Weekly Devotion - NOTICE GOD IN THE ORDINARY - June 21, 2010

From Lenae, GEMS Training Manager

NOTICE GOD IN THE ORDINARY

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Jeremiah 29:13

Esther is the only book in the sixty-six books of the Bible where God’s name is not mentioned – not even once. We might be tempted to think He’s not involved in her story because we can’t see His name. Not so! Just check out these amazing God sightings – evidences and signs of His presence!


Fact: King Xerxes’ search for a queen was done in every province of his realm. The girls needed to be beautiful, young virgins.


God sighting: Esther, the girl God chose to use to save His people, lived in King Xerxes’ kingdom, and was a beautiful young virgin (Esther 2:7).


Fact: Mordecai was Esther’s older cousin who became her foster father after her parents died. Mordecai was also a Jew. Because he was a Jew and refused to bow before Haman, the king’s highest ranking noble, Haman built a gallows, 75-feet high, and made a plan to hang Mordecai.


God sighting: On the night that Haman was building the gallows, God kept the king awake – he couldn’t sleep! Wide-awake, the king ordered the record of his reign be read to him. He discovered that Mordecai saved his life when someone was trying to assassinate him. The king wanted to recognize Mordecai for his help, and whom did he ask to help? The man who wanted to hang him – Haman himself (Esther 6:10-11)!


Fact: Haman plotted to kill all the Jews and received the unsuspecting king’s approval to do it.


God sighting: Esther was queen and no one suspected she was a Jew. God placed her in a unique position to go into the king’s presence and beg for mercy for his people (Esther 4:14).

Fact: Evil Haman is second in charge in the kingdom, and fully expected that everything be done according to his plan.


God sighting: God used Haman’s evil wife Zeresh to speak truth to Haman about Who is really in charge and directing all the plans (Esther 6:13).


Fact: God sightings are not unique to Esther’s story. The same is true for you and me! If we want to find God in our story we must look for Him with all our heart (Jeremiah 29:13).


God sighting: Your turn. Where do you see Him in your story today? Feed the fire by being on watch for God in all places, at all times by noticing Him in the ordinary.


PASSION Step: The book of Ruth is packed with God-sightings, too. Read it this week (and Esther, too!) and count how many you can find!

How often do we need to see God’s face, hear His voice, feel His touch, know His power? The answer to all these questions is the same: Every day!

John Blanchard

PS Ladies, this devotional was based on Lesson 1 of Esther – True Beauty for such a time as this! We’re so excited to have you touch and feel and promote all the new curriculum within your area. Keep the staff in your prayers as they work hard to complete all of these things before Conference. Thank you!

Weekly Devotion - OPEN UP AND TALK ABOUT GOD - June 14, 2010

From Lenae, GEMS Training Manager

OPEN UP AND TALK ABOUT GOD

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Matthew 28:19-20

One of my favorite Christmas carols to hear and watch children sing is Go Tell It On the Mountain. Children sing with passion and are free of inhibitions. They proclaim Jesus’ birth without fear of how people will respond, without wondering if they’ll be rejected or scoffed at, and without questioning whether they’ll be able to answer theological questions about His virgin birth or prophecy fulfilled. They simply open up and sing!

When Jesus rose from the dead Mary Magdalene and the other women became the first heralds of the good news. When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene . . . She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it (Mark 16:9-11).

When Jesus told them, “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me” (Matthew 28:10), the women obeyed. They went and opened up and talked about God. Some who heard doubted them (Matthew 28:17). Some who heard refused to believe (Mark 16:11). Their negative responses didn’t hinder the women from sharing the good news and planting seeds. They understood that God is the One who makes those seeds grow (1 Corinthians 3:6). The results are in His hands.

How often do you open up and talk about God to people who need to hear about Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection? Are you proclaiming it from the mountaintops with child-like passion? Are you obediently going and telling? Or are you tongue-tied, fearful, or silent?

