The Almost Daily Devotional

2010-02-28T16:43:00.000-08:00

Continue to work Out Your Salvation...

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed-not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence-continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Philippians 2:12-13

People who love someone act in that person's best interests because they want to not because they have to. Paul calls the believers in the city of Philippi to obey God the Father's will as an everyday lifestyle. Not because someone like Paul is looking over their shoulder but because they are in love with their Savior and are eager to serve Him. Do we love Christ? Then we don't need anyone policing us to make sure we live for Him. It is enough to know that he gave his all for us. Our love for him makes me want to give my all for him.

But do I? Do you? Often I am not sure that I live out my faith the way Paul is speaking of.

Lord, What do I do? What do we do?

Paul says, "Continue to work out your salvation."

Hold on there, Paul! I thought we were to trust God? That sounds a bit "works" oriented. A bit legalistic doesn't it? Not at all.

Paul says, "Continue" to work out your salvation.The word "continue" means an activity that has a starting point and which is ongoing. That is what unpacking our salvation is like. It is not just a one time event. It begins with an initial encounter and is meant to continue on. To percolate through and penetrate our whole lives with a new reality that gets more real to us the more we live in it. Salvation does not just apply to eternity. It applies to all of Life. To every situation. We are called to put our eternal souls in the hands of the Savior, Jesus. We are also called to live every moment of every day in His strength and by the power of His Spirit. The word "salvation" has an interesting synonym - "deliverance" which means "to be set free from something that binds us".

To work out your salvation means to apply that salvation to every situation of life. To live "delivered" from lostness and aloneness. Because of Christ's gift of the cross, you and I are not alone. Our Savior is with us. And by his presence and power we are called to serve those he loves in every situation He takes us into. As we increasingly call upon Jesus' saving power and live in His Spirit's presence on a daily basis, we become increasingly free to sense his love for others and to experience the gratitude that this kind of freedom brings. We begin to want others to experience what we experience.

Jesus didn't just save his disciples, he served His disciples. But he didn't serve them in the way we are inclined to view "serving" someone. He certainly didn't park them on recliners somewhere and shower them with grapes and other dainties while they had their feet massaged. Jesus' disciples went through some real stretching! He led them into one situation after another where they were helpless and taught them to trust him there. He knew that the human tendency is to rely on our own strength when we get into trouble. He also knew that the only way to teach reliance on God was to take his disciples into places where only the mercy and power of God could bring them through. Places where they had to practice turning to him in trust for salvation and deliverance from whatever threatened to overwhelm them.

So we are called to work out our salvation. But why "with fear and trembling"? It is because of our tendency to wander back to the old way of living that we are familiar with. We tend to drift back to depending on ourselves and our strength to get through the day. We who begin with Christ in new freedom often wander back to the old slavery.

How many of us remember when we experienced the power of God? When we knew his love closely? When we were active in sharing our faith? Maybe we saw visions and had ecstatic experiences too? Where have those things gone? Maybe the reality that we live with is that the passion for Jesus and the joy we once knew has gone and now we just live and struggle to cope with the stresses of life and family.

Paul calls us to fear this tendency to wander! To beware! To care for our relationship with Jesus and walk in it deliberately. To not drift back to the old ways we once lived in.

As we walk in Jesus; as we live in God's service, know this: it is God himself who works in us to accomplish his will and his good purpose. As we live daily, situation to situation, in dependence on the Spirit of Jesus, he works in us. We will come once again to know his presence and the freshness of his love just like we used to.

Prayer time: Take a moment to relax.

Pray : Come Holy Spirit. I give this time to you in Jesus name.

Sit back. Close your eyes. You are in God's presence. Take approx 1 minute.

Pray: Jesus save me from my own strength. Deliver me from self-dependence. Let me apply today and everyday the salvation that I have in you. Let that deliverance from self-strength be worked all the way through my life just like a baker works the yeast through the dough. Lord, I know my tendency to wander. I know my tendency to take life on in my own strength. Forgive me. I renounce my strength and place myself at your mercy for your strength.
Father, I want to sense your Spirit working in me to bring about your will. I want to look back at the end of each day and be able to see the hand of my God evident. To that end I renounce my will that your may be done. I give you the coldness and aloofness of my heart so that I can be filled with your passion to serve others in your name and power. Come Holy Spirit! I say "Yes!" to you. In Jesus name, amen.

