Welcome the Word.....

James 1:21-21  “Humbly welcome the word that has taken root in you, with its power to save you.  Act on this word.   If all you do is listen to it, you are deceiving yourselves.” (NAB)

Heavenly Father,

Once again “the Word”.  We are to “humbly welcome” the Word, Jesus Christ.  He is to “take root in you.”  This is an abiding relationship.  When there is “abiding”, something has rooted itself securely, moved in, taken up residence, lodged, has no plan to leave.  Christ, the Word, takes root in us.  We in turn take root in Him.  For the Word to take root and grow we have to provide good soil and nourishment.  This is the “humble welcoming” part.  A growing plant needs to be watered and tilled and protected and cared for.  We can’t allow Jesus to fall lightly on top of the soil in our hearts and minds and not do anything with Him or the words of life He brings with Him.  This Word has “the power to save you”.  We draw our life from this Word.  He will save us…..all the more reason to “humbly welcome “ Him.  When we are humble we show an eagerness, a desire to accept, a desire to serve, a recognition that we need and want this Word.  We recognize His importance and the necessity to be thankful for Him.  We welcome His presence and open ourselves as an abode for Him.  Finally we act on this Word.  Jesus calls for a response.  We welcome Him in humbly, but than further action is needed to let Him take root.  We, the soil, have to break down and allow Him to penetrate.  The roots don’t form until the soil is broken.  Jesus has to penetrate our defenses, our self-reliance, our free will, our self-importance.  We act by becoming pliable and usable and ready.  Just listening isn’t enough.  We have to accept and be changed.  We have to become a partner with the Word.  When He is rooted He will flourish throughout and take over our will with His will.  Our actions and words will began to reflect His.  If we hear the Word, but don’t allow it to take root and take over……”we deceive ourselves.”  Make me fertile, welcoming soil.  Amen.

The Word.......

John 1:1  “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was in God’s presence, and the Word was God.”

Heavenly Father,

Why is Jesus described as the “Word”?  Why not, “In the beginning was the Son…” or “In the beginning was the Light….” or  “In the beginning was the Truth…” or “In the beginning was the Way….”?  The Word becomes a cross-reference not only to the person Jesus Christ, but to scripture.  When you find a term that refers to God’s “word” (statutes, law, precepts, commands, etc.) you can substitute “Jesus” and get some interesting and true statements.  Psalm 19 is a good example of this.  Anything that God speaks is summed up in the person of Jesus Christ.  Jesus stepped into our world and fulfilled God’s law.  He became the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  He became the Word to live by and obey.  This Word, this Truth of God always existed with God, present from the beginning.  The Word is not new.  The Word is not different from what God always was and is.  The Word just manifests God more clearly to us.  The Word is someone we can hear and listen to….spoken to each of us personally. We can’t see God.  We can see and hear the Word.  The scriptures bring us the story of the Word, the words spoken by the Word, the actions of the Word.  The Word flows throughout the words of scripture.  A word comes from a source, flows from a mouth.  The Word flows from God, speaks for God, speaks of God, presents God’s thoughts, God’s will.  The Word and God are One.  The Word is a voice we can hear with human ears.  The Word translates the thundering voice of God into human speech, human understanding.  The Word became a Life…..took on form, wrapped itself in human flesh, lived a human life, died a human death.  But the Word didn’t cease to exist….it arose to continue speaking, still speaks, still rules, still contains God’s will for us.  The Word saves.  The Word tells us how to get home.  The Word is God’s love spoken, God’s truth expressed, God’s peace restored to us.  Thank you Father, thank you Word, thank you Holy Spirit!  Amen.

Heed what you hear......

Matthew 13:9  “Let everyone heed what he hears”  (NAB)

“The man who has ears to hear should use them.”  (Phillips)

“Are you listening to this?  Really listening?”  (MSG)