In Greg Laurie’s book, Making God Known – How to Bring Others to Faith, he writes, “According to one poll, nine out of ten American adults cannot accurately define the meaning of the Great Commission. Seven in ten adults have no clue what ‘John 3:16’ means. But the most alarming statistic of all is that 95 percent of Christians have never led another person to Christ.”

We must quit overcomplicating things! We are Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20), empowered to be His disciple-makers (Matthew 28:19), and chosen to be His royal priesthood that we may declare the praises of him who called [us] out of darkness into his wonderful light (1 Peter 2:9). You are needed to go and tell! The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few (Luke 10:2).

PASSION Step: Feed the fire: open up and talk about God to someone who doesn’t know Jesus.

The evangelistic harvest is always urgent. God will hold us responsible at the Judgment Seat of Christ for how well we fulfilled our responsibilities and took advantage of our opportunities.

Billy Graham

Upcoming Event!

Information & registration forms for our Fall Workshop have been mailed to all registered counselors in Areas 28, 32 & 33. 

Register by June 30 for the Early Bird rate.

Click on "Fall Workshop" on the right for more information.

Weekly Devotional - INTERACT WITH GOD'S PEOPLE - June 7, 2010

from Lenae, GEMS Training Manager

INTERACT WITH GOD’S PEOPLE

 

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:25

Jesus said, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20). That was certainly my experience around the kitchen table with Jo and Maria on Tuesday night. It was the first time I met Maria. She’s a beautiful Hispanic sister in Jesus whose love for God glows and gushes from her tiny frame. Her single-minded life purpose and focus is to share God’s love with people.


In our two hours together the only thing that interrupted our discussion and the prayers that Maria seamlessly and spontaneously wove into our conversation was her ringing cell phone. How rude, right? Someone needs to take Cell Phone Etiquette 101. Not Maria.


Hurting women were calling Maria because they needed prayer. Maria was a safe place, an ambassador of love that provided something these women hadn’t experienced in the church. Her tears flowed for the women; my heart broke that the church had failed to be the Church.


God has given His people a number of one-another commands. When we gather at church, GEMS, and around kitchen tables with brothers and sisters in Christ, are we “one-anothering” each other? Check the ones that are true for you:


_____You live in harmony with one another. You are not proud, but are willing to associate with people of low position (Romans 12:16).


_____You love one another. Not just the gals you drink coffee with, but you have a huge debt of love for the people in your congregation who are doing everything wrong (Romans 13:8).


_____You offer hospitality to one another without grumbling (1 Peter 4:9). You provide practical and genuine care even when it’s not convenient or easy.


_____You speak to one another (not just about the weather or your kids), but with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, you make music in your heart to the Lord (Ephesians 5:19).


_____You encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11). Not just at Bible Study or GEMS, but every time you connect with God’s people you encourage them to press on and strain toward the prize for which God has called you heavenward in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14).


PASSION Step: Look up all the one another commands in Scripture. Feed the fire by obeying them in every relationship.

The church is not something additional or optional.

It is at the very heart of God’s purposes.

Jesus came to create a people who would model what it means to live under His rule.

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis

Weekly Devotional - SERVE OTHERS - May 28, 2010

from Lenae, GEMS Training Manager

SERVE OTHERS

 

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20

Before King David gave his son Solomon the plans for The Temple complex he said, “And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts” (1 Chronicles 28:9a).


Confession time. More often then I’d like to admit when God searched the motives behind my service, they fell far short of His command that my attitude be the same as that of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5). I’ve volunteered out of a desire to fix and rescue the project, rather than to love and serve people. I’ve stepped into neighborhoods that looked different than mine out of selfish ambition or vain conceit instead of humbly considering them better than myself (Philippians 2:3). That service may have looked admirable on the outside, but the lukewarm waters that God saw when He searched my heart and mind must’ve made Him sick.