2010-01-31T18:05:00.000-08:00

Paul prayed for them...

Paul, Silas and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you. We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 1:1-3

Paul knew how to pray for people who are following God's calling. He prayed for them to live in the peace of God. Only God's peace can be the basis for handling the challenges of life, especially if you are a believer who has to learn how to deal with the struggles that can come with serving Christ.

Paul prayed for God's grace on them. Anyone following God's calling needs God's grace. There is no other way to carry out that calling. It is beyond our human strength and abilities. Grace is provision. It is power. It is out of grace that the peace of God becomes an experiential thing in our daily lives.

Paul prayed for them constantly. There is something unexplainable about constantly turning to God for what we need. Paul understood that and not only wen regularly to the Lord for his own needs but also for the needs of his brothers and sisters in Christ.

The people Paul wrote to endured. And the things that they accomplished for God were produced by their faith. It was literally through their faith that the power of the Holy Spirit was able to work in their earthly context bringing the Kingdom to earth - just like we are reminded that it comes as we pray the Lord's Prayer.

These followers of Jesus pressed on in following their calling and in serving Christ because of the hope of God that was in them. They knew there was more to come!They knew that the Lord had not left them to serve Him on their own strength! They anticipated seeing the power of God in their daily lives!They lived in hope! They had a conviction that God was with them in whatever they were doing. They continued to trust their Savior, even when everything seemed impossible. Their faith was persevering faith. Persevering faith sees the impossible coming to be even before it actually happens because those who have it know in whom they have put their trust - Jesus the Messiah.

You and I can also live like this. We are part of something eternal - the family of God. As the Thessalonian Church had their hope in their Lord Jesus the Christ - so is ours. As He was strength to them because they had surrendered their lives to him and allowed him to be that strength- so he is today for those who surrender to Him. He is the Christ, which means the "anointed one". He is the one on whom God's power for all things Godly rests.

The Thessalonians had put their hope in Jesus because they had experienced, as I have, His faithfulness to them. The scriptures state that all the promises of God are "yes" to us in Christ. Simply put, whatever our need is, we will find the response of God to our need in Jesus the anointed one. We don't have to look elsewhere. That said, we may need to look more deeply into Him because right now things are a little blurry for us. But it is to Jesus we must go and it is on Him that we have to keep our focus. He is our hope for all things, both eternal and of this life.

Pray: Father, I surrender to you. Make me one who perseveres in faith. Make me one who hopes in you always. Make me one who cannot take my eyes and heart-focus off of you. Let me be known for the grace that I walk in. Let me be a blessing to others in prayer as Paul was a blessing to the people he prayed for. I receive your promises in Christ, I look to you as my strength. Work through me to bring others to know the hope I have. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen.

God is faithful!

I would love to share how faithful and gracious God has been to our family this week but there has been too much to describe here. He demonstrates that he truly does meet all of our needs. I pray that each person reading this finds the where-with-all to trust God for something concrete this week. Do more than ask God to give you something. Actually give Him your need. He says in Matthew 6 that he will take care of us and fulfill our needs so that we can serve Him.

The "Finding Freedom in Forgiveness" course is coming up this weekend in Saskatoon. Pray for God to touch and change lives. A wide variety of people will be there, including people who do not know Jesus YET. Pray that they will come to salvation.

2010-01-24T18:54:00.001-08:00

GUIDANCE IN MOTION

The promise, "Lo I am with you always (Matt 28:20),"is preceded by the command, "Go."

The promise, "You shall find rest for your souls (Matt 11:28)," is preceded by the command, "Come."

We cannot expect the Lord to lift us out of our chairs and carry us in his purpose if all we are willing to do is sit and dream our dreams.

"Go, wash in the pool of Siloam"...

So he went and washed and came back seeing.

John 9

The presence of the Lord is known to those who act on his word.

The peace of the Lord visits those who answer his call with their own two feet.

The power of the Lord comes to rest on those who obey the command, "Go."

And as he entered a certain village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" When he saw them he said to hem, "Go show yourselves to the priests." And as they went they were cleansed.

