Lent devotional 29
Why do you enter Jesus’ presence?
Is it because you have to? Because you want to? Because you need to?
Jesus is always there. What part of you does He want? All of you. Every inch of your mind and soul is something Jesus longs for and desires after. Go to Him. Because you want to, because you need to, and because you should. You will never regret a moment spent in the presence of Jesus.
Lent devotional 27
Freedom
When Jesus died on the cross He didn’t just take away our fear and pain, but He gave us complete freedom from it. Fear is not from God, He says that His perfect love casts out all fear. That does not mean that you will never feel fear again, it means that Jesus’ power gives you the authority to pray against your fear and have it cast away. In Jesus name I stand against this fear I am feeling! Then if the fear comes back ask Jesus to cast it out again. The devil uses fear to drive us down and keep us from God’s goals in our lives. We must stand against this fear in the name of Jesus and refuse to permit it to overwhelm us. Jesus is there, standing guard, call on His name and believe that your fear will be cast out by His holy and glorious power!
In Jesus name I stand against fear and trembling of anything earthly. I stand in the power of almighty God! Fear has no hold on me because Jesus is the one who holds me. Amen!
Lent devotional 26
I’m not faithless, just paranoid of being lost- Flyleaf
We become afraid, even paraniod of being left behind or lost.
But the Jesus who mourned in the garden, suffered in the flogger’s hands and died on the cross will never leave us behind. He died so we would never be lost. Jesus came for us, He found us, He goes after the one and never gives up until you are found. Feeling lost does not make you faithless, it makes you human. It’s easy to feel like you have lost your way when things are spinning and you can’t focus. They say you should work on you and that will help you help others, I’m not sure that that is true, but how do you work on you when you can’t find you? Life gets messy. The world is crazy and it get’s inside your head and causes stress. Things fall apart, people fail you, things pack on top of themselves and you feel like Atlas holding up the world. But the world is not yours to hold, that’s God’s job. The mess and crazy all around you is not your’s to deal with. The pile of things for you to do is not yours to bear alone. God arms me with strength, and He makes my path perfect Psalm 18:34
You are not lost just because you are spinning, God always knows where you are. He doesn’t need to find you again because He never lost you even if you have lost focus of Him.
There are days when I picture the angel taking care of my dog. I know he’s there because of the times I pray, ‘God protect my pal from himself,’ and then later that day see him do something that causes me to hold my breath in horror as I wait to see if he survives. Only a loving God would bother to protect my unstable Jack Russell because He knows how much he means to me.
Today I imagined Pal’s angel sitting him down for a talk that went like this:
Angel: “okay, let’s do this one more time. You do not chase the skunks.’
Pal: “okay! I chase skunks!”
Angel: “no, you do not chase the skunks.”
Pal: “yep, chase skunks. Got it.”
Angel rubs his forehead: “no, you do NOT chase the skunks! You leave the skunks alone! Skunks carry disease.”
Pal, horrified: “I can’t leave the skunks alone! Then they will be lonely!”
Angel groans but refuses to give up and tries again. This could go on forever so we’ll move on.
How like my crazy little dog are we at times?
God sits us down and says that there is something we are about to do or are presently doing that we should avoid because it’s dangerous. Maybe not physically, but it might be spiritually dangerous. Then we miss what He is saying and keep going, we keep chasing whatever it is that we are after no matter how bad it might be. He tries again to stop us and save us from ourselves, and again we miss it and keep going. Then when we finally understand that God is saying to stay away from that thing we are chasing we become defensive and argue with Him that we know best. But our loving God refuses to give up on us, even if that means He has to step in and save us last minute because we wouldn’t listen to Him. He is such a loving Father. He always strives to keep us from harm, and then we chase the skunk and get sprayed He loves us enough to clean us up and heal our injuries and to continue to protect us, even from ourselves.
Lent devotional 25
‘We are persecuted, not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed, blessed beyond the curse for our promise to endure, and joy will be my strength, though our sorrows may last for the night, joy comes with the morning. I’m trading my sorrow, I’m trading my pain, I’m laying them down for the joy of the Lord. I’m trading my sickness, I’m trading my shame, I’m laying them down for the joy of the Lord.’
Okay, admit it, you sang that😉
If you didn’t sing this song at a kids youth group and have no idea what I’m talking about I recomend looking it up, it’s a fun song. But it’s based on a powerful scripture.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
2 Cor. 4:7â€-‬10 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/2co.4.7-10.NIV
It is easy to feel like the world is pressing against us. It is easy to feel like the devil is clawing at our Faith and trying to steal it from us. But we have the power of Jesus in us. He died so we could live, and so that we would have the power to fight against the demons that rise up to tempt us. The devil prepares us for the plunder by making us feel small and afraid, but Christ Jesus died so that we would share in His kingdom and His power. He said to His disciples that He would give them the power to cast out demons, that also gives us the power to cast evil spirits away from us. The devil wants all of us to belong to him, that’s why this world is so hard to live in. But Jesus promises a better life, in Heaven, if only we can endure. Fight on and have faith. Because we have traded our fear, and sickness, pain and shame for the joy that the Lord brings. Amen!
Lent devotional 24
What do you do my friends when you are afraid?
Brother Andrew has said, ‘you have been spiritually mature in faith for a long time, act like it.’
Do we trust God when something that brings us fear takes ahold of us? Or do we try to fix it ourselves?
