Bible Verse

Romans 12:1 – Who takes first?

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I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Romans 12:1

What is worship? How are we to worship God? Looking at Romans 12:1 we see that worship consists of being a living sacrifice. What does this mean exactly, what does it look like to be a living sacrifice? A lot of it comes down to the concept of humility. I know it seems like humility is something that is mentioned constantly, but that is because it is central to our faith. The concept of being a living sacrifice means we are not just day by day but instant by instant laying aside our will and our desires and looking towards God to receive His will and His desires. This means in order to be a living sacrifice we take ourselves out of the equation and place God first in our life.

You see worship is what we place our energy, priority, and focus on. What we worship is what we place first in our life. The problem though is that we often make a list of things in our lives and rank them by priority, yet just like a golf leaderboard something in second place still has the chance of becoming first. You see God wants not just to be first in a list of priorities but He wants to be our everything. This is offering ourselves as a living sacrifice, we take our leaderboard of things in our life and place God at every single ranking. In other words we throw out the leaderboard, throw out the rankings, and seek out God alone.

So do you have a leaderboard of priorities in your life? If so I challenge you to first place God firmly in that top spot, then work on making God fill all the spots, as that is what spiritual growth is.

Galatians 1:10 – Who do you try to please?

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Galatians 1:10
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Are you a people pleaser? Do you plan out your actions regarding how others will see you? Do you resist doing certain actions because it may offend someone? How about do you think if your actions will bring yourself pleasure as a priority? This is the opposite of how we as Christians should be. Now I am not saying that we should intentionally offend others, but our actions should be based off will this be pleasing to God, not will this be pleasing to someone else, not even ourselves.

The issue here comes down to pride. What I am getting at here is that when we look at how we can please others, to try to gain the approval of man, we are looking at how we can make ourselves look good in the eyes of others. So in other words we are placing ourselves at the center of our lives. You see when we try to please others our motivation is often to make ourselves look good to the people around us, think about it would you rather have someone tell you what you want to hear or tell you the truth? Would you rather be told that you look good in that suit, or would you rather be told about the tear in the pants around the back pocket? We don’t like it when people are trying to just please us, so why do we often try to please others by avoiding to temporarily hurt them.

You see when we focus on God and are motivated to please Him, others may eventually thank us. That is because when we share God’s truth it may cause some discomfort to people, because of the conviction of sin, but it is a temporary discomfort if it eventually leads them to the foot of the cross. I have heard it said somewhere, and I believe it does hold true, you have to really hate someone not to be willing to share the Gospel with them because when you refuse to share the Gospel you are acting as judge and jury convicting them to eternal punishment. So you see when you try to please others, while temporarily pleasing them, it ultimately hurts them. So which would you rather be a people pleaser or a God pleaser? Do you want to give people temporary pleasure, or would you rather offer them eternal hope?

Psalm 119:9 – Why is Bible Study Important?

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How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.

Why is it important to study the Bible? Well if you were to ask the psalmist, he would tell us that it is to keep us focused on God and to help keep us from falling into sin. The more time we spend in the Word the more we see how we should be living and acting. We see how we should keep our focus on God as He is the only one worthy of our worship; and whatever has our focus, whatever takes our priority is that which we worship. Spending time in the Word keeps our mind and hearts centered on God, guarding our way and keeping it pure.

The best illustration of this in practice is when we look at the temptation of Christ. After Christ was baptized He went into the wilderness for forty days at the end of which Satan came and tempted Him. We see in the narrative that with each temptation Christ countered Satan by quoting Scripture.. But now here is the thing, it is not just enough to know Scripture, we can’t just memorize verses and just quote them at times of temptation; we need to understand what the verse actually means so we can use them appropriately. We even see this with Christ’s temptation, in one instance Satan, seeing Christ countering him with Scripture, used Scripture to try to get Christ to sin by twisting the intended meaning of the verse to suit his purpose. Someone not grounded in Scripture might look at it and think, “you know you’re right,” but because Christ knew His Scripture, He was able to say, “you’re wrong and according to Scripture here’s why.”

So have you been finding it hard to stay on track in your faith? The first thing to do is look to see if you have been neglecting your Bible, and start digging into His Word.

Psalm 37:4 – Where do you take delight?

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Delight yourself in the Lord , and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalms 37:4 ESV

I have once said it before, “God wants you happy…but not in the way you think.”

Psalms 37:4 is an interesting verse to look at, as I believe we tend to focus on the wrong words and thus develop a misunderstanding of what the psalmist is actually saying. Some people will look at this verse as one that shows God being like a genie. They see that if we just delight in God, He will give us everything that we want. They look at this verse and think God will make them rich, or God will make them successful, healthy, never have them encounter any hardships, and so on.