Four years into Dr. Helen Roseveare’s twenty-year service (1953-1973) to God in Africa she became aware of some wrong motives in her service, too. It was a Sunday evening when Pastor Ndugu and his wife Tamoma called her out to the fireside to talk and pray. He showed her some hidden areas of her heart that pertained to race prejudice. She said, “The Spirit forced me to acknowledge that subconsciously I did not really believe that an African could be as good a Christian as I was, or could know the Lord Jesus or understand the Bible as I did.”


Pastor Ndugu opened his Bible to Galatians 2:20. With his heal, he draw a straight line in the dirt floor. “I,” he said, “The capital I in our lives, Self, is the great enemy . . .


“Helen . . . the trouble with you is that we can see so much Helen that we cannot see Jesus.”


Her eyes filled with tears. Pastor Ndugu’s object lesson continued. He drew another line in the dirt across the I he had previously drawn and said, “May I suggest that you lift your heart to God and pray, ‘Please, God, cross out the I.’”


Helen wrote, “There in the dirt was his lesson of simplified theology – the Cross – the crossed-out I life.” I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20).


PASSION Step: What is central to your service: Your ego or Christ’s life in you? Zealously serve with a crossed-out I life.

The greatest competitor of true devotion to Jesus is the service we do for Him.

It is easier to serve than to pour out our lives completely for Him.

Are we more devoted to service than we are to Jesus Himself?

Oswald Chambers

PASSION Disciplines.....

P is for Pray Constantly. Fold your hands in prayer.

A is for and. Hold forearms in the shape of a cross.

S is for Study God’s Word. Extend your arms, and place your hands together like an open book.

S is for Serve Others. Move your hands and arms like you’re shoveling dirt.

I is for Interact with God’s People. Pretend to interlock your arms with the other members of your GEMS team.

O is for Open Up and Talk about God. Hold your hands to your mouths like you’re making an announcement.

N is for Notice God in the Ordinary. Hold your hands to your eyes like binoculars.

Weekly Devotional - STUDY GOD'S WORD - May 24, 2010

from Lenae, GEMS Training Manager

STUDY GOD’S WORD

 

Do not snatch the word of truth from my mouth, for I have put my hope in your laws.
Psalm 119:42

You are what you eat is a well-known phrase that the food one eats comes with consequences to a person’s mind and health. Eat good food: experience good health. Eat junk food: experience poor health. Food becomes part of our inner being – strengthening or weakening our bodies.


What’s true for feeding our physical bodies is true for our spiritual health as well. In the book of Revelation when John went to the angel and asked him to give him the little scroll, the angel said to him, “Take it and eat it” (Revelation 10:9). Eugene Peterson writes, “The book he ate was Holy Scripture. John got it into his nerve endings, his reflexes, his imagination.”


Chew your food. We chew on Scripture through meditation, understanding, and obedience. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful (Joshua 1:8). Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly (Colossians 3:16).


Clean your plate. Like children who eat their favorite part of the meal and shove the vegetables under their napkin hoping no one will notice, there’s a temptation to feast on our favorite Scripture passages and push verses like love your enemies (Matthew 5:44) and forgive your brother and sister from your heart (18:21-35) to the side. We mustn’t read our Bibles like picky eaters – picking and choosing what we want to hear. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).


Fresh is best. Warren Wiersbe writes, “Just as the Jews could not live on yesterday’s manna, so you cannot live on yesterday’s spiritual diet.” Don’t live on the leftovers of Sunday’s sermon. Get in the Word yourself, every day! Love God’s Word and meditate on it all day long (Psalm 119:97). I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word (Psalm 119:16).


Feasting on God’s Word will keep us pure, counsel us, preserve our life, strengthen us, cause us to walk in true freedom, comfort us in suffering, encourage us in affliction, light our path, give us understanding, sustain us, and uphold us. (See Psalm 119 for a full listing of spiritual health benefits.)


These blessings won’t through a drive through window of a short devotional or power verse for the day. Feed the fire by studying God’s Word, listening to it, and doing what it says (James 1:22).