Luke 17

Those who wait for "guidance" when they have already heard the Lord's command to action---

---will wait forever.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-he will be blessed in what he does.

James 1:22-24

2010-01-19T16:31:00.001-08:00

Our calling brings Hope...

for I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.
Philippians 1:19-20

Paul was in trouble. He had been arrested and was in prison under threat of death. For most of us this would be a good time to freak out. But not Paul. He had confidence in the midst of a bad situation. How did he get such confidence? I need some of that!

People with confidence have hope. They may not know what will happen but they have hope. They have anticipation of something good to come and they are on the watch for that good thing, whatever it is. They know they will recognize it when they see it and they prepare themselves to receive what they expect is coming. This confidence is what Hebrews 11:1 calls "the substance of things hoped for". It is faith! Heb 11:6 goes on to teach us that faith (confidence in God's provision) pleases God. That is because this "confidence" positions us to receive what He wants to give.

It is different with people who have no confidence.

People with no confidence are anything but happy. They have no sense of hope for the future. They live with fear. They live with dread.

People without hope may panic and lose it. People without hope may "turtle up". They may go into survival mode. They may live with a hatred of the past because what happened in the past has brought them to where they are now - living without hope.

Or, people without hope may yearn for the past. They may feel that, if they could only have another chance, they wouldn't make the mistakes they made and things would be different now. They may obsess over the "if onlys". "If only I had done something different." "If only God had done something different." People without hope often live with a lot of anger because their expectations of life and relationships have failed. Failed expectations make for very angry people.

Invariably, people who live without hope can only see their own situation. They can't see beyond their situation to God who has the power to use their situation if only they will trust Him with it.

Paul saw beyond. He had enough experience of the grace of God that his faith had grown into a confidence that God was in control regardless of how the situation looked. Even though things were tough right now, and definitely less than comfortable, he knew that God, in His love and desire for the lost, would only take him into this place in order to do something good.

Paul's job in the situation was simply to trust God.

So... You find yourself lacking hope. In a situation. Living with an accumulation of situations. How do you get this confidence?

I would like to say that you read your bible, absorb the principles and simply apply them.

Well, that is part of it but the reality is much more intense.

God had a call on Paul's life and Paul said yes to that calling. Paul gained his confidence by putting his life (not just his eternity - his life) in the hands of God the Holy Spirit. Paul told God, "my life is yours to do what you will with." God took Paul at his word and began to use him to spread the word of the gospel, the message of hope, the good news of Christ that this world is often so hostile to.

God wants to do this with us too.

Over and over the God took Paul into places and situations where only the Holy Spirit could save him. In those places people saw the power of God demonstrated and the gospel was advanced. Paul was always helpless in those places. He was always at someone's mercy. He was always in over his head. Over and over Paul, because he was willing to go to those places with God, experienced the trustworthiness and the faithfulness of God being demonstrated in his situation. Out of that wealth of experience he writes, "I have confidence!" "Confidence in my God who has never let me down." "Confidence in my God who has carried me through every situation that has been too big for me to deal with on my own."

Paul had learned to look beyond the situation and to say "Come, Lord Jesus!"

The difficult reality is that we who follow Christ only gain this kind of faith by allowing God to take us into the places where we are not in control. In those places we learn of God's faithfulness. In those places we experience our helplessness. In those places we gain the ability to say "amen!" when we read of God's power to save in the pages of scripture. This is not an easy process. In fact Jesus likens it to dying - dying to ourselves in order that we may live in Christ.

Are you ready?

Pray: Dear Father in Heaven. Hallowed Be your name. I worship you. Your Kingdom come. I depend on your power and renounce living by my own strength. Your will be done. I give myself to your purposes and renounce my own demands and plans for my life and situation. Give me today my daily provision. Lord, I trust you for all I need. You are my provider and I acknowledge that I cannot gain my own provision aside from you. Forgive me as I forgive others who have hurt me. I let go of my anger over all of the betrayal and failed expectations of my life and relationships. Lord I receive your forgiveness for being so self-absorbed. Lead me not into temptation and deliver me from the evil one. I know that nothing evil comes from you. Forgive me for the times I have blamed you for my situations, Lord and for the times I have believed the enemy's lies rather than your word. Lord, you are my deliverer and I receive my freedom from your hand. The Kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever! Its true, Lord! Keep this always before me in every situation. You are greater than anything I can encounter. I accept a new confidence in you and look forward to what you will bring, just like Paul did. In Jesus mighty name, I pray. Amen.