The thing is I don’t think this is what the psalmist was getting at. Rather than God giving us what we want, He starts to change our wants to line up with His will.. You see when we start to look to God and take our joy in Him, we ourselves start to change. This is the Holy Spirit working in the lives of the believer, we tend to find that as we grow in our faith our desires actually start to change. The things we once desired and wanted to get no longer hold the same appeal that they once did.

Now with talking about the last half of the verse, I don’t think that is where we should be focusing at all. You see the focus of this verse should not be on the receiving of the desires of our heart, regardless of which way you look at it, but where it states we should be looking to. We are to delight ourselves in God. This means we are to place our focus on Him, to put Him first and look to Him as the source for everything in our lives. I have said it before and I will probably say it again, but when we do this, when God becomes our priority everything else will fall into place. We are not to look to God to give us what we think will make us happy, but rather find our happiness in God’s presence. So where do you look for happiness? In the things you desire, or in God Himself?

1 Corinthians 3:10-11 – What is your faith built upon?

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According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 3:10-11

What is your faith built upon? When you build a building the first thing that needs to be done is to have a proper foundation laid. One you don’t go and build a wall here, place furnishings, or set up the roof until the foundation is laid. That is because the foundation is what everything else rests on. Without a foundation it is like the man who built a house on the sand where it is not able to stand up to the elements. The same can be said about a faulty foundation, if the proper foundation is not set for the environment and type of house that is being built again the building will eventually fall due to structural problems.

Our faith works much in the same way. We need to be careful on what we base our faith off of. It needs to be firmly placed in Christ and rooted in Biblical truth. There are many teachings out there where we can hear it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere. Then there is also the thought that all religions ultimately lead to God, or that since God is love He won’t send anyone to hell. The problem is that these teachings build a faith that is on an inadequate foundation, much like having a mansion built on a fault line, an earthquake comes and that house will eventually fall. When Christ returns if our faith is not right, if we aren’t rooted in Christ and Christ alone then what we have our faith placed in will eventually fall as well. So what type of foundation is your faith built on?

 

John 3:36 – What is Belief?

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Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
John 3:36 ESV

I will admit this is a tricky verse to look at, because in many translations the word obey is also translated into believe. I will say that in my opinion trust would be a good word to have in both places although believe and obey is the better option. You see our Christian faith is a combination of belief and obedience that stems out of our trust in God. What I mean is that our belief in God goes beyond just the intellectual to a deeper trust in God that leads to obedience. For example let’s look at our regular relationships, when we were kids I am sure we all scraped our knees at one time or another. Now often our parents would tell us that we would be okay and that we would live while in that moment we would feel like our world was coming to an end, but because we believed in our parents, we trusted them, we knew what they were saying was true and it would help comfort us.

We do this because we know that our parents have our best interest in their mind, even when they are disciplining us they are doing it out of love. Even though we may not like it at the time our belief in our earthly parents has us obeying them because we trust that they have the best intentions for us in the long run. God is the same way, we may not like what we are going through or may feel like obedience to God is killing our fun, but in the long term obedience to God will lead us to eternal life. Our pride will often say that intellectual belief is enough, that obedience is not needed, but remember we are told many times that our belief and obedience goes hand in hand. So how deep is your belief in God, is it the surface level intellectual belief or is it the deeper trust that leads to obedience?

Matthew 6:34

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Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:34 HCSB

Worry, it seems to be a fact of life. There are many things in our lives which we tend to worry about; finances, health, and relationships are some of the big areas where we encounter worry. The question is who has ever benefited from worrying about something. I usually find the opposite to be true, the more I worry about one thing the more time and energy is taken away from something else. Let’s say I am worrying about my finances and where I am going to get the money to pay my rent among all my other bills, that takes time effort and energy that I could be using to focus on producing content and working on a number of podcast and other multimedia projects I am involved with.

You see Satan uses worry as a way to draw first our attention away from God, but also to foster doubt into our minds. When we worry we are often, though not intentionally, stating that we don’t think God has as much control over His creation as He does. It is a subconscious belief that we need to be in control, worry is essentially just another form of pride. When we worry it is because as I mentioned we want to be in control and our worry is because we feel like we aren’t in control and that makes us uncomfortable.

What Jesus wants us to do is to give control over to Him. That is because if we place our trust in Him and let Him take control we have no need to worry. If we are willing to focus our time and energy on God and let Him worry about everything else, everything else will essentially fall into place. So what are you worrying about today? Why don’t you give it over to God and trust Him to take care of it.

Galatians 5:22-23

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“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 (ESV)

 

This is one of those verses that almost every Christian knows, but is probably one in which many of us don’t fully understand. There is often the question that some will ask of how many fruit are there, or some people may state that they don’t understand why fruit is singular. If you were to ask me I think the reason why it is singular is more to indicate how these 9 qualities are part of a whole. If fruit was plural indicating multiple fruit of the spirit then we would want to pick and choose which fruit we wanted, much like with a fruit plate if you don’t like strawberries or pineapple you can just ignore them and eat the blueberries, bananas, and cantaloupe.