Heavenly Father,

“Everyone”…..I’m always drawn to the word “everyone” in scripture.  I want everyone saved.  I want no one lost or left behind.  It seems like such a hopeless task….how do we help “everyone” to be saved?  How do we get past the heartache when someone we love might not be saved?  I know it begins here.  If “everyone” is to be saved, than “everyone” needs to listen to Jesus and really hear what he has to say.  The Words of hope are there!  The words of salvation come from Him!  The words of forgiveness and mercy and grace are just waiting to be “heeded” by everyone!  We have to be willing to put our ears to use.  Just having ears doesn’t guarantee hearing.  I should know, since I am 50% deaf.  We don’t always value our hearing as much as our sight.  Eyes seem more important than ears……until you lose them.  I would be very sad without my hearing.  I love music and would hate never hearing it again.  I am an introvert, but without hearing I would feel totally cut off from other people…..no daily interaction of thoughts or simple communication.  You have to know something to miss it.   You can only lose something you once had.  I guess that is why teaching the gospel of Jesus can be hard.  How do you help someone hear, what they have no awareness of missing?  To find what they don’t know they lost?  You have to convince them of how bad they are in order to offer them redemption and grace!  We don’t have the awareness of sin, the awareness of our separation from You, that we should have.  Help us to really listen, to understand our sin, so that we may better understand your grace.  Show us how to teach this to others, that they may heed Your words and be saved.  Thank you!  Amen

Pay attention!......

Mark 4:9  “If you have ears pay attention.”  (CEV)

Heavenly Father,

I know that the parable of the sower is being covered in later days, so I will resist getting into it now.  We’ve had so many verses that just say, “listen” and little else, that it is hard to see something new at times.  Two translations here go beyond the word “listen”.  One adds the adverb “carefully.”  The other uses the phrase, “what do you make of this?”  I also looked at verse 9:  “If you have ears pay attention.”  Just like any other words, Jesus’ words can “go in one ear and out the other”.  These phrases stress the idea that we are to “stop” the words, rather then letting them fly right through our head.  We are to give “care” to hearing them, “pay attention”, “make” something of them.  Hearing without meditating or thinking about what we hear, is wasted.  The parable of the sower will illustrate that.  We tend to listen to Jesus’ words and pick out the most obvious thing that is there….the easy meaning, the surface interpretation.  That is a start…..at least it didn’t pass through totally unheard!  I find myself wanting to go to someone else….someone wiser…..and let them interpret for me.  I think Jesus means for us to try harder on our own.  He may speak a word to us in the scriptures that is different than what he speaks to someone else.  The Holy Spirit is our interpreter.  We all have different levels of learning, different life experiences, different perspectives to filter the Word through.  Jesus spoke to many individuals, as well as crowds.  He focused his words on their lives, their need.  We have to sift scriptures with the Holy Spirit’s help to see what we each “make of it”.  “If you have ears pay attention!”  Does Jesus have our ear?  Are we paying attention?  We may miss something life-changing, something to feed our hunger, something to help us grow.  Help me listen more carefully, to invite the Holy Spirit to teach me, to spend enough time listening with attention to what you say, that I might learn from You and grow more Christ-like.  Thank you! Amen

"My Son...listen to him!".......

Luke 9:35  “This is my Son, my Chosen One, listen to Him.”

Heavenly Father,

“Listen to Him.”  This lesson is repeated over and over.  We must focus our whole being on Jesus….what he said, what he did, what it means, what we are going to do with what he hear.  In order to listen to Jesus, we have to commit time….something most of us feel we have too little of.  We are a driven people, caught up in a fast-paced world.  Every second of our day seems to be planned for us or full of things to do.  If we keep reading chapter 9 of Luke, we see a world similar to ours.  The crowds gather around Jesus to listen, but get side-tracked by seeking his healing powers.  The disciples argue over how high they’ll rank in the kingdom…..Jesus tells them to look at a child and that welcoming this child in His name is what will make them “great”.  They counter with a tale of a man who is preaching in Jesus’ name but he isn’t “one of them”.  So they try to stop him.  Jesus must have shaken his head in exasperation over that…..if the man isn’t “against you, he is for you!”  This unknown man was preaching Jesus and they were worried about his “connections” to their inner circle (which denomination?)  The Samaritans reject Him and the disciples want to destroy them.  Jesus rebukes this desire to destroy in his name, rather then teach and heal.  Then we have the two half-committed followers….not willing to leave the world behind to follow Jesus.  The closer Jesus came to Jerusalem the more frustration he must have felt that no one was “listening” to Him!  He taught, he healed, he lived an example, and everywhere he went  people….including his disciples……continued to see, hear, and act through worldly eyes, rather than through the “Word” that he was speaking and living out right before their eyes.  They weren’t “listening!”  Mary sat at Jesus feet to listen….Martha bustled about “doing”.  Jesus loved and died for both.  My book says, “Jesus is not so much concerned about what we are trying to accomplish for him, but rather what we are.”  Listening to Jesus will make us what he wants us to be.  Listening precedes doing.  Listening forms our actions.  Tuning our inner ear to Jesus at all times, will mold us, but we must take time to do it and listen.”  Amen

"Open your eyes and see"......