When we are afraid or something goes wrong we need to give it to God, then we need to trust Him with it. I feel like we are in a tug-of-war with God and our lives are the ropes. We let God have one end and then we yank as hard as we can from the other end and try to pull God over to our side or else to simply pull the rope itself out of God’s hands. Then we dance around like we have won something because we have done it all on our own.
But to have true peace we must hand our fears and troubles over to God and then let GO. Only once we have let go can we experience the rewards of faith and can see what happens when thungs are done the King’s way.
Lent devotional 23
To love them with your whole heart.
We feel these days that to love them is to accept them, all of them, as they are in that moment. That is true in a sense but not in a whole. As Christians it is always a struggle to accept the whole of the person but to also fight against their sin. We forget that if we accept the sin and not simply the sinner then we aren’t truly loving them. To accept our whole selves and to accept our own sin is not truly loving ourselves either. There is the great truth that we all have a darkness to us, but when we claim that we love our darkness as part of ourselves we are hurting ourselves. When we claim that we love someone else’s darkness as part of themselves then we are condeming them to forever be trapped by that darkness. Our sin is not who we are, it is not part of us. Like a big chain holding down a wolf, that chain is not part of that animal, that free spirit, it is simply attached to him or her. Once someone loves the wolf enough to say, ‘that doesn’t belong on you, let me help you take it off,’ and the wolf is set free from it’s bonds it can finally return to the trees and run the way it was meant to run. These chains are not part of us, our sins are not part of us, we cannot lie down and simply accept them in ourselves and in others, we must stand up against sin and scream ‘no more!’ ‘No longer will this sin hold me down!’ ‘I want to be free!’
You are not defined by your chains. You are meant to be free.
Seek a good Church with a pastor you trust and can come to with your sin, seek good Christian people who will help you. I don’t mean as someone to confess to, I mean as people to pray with you. Trust me, they have sins too that they are fighting, you are not alone.
Pray
Jesus I love you, I love that you love me and fight against my sin becasue you want me to be free. Thank you that you are not condeming me when you condem my sin, but that you are saving me. Let me trust in you and your truth. Guide me to fellow Christ followers so that I might find people who will pray with me and fight with me.
Amen
Lent devotional 22
Even dying on the cross Jesus was more than enough.
Many see Jesus’ moment on the cross as a moment He was weak in. It was the end and He was dying. The ministry, the battle, it all stopped with the first fall of the hammer. The first fall of the hammer, the first snap of the cat of ninetails, the first I Am He, was when it all began.
Do you remember in Ben Hur when Judah and his girlfriend bring his mom and sister to see Jesus, to see the one man who could heal them and fix it all, but when they got to Him He was already hanging on the cross? His eyes met theirs and the girlfriend quickly brought them away because people were angry that lepors were there. Remeber what she said? She appologized for making them walk from the lepor colony to Golgatha only to see Him die, that that wasn’t what she had intended for them to see, that she had made a mistake. And Judah’s mother replied, “oh my darling, you did not fail.”
Why? Because even beaten and dying on the cross Jesus was still enough to heal them. He healed their heart and returned hope to them. Hope of life better than this one. In Paradise.
Jesus was never stronger than when He was on the cross, that was His bravest moment, because it was His moment of weakness and pain, yet He endured for us. He could have called down the leagons of Heaven and saved Himself, but He suffered agony and died for us. I seek Him because He is wonderous, I praise Him because He is glorious, but I love Him because He is good and cares for me.
What weak moment of pain are you in right now? Maybe it’s your most powerful moment of courage too, because you have chosen to endure. Jesus was just as powerful bleeding on the cross as He was rising from the grave.
Lent devotional 21
Day of tears
‘Today is my day to sorrow’, thought the tiny flower growing beside a rock. ‘Last night a great trouble came over me as a man, or something more than a man, sat by my side and wept. His tears were so great that when they splashed upon me I felt sick and my roots were weakened. I tried to reach out to the man, but I am just a flower and cannot draw attention to myself like a bird can with her song. He cried and screamed and begged and pleaded, but no peace came to this man. I hoped that He would look at me and I could make Him smile. He left and then returned, even sadder when He came back. All I could do was sit with Him. Then I sensed a resolve in His being and He went to stand once more. He stumbled and His hands landed near me. I tried to be radiant to bring Him comfort, finally He saw me, He smiled very gently, then He rose to His feet. “Thank you my radiant flower.” He said, then He left.
I feel that something great and tragic happened that night. Today I feel as though a friend is calling out for mercy. Today I feel sad. But being a flower, I know that tomorrow will bring new joy and hope.’
Lent devotional 14
I don’t want Jesus to simply have a place in my life, I want Him to have my whole life.
There are times when I feel like I am telling God to wait His turn. I’m busy right now God, give me a second to finish this please. Will He wait? Yes. Should He have to? No. It’s like I’ve put God into a spot in my life and He gets His time but has to stay put. Remember when we were kids and we sat in Children’s Church or Kindergarten and we had a mat to sit on? That was our spot and the floor was lava so we had to stay on our spot as the teacher read. There are days when I feel like I have given God a listening mat to sit on and that’s where I tell Him to stay. But as Stormie Omartan said once, I had let God into a room in my heart and had locked the door. That was where He supposed to be. But He kept knocking on the door to the next room until I opened it. Then the next one. And the next. Until I threw open all the doors d simply said ‘here God, I am yours’. That’s us. God doesn’t want a mat or a room, He wants all of us. He desreves all of us. What area of your life have you locked God out of? Pray, and ask Him to give you the courage to open the door and let Him in to every area of your life.
Carried in the cross 