 

I think that is why many of us look at this verse and want it to be talking about multiple fruit. Some of the qualities are easier to exhibit than other, so we want to pick and choose which qualities we exhibit ourselves. I mean often times kindness, goodness, and faithfulness are easy to exhibit, and depending on the person we can probably show love with no problem. It is when you look at the qualities of patience and self-control that it becomes hard. We at times want to say can’t we just focus on five out of the nine? Isn’t that good enough?

 

How we should look at the fruit of the spirit is more like one fruit with these nine aspects. Take a Fuji apple for instance; it has a specific taste, sweetness, tartness, texture, smell, nutrition value, etc. It has a number of characteristics and aspects that differentiate it from a strawberry or even a Red Delicious or Granny Smith apple. So much like the different parts that make up an apple, the fruit of the spirit are the different aspects that make up our spiritual life, that as they are brought to fullness we become more of the person God has created us to be.

 

So you see there is a reason why Paul said “the fruit of the spirit is” and not the “fruits of the spirit are;” because it is basically all or nothing. As a believer each of these nine qualities that Paul mentions should be expressed in our lives as it shows the Holy Spirit working in and through us. It is a litmus test of sorts for a changed life, I mean an unbeliever might be able to exhibit many of these qualities, but a believer will exhibit them all. I mean a Jolly Rancher is sweet and often tastes just like different fruit; and a plastic fruit may have the shape, color, and general look of real fruit; but they are imitators and not the real thing as they do not have all of the qualities that make up the fruit they are made to taste or look like.

 

So examine yourself, ask God to come and help develop all aspects of the fruit of the Spirit in your life, to help you grow spiritually into the person He has created you to be.

1 Peter 1:6-7

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1 Peter 1:6-7
“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

One of the biggest misconceptions we face as Christians is that once we come to Christ life will be easy. That if we just have enough faith we will never have any problems. The issue is when we look at Scripture we are never told this, in fact we are told quite the opposite many times. Jesus himself told us many times to expect persecution for being a Christian and here in James, and the sentiments are mirrored in 1 Peter, that we are to not just expect problems, trials, tribulation, or persecution but we are to take joy in it. We see it in James 1:2, “Count it all joy,” and Peter tells us in 1 Peter 1:6, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,”

You see there is a reason for trials, in that much like physical growth we have to encounter some pain. Peter tells us it tests the genuineness of our faith. Peter uses the imagery of  refining gold, this is a process where the gold ore is melted down, or in Peter’s time a combination of acidic substances and heat were used to melt away the impurities from the gold. No matter which era you were refining gold in it is a process that put the ore through some harsh treatment in order to get as much of the impurities out of the gold as possible.

The problem is that no one likes to go through trials, I know some of the classes in college I hated the most were the ones that challenged me the most. It was because they were not easy, but it was also in those classes that I probably learned the most. Much like in our Christian lives we all want that mountain top experience, and we never want it to end. We enjoy that feeling when we are close to God, and everything seems to be going right. The problem is with our spiritual life in that state, much like on the top of a mountain, nothing grows. It is in the valleys where the growth happens. So when you go through the valleys take joy and remember that God is still working on you to help you grow and purify your faith.

1 Peter 3:15

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“But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”
1 Peter 3:15 (ESV)

This verse is one that is so theologically rich that I am not sure how to properly approach it and do it justice for a short devotional. This is a verse that is used often as the basis for a study known as Apologetics where one defends their faith, thus it also has implications for evangelism as you are sharing your faith with unbelievers. If you ask me however, I feel that while those are important aspects of the verse when it is put into the context of its section in 1 Peter 3 and even in the context of 1 Peter as a whole this verse seems to be getting at more than defending our faith or even evangelism. This verse is talking about our actions as Christians, it is talking about our holiness.

Let’s look at 1 Peter 3:13-17 together:

“Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.”

You see when you read 1 Peter you notice Peter charging Christians to live holy lives and this verse comes right smack in the middle of 1 Peter, where he states that they are being questioned about their hope. Holiness is the outward expression of our inward hope. It is this holiness this expression of our hope that causes people to take a look at us and notice we are different from the world. It is this outward expression of our hope that should be causing unbelievers to question us about the reasons for why we act the way we do. It is this outward expression of our hope that requires us to share and explain the Gospel to any we encounter.

Yes evangelism and apologetics are an important part of this verse. The thing is however, they are meaningless if our lives aren’t displaying the hope we have. Though just like it is stated in an often overused and misused phrase, “Preach the Gospel at all times; and if necessary use words,”  Remember people won’t listen to your words, if your actions don’t match.