John 4:35 “Listen to what I say: open your eyes and see!  The fields are shining for harvest.”  (NAB)

“Open your eyes and look at the fields!  They are ripe for harvest.” (NIV)

“But I tell you to open your eyes and look at the fields….they are gleaming white, all ready for the harvest.”  (Phillips)

Heavenly Father,

Much of this focus on prayer has been “listen” or “open your ears.”  Now we are told to “open our eyes.”  To pray effectively in your Spirit, we need an awareness of the world around us, and the condition of the people we meet each day.  We are to see the fields that are “ripe for harvest”.  Seeing is more than just being intellectually aware of something.  It is experiencing it first hand.  To see as well as to hear, we have to get close.  We have to use our senses.  I always thought that the philosophical question about….”if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around, does it make a sound?”……was a silly question!  Of course it does!  Not hearing it, or closing our ears to something, doesn’t stop it from happening.  Sight is the same….we can “close our eyes” to God’s work, but the harvest is still there.  Jesus says, “open your eyes”…..look at it!  See and understand what is there to be done!  Jesus also tells us in Luke 10:2 and Matthew 9:38 that “the harvesters are few, pray to the Lord of the harvest…….”.  We often are overwhelmed at the sight of the fields of harvest.  We feel defeated before we began….too many of them, too much to do!  But we don’t work alone and we aren’t responsible for the entire harvest by ourselves!  We are to “pray to the Lord of the harvest”.  God is in charge….it’s His field, His harvest.  Our duty is to pray to the Lord of the harvest for workers.  He will provide what is needed.  He will equip those who he sends to harvest.  He will allow us to “see” our field and how to work in it.  We can hack a patch here and there or we can systematically work a large section…..either way the Lord of the Harvest is directing things.  Jesus says that the sower and the reaper work hand in hand.  Our job as the Body of Christ is to first “look” and “listen”…..than pray.  Move into the fields, get close, see the possibilities, share Christ’s vision, work in Christ’s power, bring in the gleaming fields of spiritual grain.  Jesus saw ripe fields…..acres and acres of souls…..and he guarantees the harvest with his blood of redemption.  Thank you, Lord of the Harvest!  I pray for workers and a full harvest!  Amen.

Wait with courage.....

Psalm 27:14  “Wait for the LORD with courage, be stout-hearted, and wait for the LORD.” (NAB)

“Wait for the LORD, be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” (NIV)

“Stay with God, take heart, don’t quit.  I’ll say it again, stay with God. “ (MSG)

“Wait on the LORD, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart: wait, I say on the LORD.”  (KJV)

Heavenly Father,

Courage…..not something I’ve ever felt I had a lot of.  Being shy and lacking self-confidence doesn’t make one feel courageous about anything.  Things that are simple to others are a huge battle for me.  We are to wait for you with courage.  Courage involves a willingness to try, to take a stand, to stay in one place no matter what is happening around us.  Our courage is meant to keep us rooted in you…..standing on the one thing we know and can trust beyond a shadow of a doubt…. Your love for us.  There is no lack of evidence of your love.  You loved us enough to send your only son to die for us, to take the punishment that should be ours.  When we believe in Him, we receive the courage that rests on a sure foundation of love…..grace forgives us, grace washes us clean, grace gives us confidence and courage to stand in Your presence.  I like the KJV translation of the middle of the verse:  “…..and he shall strengthen your heart.”  Our strength comes from you, from Jesus Christ, from the Holy spirit.  We don’t produce strength from our own personality; we gain it as a by-product of trusting in Jesus Christ and “waiting “ for him.  Our strength is really His strength.  Our courage is His courage.  It is our “heart” that he will strengthen.  The heart is the source of life….when the heart quits, we die.  Jesus strengthens our heart with His own life….He is the Way, the Truth, the Life.  In Him we are as strong as we need to be.  Sometimes we feel very weak, very lost, and our courage falters.  There is a prayer vigil going on today for a women with cancer.  We don’t feel very strong when we battle deadly foes that we can’t even see.  We don’t feel strong sometimes when we pray for those who battle illness.  We lose our focus and we feel defeated.  Help me to wait on you, to draw strength from you, to be courageous and stand on the foundation of your love.  I trust your strength when I have none of my own.  Amen

Wait for the LORD......

