2022-04-13
1 Chronicles 21:1 NIV
Fresh from a major victory over the Philistines, King David made a major mistake. Instead of trusting God for his next battle, he conducted a census to measure his military power and determine his chances of winning. And this mistake cost the lives of seventy thousand Israelites.
This story teaches us three very important lessons about responsibility: 1) Leaders are Satan’s special targets. He knows that in order to easily get to others, he can go through their leader, so he’ll use every strategy he has to bring a leader down. ‘Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census.’ The census sounded like a good idea, but it wasn’t God’s idea – He saw it as an act of arrogance and unbelief.
2) Don’t be presumptuous. We mustn’t allow past victories to make us overconfident about our next battle or our skill level. There’ll never be a time when we don’t need God. The fact that God had just granted David a great victory should have made him more, not less, dependent on God. Paul wrote, ‘Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent’ (2 Corinthians 3:5-6 NIV).
3) Listen to wise counsel. Joab, one of David’s generals, warned him he was making a grave mistake. ‘The king’s word, however, overruled Joab’ (1 Chronicles 21:4 NIV). We may each have great gifts, but no single one of us has all the gifts. Where we have weaknesses, others may have strengths. ‘Victory is won through many advisors’ (Proverbs 11:14 NIVUK), so let’s listen to the people God has put in our lives to guide and protect us.
Lev 22-23; Luke 23:8-17; Ps 32; Pro 10:4
2022-04-12
Romans 12:3 NIV
Generally speaking, we tend to overestimate our capabilities. We like to think we can do it all, and do it better than anyone else. But no matter how disciplined we are or how hard we try, without a ‘sane estimate of [our] capabilities’, we’re setting ourselves up for a fall if we overestimate ourselves.
Author John Ortberg said: ‘Willpower is… finite… You don’t get separate stockpiles for different areas… That’s why a long list of New Year’s resolutions is almost certainly doomed… It takes a whole lot of willpower… For most of us… our wills get depleted… more quickly than our bodies.’
John Ortberg suggests these: 1) Schedule your most important tasks for when your willpower is strongest. For many people, that’s the morning, but it can vary. We should try to be aware of times when we’re more decisive, and less likely to be swayed by temptations (big or small), and try to do important tasks at those times.
2) Spend willpower wisely by not taking on too many tasks at once, even after you’ve prayed about them. God generally works through our will, so we need to be careful in how much we rely on our willpower. We don’t want to spend it all and have none left for God.
3) Set goals – but not too many. If we have too few, we tend to drift; but having too many means we worry more about them, accomplish less, and struggle emotionally and physically.
4) Remember that the one act of our will that replenishes willpower instead of depleting it is surrender to God. God meant for prayer, solitude, worship, and meditation to be done in a way that restores us.
Lev 20-21; Luke 23:1-7; Ps 25:16-22; Pro 10:3
2022-04-11
Galatians 6:2 NKJV
Have you ever said something you wish you could take back, held on to a grudge and been reluctant to forgive, or struggled to pass your worries over to God? The author Chuck Swindoll wrote: ‘All this stuff caves in on us… and we wonder how anybody could ever love us… especially God. When we start thinking like this, we need to turn our mind to the “one anothers” in the New Testament. Love one another, build up one another, live in peace with one another, confess your sins to one another, speak to one another, admonish one another, comfort one another, pray for one another. “Bear one another’s burdens.” Imagine two mountain hikers. One… has a… light pack… while the other poor soul… is… loaded down… It could be a long-standing grudge… [or] a broken relationship… That pack could be loaded with unpaid bills. The question is, Where can… [they] go to unload?’
We all need a safe place to unburden ourselves of our troubles. Just sitting in church with any number of other people isn’t going to do it. We can (and should) tell God about everything that’s weighing down our minds, but He’s also placed people around us to share our worries face-to-face, to help us make sense of the chaos of our problems, and to support us on our journey through them. There’s an old saying: ‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’
Other people may not necessarily take our burden from us, but there’s something powerful and liberating in sharing our worries. So who’s your safe place? Who are the trusted people in your life that will listen without judging or causing embarrassment? And could you be the trusted friend, the ‘safe place’ for someone else?
