Category: Daily Inspirational Devotional

To the people in the Court of Gentiles, Jesus was some crazed man overturning tables and claiming that the Temple was somehow His. To the merchants and money-changers, He was destroying their very profitable commerce of conveniently offering sacrificial animals & and acceptable currency to worshippers who had travelled from a distance. Most only saw Him as a nuisance and annoyance…not connecting what He was saying to Old Testament prophecy. Jesus was in fact carefully fulfilling prophecy from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Malachi in rebuking those who had turned the Temple into a market…using it for everything other than what it was meant to be.

As Jesus rode slowly into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday He was fulfilling both the Old Testament prophecy of His triumphal entry and His forthcoming Messianic reign. But as the crowds gathered, they were looking for short-term results…not even realizing that what Jesus was accomplishing had long-term & eternal consequences. The people wanted freedom from Roman rule…but Jesus was offering freedom from sin & death. (Luke 4:18) As we see by one of His first public appearances where Jesus read from Isaiah 61 to proclaim freedom to the captives. The crowds were envisioning victory by a powerful warrior King riding in on a white stallion, & taking His rightful throne by force. But Jesus entered Jerusalem that day on a donkey, meek and lowly…His victory coming in the triumph over sin & death, in turn, giving us eternal victory. (I Corinthians 15:57) Finally, the crowds were all crying out… Hosanna! Save us!… imploring Jesus to save them from Roman oppression & injustice. But the saving Jesus had come to earth to do encompassed all of mankind’s Salvation… by way of the Cross…and would be found in no one else but in Him. (Acts 4:12)

When the cares & worries of the world are seemly dragging you backwards, remember this…an arrow can only be shot by pulling it backwards. Right now it may seem like life is one step forward followed by two steps back…and waiting on the Lord is the last thing you want to do. But God promises fulfillment of His Word, so we can’t look at our waiting as failure, but rather as a time of equipping & endurance. For just like that arrow, God may be preparing you to be launched forward into something great.

Many times throughout our life we’ll be thrown into difficult situations, with the path ahead unclear and difficult to understand. That’s when we need to trust in the Lord and rely on His faithfulness. We may not be able to comprehend & grasp the story… but even so, we can trust the Author who wrote it. Hebrews 12:2 tells us that Jesus is the author and perfector of our faith. He is the creator, sustainer, and finisher of the faith in the hearts of all God’s people. So even when we don’t understand the story, we can be assured that Jesus goes before us as the founder and completer of it.

For many, they’re quite proud of their self-sufficiency & self-reliance…with their mantra being, “You only need two tools in life…WD-40 & Duct Tape.” These people “MacGyver” their way through life, boasting about their independence and that they don’t need help from anyone…but for them, life is exceedingly hard…and it doesn’t need to be that way. As it tells us here in Psalms, the ultimate source of our well-being rests in God and there is no need to “take over” when things aren’t moving (WD-40) as quickly as we want, or when life seems to be falling apart. (Duct Tape). For if you think about it, we are nothing, with no real power and of no real weight in the grand scheme of eternity…or as Galatians 6:3 says, “If anyone thinks he is something (or someone) when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”

As unbelievers, we are all measured against exactly the same list of moral behaviors, and in the end, each one of us will receive precisely what we deserve. Or as Ezekiel 18:20 tells us, “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” But our human nature wants to “fix” people so this doesn’t happen to them…but only God can accomplish this as He pursues, soften hearts, and removes scales from eyes and plugs from ears. What we can do though is to faithfully continue to pray for them that God’s Divine Will will be done.

And it was Lazarus’s sister, Martha, that put flesh onto the two words, “I believe” when she said, ” Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, Who was to come into the world.” (John 11:27) For many of us, especially those raised in Church, we grew up with a general knowledge and confidence in Jesus and His Godly Mission…but it took a marked & emphatic moment in our life when our faith was thrust out of neutral, and our trust in Christ Jesus became real…with those two words forever changing us. “I believe.”

Can’t you almost feel the lament, suffering & discouragement David writes about here? Much has been written about the mind-body effect…but the effect of an infirmed & debilitated body on the mind can be just as devastating. When our body is frail and weak and won’t do what we want it to, our emotional strength wavers. We struggle to remain positive when our health is impaired and it seems like we move one step forward only to fall two steps back. Life carries great burdens for us all, but we’re not meant to carry them alone…for in our feebleness God is our strength…and in this darkness of emotional weakness He will become our light.

A long time ago when I was a brand new Christian, I was mentored by several older & wiser women. I still remember the sage words one gave me… that as we mature in the Lord it will not be such a battle over blatant sin in our life, but more a battle of keeping our focus on Him. And many years later, I must agree. It is a daily conscious decision and effort to keep my primary goal of glorifying God constantly before me. It means holding myself to the highest of standards year in and year out, “to be well pleasing to Him.” Thus it has nothing to do with how many Church projects I’m part of, but rather curbing my own selfish motives, attitudes & goals in order to keep my eyes firmly on Him. Paul summed it up well when he wrote in I Corinthians 9:27, “I discipline my body and keep it under control…”

Paul’s contentment was utterly reliant not on himself and his ability to suppress his emotions of displeasure, or even bitterness & resentment…but on Christ, Who held Paul fast and sustained him through all his adversities. But the interesting part of these Scriptures to me is the phrase, “I have learned to be content…” Which to me would mean that contentment is not part of my natural make-up and rather is something to be discovered & grasped with understanding and maturity in Christ. For if I look at my old self, there is very little contentment and a whole lot of impatience and irritability. Jesus tells us in Matthew 11:29 to, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me…” for He is an example for us to follow in order that we can be happy & satisfied whatever the situation.