Bones Alit Devo

What a wonderful thing it would be to have this thought in our hearts: “Jesus, I love to obey You.” Personal communion with the Savior will be followed by the joy of personal service and allegiance. Are you ready to obey in all humility and weakness and reverence? Can you say, “Yes, Lord Jesus, I will obey”? If so, give yourself up to Him completely. Then your thinking will be, “I am not going to speak one word if I think that Jesus would not like to hear it. I am not going to have an opinion of my own, but my whole life is going to be covered with the purity of Christ’s obedience to the Father and His self-sacrificing love for me. I want Christ to have my whole life, my whole heart, my whole character. I want to be like Christ and to obey.” Give yourself up to this loving obedience. -Andrew Murray, The Practice of God's Presence, p.288  James 3:2-3 ASV - 2 For in many things we all stumble. If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body ...

For months youtube kept suggesting that I watch videos about why people left Bethel and Hillsong. I never clicked on any of them. I tried blocking some of them. I told my husband that these videos were surely divisive and that I didn't want to support them. But then I had a question about visions. Mind you, my "vision" wasn't a dream or waking vision. It was just something that happened to me and I wondered what I should take from it. Was God stopping me from writing about worship because I was wrong? Or was the devil fighting me, because what I stumbled upon needed to be said?  So I prayed, "God, give me something good to watch" while I turned on my tv. Up popped a video: Unpacking Doreen's vision with Pastor Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith https://youtu.be/f9MtKZsh1U0 So I watched it. Of course, not all visions are from God. I have had visions and dreams that were so obviously playing on my fears that I never questioned whether they were fro...

What kind of performance does God prefer from the congregation? When I first read the description for the book, Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I thought, I'm not planning to live in a monastery, why would I read about life in a community of believers? As is often the case, I found a quote from this book which intrigued me, so I gave the book a read. Previously to reading Life Together, I had read the Bonhoeffer biography by Eric Metaxas which inspired me greatly. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's journal he recounted having visited Harlem and wrote highly of the congregational singing he encountered there. My heart was lifted up just thinking about the black spirituals I grew up on. My heart needs to experience congregational singing.  I long to be one voice among many worshipping someone worth worshipping. I'm not trying to show anyone how worshipful the service was for me. I am trying to not care at all about anyone but God.  How many Hillsong or Bethel or Elevation or Jesu...

When does justice come? Some of us put it off expecting justice to come only when all things are made new. (Isa 66:22) Others of us demand justice and get mad at anyone who stands in the way of justice because "not to speak is to speak and not to act is to act."  Popular opinion puts forth a false choice between two sides of Christian thinking: speak out against injustice versus let God handle it. Isaiah 58 helps us to understand what God expects from us. The people in Isaiah 58 have declared ritual days of fasting. They say that they are motivated by closeness with God. Yet while they are fasting, they are still having fun while their workers work hard. They look like they care about what God cares about, but they continue to keep others down and diminish their freedom. They fight amongst themselves. God is not pleased, because they are more concerned with pleasing themselves through fasting than with pleasing Him.  A group not mentioned in Isaiah are people who are angry an...