Lev 18-19; Luke 22:63-71; Ps 25:8-15; Pro 10:2
2022-04-10
Matthew 12:34 NCV
When Mary Southerland came down with a raging fever, her doctor suspected viral meningitis. In the course of examining her, he checked the colour of her tongue. Mary was puzzled. Why did that matter? The doctor told her that the tongue can actually tell us a lot about our health. And a similar idea applies to our spiritual health.
The Bible tells us, ‘The mouth speaks the things that are in the heart. Good people have good things in their hearts, and so they say good things. But evil people have evil in their hearts, so they say evil things’ (v.34-35 NCV). Our heart, our attitude, our outlook, and our temperament are all reflected by our tongue through the words we speak and the way we say them.
Mary Southerland wrote: ‘The tongue is a spiritual thermometer that reflects the condition of the heart… Words are power tools that can build… encourage… destroy and cause confusion. We have all been hurt and even defeated by words spoken in anger or words rising out of a wounded heart… If my words are boastful, my heart is insecure. If my words are filthy, my heart is impure and if my words are critical, my heart is filled with pride and anger… Solomon said, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver” (Proverbs 25:11 KJV)… The right word, spoken at the right time and in the right way can bring order in the midst of confusion and light on a very dark path. “Good people know the right thing to say” (Proverbs 10:32 NCV). God gives us spiritual “radar” so we can assess a situation and speak the right word for that circumstance. We just need to check the “radar screen” before we speak.’
Matt 21:1-16; Ps 118:19-29
2022-04-09
Ezekiel 36:26 NIV
When we’ve been hurt, it’s natural that we’d try to put up barriers to protect ourselves. But we need to be careful that our protective shell doesn’t turn into a ‘heart of stone’ that’s resistant, unmoved, and doesn’t even let God in.
Author Kristen Armstrong writes: ‘The only thing more painful, and with… more serious ramifications than a broken heart, is a frozen one…. Paul warns us [about] allowing our hearts to harden. “They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts” (Ephesians 4:18 NIV). A soft heart is not weak or naive. To the contrary, wisdom, experience, and faith make for a strong heart, weathered by compassion and seasoned with mercy. A hardened heart is not protected, it’s merely encased in injury.’
A hardened heart makes us immune to God’s promptings. We lose compassion for the needs He’s trying to show us. We miss opportunities to make a difference in the lives of those around us because our hardened hearts won’t allow us to be moved by feelings of sympathy. We can’t empathise with those who are hurting. God softens our hearts with love.
He might allow us to go through a season of testing, and while we may see it as nothing but a struggle, He sees it as an opportunity to break through the heart of stone and replace it with one that’s pliant, tender, and ready to respond to Him. Kristen continues: ‘[God] wants to give you a heart of flesh. With His love you can emerge from a painful season of loss with a heart that is yielding, porous, and ready to receive the gifts He has… for you.’
Lev 15 -17; Luke 22:54-62; Ps 25:1-7; Pro 10:1
2022-04-08
John 9:4 NKJV
Like the rest of us, Jesus sometimes got tired (see John 4:6). But He was never stressed out by the job He had to do. He was led, but never driven. He knew what needed to be done and the amount of time needed to do it, and He picked a team to help accomplish it. Three of them – Peter, James, and John – were in His inner circle. It wasn’t that He showed favouritism; He just recognised the particular gifts of the people He worked with and what He needed from each of them to get the job done.
An important step towards accomplishing something big is knowing the kinds of people we’ll need around us. In other words, we need to know who should be on our team. Jesus spent three-and-a-half years training His disciples before delegating responsibility to them. Was He afraid they would make mistakes, outshine Him, or make Him look bad? No; He told them, ‘He who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father’ (John 14:12 NKJV).
Jesus was a team player who got things done through others. But even when we break a task down, strategically plan it, and recruit brilliant people, we need one more component to succeed: teamwork! Teamwork is the glue that brings people together – and keeps them together. There are more than a billion Christians in the world today. And it all started two thousand years ago with one man who had a vision, a man who recruited and trained a team to fulfil that vision. Let’s approach our work according to His work philosophy and see the difference it can make.
Lev 13:38-14:57; Luke 22:39-53; Ps 4; Pro 9:13-18
