church is not a club for the well-heeled, but a hospital for those needing to be healed and set free. You don’t have to like everything about the people you’re called to minister to, but you do have to love them because God does.” We have been called to gather up those the world has thrown away because they matter to God: “‘They shall be Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘on the day that I make them My jewels'” (Malachi 3:17 NKJV).
Soul food: Rom 7:1-9:16; Luke 10:25-37; Ps 33:1-12; Prov 5:7-14
2023-02-19
John 4:15 NIV
This Samaritan woman tried to fill the emptiness in her life with multiple relationships. But it didn’t work. When you try to find in anyone else what can only be found in Christ, you place so much stress on the relationship that it will break under the weight of it.
Why did Jesus say, “You have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (v. 18 NIV)? Because one of the first things hurting people need to do is break the pattern of using other people as a narcotic to dull the pain of their inner void. The more you medicate the symptoms, the less chance you have of allowing God to treat the cause. The other dysfunctional tendency that can exist is that you keep increasing the dosage. When you become increasingly dependent on others rather than on God to create a feeling of wholeness in your life, you’re abusing your relationships.
Clinging to people is very different from loving them. It’s not so much a declaration of your love for them as a crying out of your need for them. Like lust, it’s extremely selfish. It’s taking, instead of giving.
Jesus quenched the Samaritan woman’s thirst with His Word, saying, “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (v. 14 NIV). And she went back home totally changed, for that’s what Jesus does. Listen to her testimony: “Come, see a man who told me everything” (v. 29 NIV). And what Jesus did for her, He will do for you today.
Soul food: 2 Chron 7:12-16; Matt 6:5-15; Luke 18:1-8
2023-02-18
Luke 13:12 NKJV
The Bible says: “There was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, ‘Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity'” (vv. 11-12 NKJV). Notice four things in this story: the person, the problem, the Great Physician, and the prescription. For every person, including you, there will be a problem. But more importantly, for every problem, including yours, the Great Physician has a prescription. Jesus’ opening statement to the problem in this woman’s life is not a recommendation for counseling – it’s a challenging command: “You are loosed!”
Christian counselors are a gift from God, but often more is involved in maintaining deliverance than just discussing past trauma. Jesus didn’t counsel what should have been commanded. After you have analyzed the condition and understood its origin, it will take the authority of God’s Word to put the past under your feet!
This woman was suffering as the result of something that had attacked her eighteen years earlier, yet her trauma was as fresh that day as it was the day it occurred. But while her problem was rooted in the past, her prescription could only be found in a present word from God. Jesus, who is the Living Word, is “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8 NKJV). That is to say, the word you are hearing today is able to heal your yesterday! Jesus said, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.”
Why didn’t Jesus call her by name? Because His promise applies to all of us.
Soul food: Rom 3:21-6:23; Luke 10:13-24; Ps 28; Prov 5:3-6
2023-02-17
Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 KJV
Sorrow comes to us in many forms. You can lose your job, or your home, or your health. But nothing hurts more than when you lose someone you love dearly. Waves of grief will come at you like the ocean throwing its waves up onto the beach.
Whatever you do, don’t drown. Don’t stop there and allow yourself to be pulled under by the current. Allow yourself to feel the grief without tying it around your neck. Allow the weight of it to help you work through your thoughts, fears, and if necessary, your tears. Grieving relieves the soul, like exhaling carbon dioxide relieves your body.
But there comes a point at which you must get up and go on. The stages of grief you go through are shock, then denial, then bargaining, then sorrow, and finally acceptance. David said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff [of protection] they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4 KJV). When you get through this valley, you will be able to look back with more gratitude and less grief. Instead of focusing on what you have lost, you will be thankful for what you have left.
And don’t be afraid to indulge in those rare moments of laughter that come even in the face of heartbreak. Laughter medicates the soul and alleviates the tension of those times; it requires us to step outside our present pain and adjust our focus. This in itself is a healing balm. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine” (Proverbs 17:22 KJV).
Soul food: Rom 1:1-3:20; Luke 10:1-12; Ps 5; Prov 5:1-2
2023-02-16
1 Corinthians 15:10 NIV
The new birth begins a transforming process in how you think about yourself. But it must be continued each day by renewing your mind. “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2 NLT).
Observe, when your thinking is changed by God’s Word, two things happen: (a) you know His will for you, and (b) you know He is pleased with you. When those two things happen, your self-perception is changed and you’re no longer at the mercy of other people’s opinions or evaluation of you.
Our opinion of ourselves is deeply affected by the opinions of the authority figures in our formative years. If our parents tended to neglect or ignore us, we concluded that we weren’t worth their time, attention, or love, and it tore at our self-worth. But as we mature in God’s Word, we learn to walk in the light of our new self-image and we gain new self-worth.
Regardless of what you have been through in life or the mistakes you have made, God will help you to realise who you are and what He has graced you to do. Before Paul met Christ, he killed Christians; that’s as bad as it gets. But after he met Christ, he wrote, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.” When you understand God’s grace – His unearned, undeserved, unfailing favour toward you – it will profoundly change how you feel about yourself.
Soul food: Gen 50; Haggai 1-2; Luke 9:57-62; Ps 149; Prov 4:25-27