2010-01-19T16:21:00.000-08:00

Forgiveness Course in Regina

Please keep us in prayer this weekend coming up. We are taking the Finding Freedom in Forgiveness course to Regina. 3 others are coming with me as we go to Celebration Lutheran Church in Regina to do the course. We will be offering the teaching as well as prayer ministry for those in need. I am looking forward to seeing how God works in the lives of the participants.

Thanks once again to those who support this ministry financially. We are greatly blessed through you.

Please pray for Isaiah. He is off on a missions trip this next month and is in need of finances. If you would like to help him, click on my email link below and I will set you up.

Be blessed. Boyd

2010-01-17T15:14:00.000-08:00

Following the Call - Jeremiah speaks...

What follows is the record we have of Jeremiah becoming aware of God's calling as it is found in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah chapter 1...

The word of the LORD came to me, saying, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

Jeremiah 1:4-5

Jeremiah had a moment of realization when it became clear to him that God was calling him.

Interesting...

Jeremiah never went out and found God's calling on his own. God came to him. God made his calling clear.

That is something to understand - No one goes out and actually finds God's call on their own. God brings the call to them. Some call it a "kairos moment". Kairos is greek for a moment of "revelation" or a moment where God's word is "spoken clearly" into someone's life. God comes and says, in effect, "Here I am. I have a purpose for you. "

God said to Jeremiah, " Before you were born, I set you apart." God had plans for Jeremiah and, according to Jeremiah 29:11 and Ephesians 2:10, God also has plans for each of us. Plans for good! Plans to make use of our lives. For Jeremiah, God had appointed him to be a prophet - one who would speak God's specific word into places and lives to which God would lead him. We are not all gifted the same but we all have an appointment in terms of a calling to follow and serve God during our lives here on earth. But many of us, like Jeremiah, get a bit intimidated at the prospect of following God:

"Ah, Sovereign LORD," I said, "I do not know how to speak; I am only a child." But the LORD said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a child.' You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the LORD.

Jeremiah 1:6-8

Lord, I can't do that! This can't be what you are calling me to! People won't listen to me! I'm just a kid! I don't speak well!

Moses gave the Lord the same kinds of excuses. Others did as well. But God does not give up on His calling on our lives. And He doesn't call us based on our abilities. He calls us because he wants to. He calls us because He wants to show His power through our weakness. All he asks is our "YES!". Even if that "YES!" comes out as a "yes...".

God equips the called. He doesn't call the equipped. One of the realities that the Lord speaks to us as He brings his calling into our lives is that He knows both who and what we are. He has always know who and what we are. There is something amazing about that reality because it means that He is under no illusions as to what he is getting when we do say "yes" to Him. He knows each of our weaknesses and He chooses us anyway. We don't have to compensate or change our selves in order to get the call. We just need to say "yes, Lord!" when He brings it to us.

I was listening to a friend the other day as she spoke about her calling. She said that when her calling came to her she did not know how to make it happen. She just stepped out and said "yes" to God. He is the one who has caused it to unfold as she has simply followed in obedience.

Do not be afraid. He is with you. He will lead you through the challenges and protect you at every turn. This is the promise of God to Jeremiah, to you and to me.

Pray: Lord, forgive me for all of the stumbling around I have done as I tried to make my calling happen. Forgive me for the times I did not wait on you but just barged ahead. Forgive me for the times I have held back from giving you my "yes" because I could not believe that I was equipped to follow You. I receive your forgiveness. I am ready to say "yes" to you now. Bring my calling to me whatever it is. I will follow. All I ask is that you be the one to lead and guide my steps as your word says that you will. I renounce the accusations and suggestions of the devil that say to me that I am unworthy or unequipped. You have forgiven and equipped me and I am yours to do with as you want. I say thins in Jesus name, amen.

Be blessed.

Boyd