Psalm 37:34  “Wait for the LORD, keep his way.” (NAB)

“Wait passionately for GOD, don’t leave the path.”  (MSG)

“Trust the Lord and follow him.” (CEV)

“Wait on the LORD, and keep his way” (KJV)

Heavenly Father,

“Wait for the LORD.”  How do we wait for the LORD?  Most ways of waiting don’t seem to make sense to my knowledge of You.  Wait for You to “catch up”?  NO!….You are everywhere at all times and way ahead of me in planning!  Wait for You to “show up?”  NO!…again, You are omnipresent so anywhere I am, You are!  The phrase “wait for the LORD” makes me think of kids telling each other, “we have to wait for so-and-so”…..with a deep sigh of reluctance and impatience.  The sense of waiting for a slower sibling, a slightly unwanted tag-a-long.  Isn’t that how we sometimes treat You?  We have made our own plans and are rushing off to “do” all the things we are sure we should “do”.  Very reluctantly we ask for You to approve our plans, bless us with power to do what we want, and sort of tag-a-long for the ride.  Then when our plans fail we turn to You and say, “where were You!  We assume that any blame lies in Your slowness or Your lack of cooperation.  The Message says, “wait passionately for God”!  What a difference!  Instead of impatience there is eagerness.  Instead of reluctance there is desire.  Instead of blame there is trust.  We are so accustomed to operating within our free will and depending on our own cleverness and strength that we don’t know how to “wait for the LORD.”  The last part of the verse is a key…”keep his way”…..”don’t leave the path”…….”follow him.”  We have to stop leading.  The choice of the path is Yours.  The person to follow is You.  The way is already chosen…..Jesus Christ said, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  We are to walk the path together.  We “wait for the LORD” to show us the Way, to walk beside us, to shine Light on the Way so we won’t stumble or get lost.  We need his presence on the path with us, so we “wait for Him.”  The KJV says, “wait on the LORD.”  We are along to do your will, to serve you, to obey.  If we are yoked to You, if we are abiding in You, waiting will come naturally and easily.  We will “keep His way”.  Thank you.  Amen

Come and listen......Pay Attention!

Isaiah 55:3  “Come to me heedfully, listen that you may have life.” (NAB)

“Pay attention, come close now, listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words. (MSG)

“Give ear and come to me; hear me that your soul may live.” (NIV)

Heavenly Father,

Two things to do….come and listen.  We are to come heedfully.  Heedfully indicates a willingness to obey, to get something out of what we hear.  If we come with our minds already made up and our agenda already set, we won’t learn anything new.  This is how the Pharisees came to Jesus.  Not in a heedful attitude but in a pre-set critical, correcting one.  They thought they were in control and that they had all the right answers.  Their goal was to prove Jesus wrong, to trip him up.  They listened with closed minds and stopped up ears.  We aren’t much different from the Pharisees.  We make plans in our lives and in our churches and then we ask You to bless them.  We let our denominations interpret scripture for us and then we twist anything that doesn’t fit to make it agree.  We don’t spend enough time being “heedful”…..having an attitude of hearing with the intent of learning and obeying.  We sift everything through our free will to determine if we like it or not, rather than if it is truth.  Many people in scripture did come to You heedfully, with an open mind and the intention of learning, changing.  They saw a glimmer of hope in Jesus, they saw the long awaited answer to their prayers, they saw the fulfillment of the promise.  If they hadn’t been “heedful”, they would have seen none of that.  Coming heedfully leads to listening and then to life….eternal life.  The Message translation says, “Pay attention, come close”.  We need to get close enough to hear every word, to ponder those words and seek their meaning, to hear the individual messages that You have for each of us.  I think of churches where everyone sits in the back.  Why??  Where is the eagerness to get “close”, to be sure not to miss a single word, to look for something new and life giving?  If Jesus wants us to “come close and listen carefully” we should anticipate words of life, something of great importance, something we’ll always regret if we miss it!  “Life-giving, life-nourishing words”!  Wow!  Pay attention!  Listen up!  Heed these words!  “Speak, LORD, your servant is listening.  Amen