PASSION Step: Ask God to increase your hunger pains for His holy Word.

If all church members were like you, would the church be more like the world? Or would the church be more powerful in its witness because it would be deeper into the Word?

Anne Graham Lotz

Weekly Devotional - PRAY CONSTANTLY - May 17, 2010

from Lenae, GEMS Training Manager

Dear GEMS Sisters -
Throughout the next six weeks we’ll be focusing on the spiritual disciplines of PASSION (Pray constantly, And, Study God’s Word, Serve others, Interact with God’s people, Open up and talk about God, Notice God in the ordinary.) If you’re looking for an online accountability partner as you establish these holy habits, check out www.habitforge.com. Better yet, seek out an accountability partner in your club, church or another sister in Christ.


Have a great week!

PRAY CONSTANTLY

Pray continually.
1 Thessalonians 5:17

In 1 Samuel 7, the Israelites assembled at Mizpah for Samuel to intercede with the Lord for them. When they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the LORD. On that day they fasted” (1 Samuel 7:5).


The Philistines mistook the Israelite prayer meeting as a preparation-for-war assembly. Their leaders came up to attack the Israelites. When the Israelites heard that the Philistines were coming they were afraid and said to Samuel, “Do not stop crying out to the LORD our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines” (1 Samuel 7:8).


Samuel took a young lamb, offered it as a whole burnt offering, and prayed fervently to the LORD, interceding for Israel. And GOD answered.


The Israelites were not physically equipped for battle, but through prayer they fought with weapons that are not the weapons of the world. They had God’s divine power to demolish strongholds (2 Corinthians 10:4).


The LORD thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites. The men of Israel rushed out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them along the way to a point below Beth Car (1 Samuel 7:10b-11).


Samuel fed the fire by praying constantly. He was born in prayer as an answer to his mother’s petitions for a child (1 Samuel 1:15-17). He started talking and listening to God as a young boy (1 Samuel 3), and he lived in dependence on prayer from boyhood to his farewell speech when he said to the Israelites, “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by failing to pray for you. And I will teach you what is good and right. But be sure to fear the LORD and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you” (1 Samuel 12:23-24).


As you think about the children in your sphere of influence within your family, neighborhood, and at the GEMS Club down the street or in Zambia, are you an intercessor like Samuel? Can it be said of you and I that we never fail to pray for these little ones? Do we teach them what is good and right?


Oswald Chambers gives this challenge to intercessors. “Get involved in the real work of intercession, remembering that it truly is work – work that demands all your energy.” It’s a work of passion and action. May the LORD never look at us and be appalled at the lukewarm hearts because there was no one to intervene in prayer (Isaiah 59:15-16).


PASSION Step: Renew your commitment to intercede for children. What will you do this week to pray for them more?

Do you find yourself thinking that there is no one interceding properly?

Then be that person yourself.

Oswald Chambers

Weekly Devotional - PASSION - May 10, 2010

From Lenae, GEMS Training Manager

PASSION

Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.

1 Timothy 4:16

Within the concise, but commanding book, Stand – A Call for the Endurance of the Saints, Randy Alcorn writes about when he and his wife Nanci attended a thirty-year reunion of their church college group. He recorded that forty came and five of their original group had died. He hinted at the losses that many had experienced in their lives, yet there was beauty in that night as person after person talked about God’s faithfulness.

 Some were unable to attend the reunion due to practical challenges like scheduling conflicts, distance, and poor health. Others intentionally stayed away because their love for Jesus had grown cold. Why didn’t these saints endure Randy asked. His answer? “Their hour-to-hour and day-to-day choices set them up for spiritual distraction and failure.”


The choice to sleep in or to set the alarm clock earlier than yesterday so we can talk to God will determine if we’re going to be women of apathy or of action. The choice to go with the flow of the culture or to move in what Eugene Peterson calls “a long obedience in the same direction” will guide us into casual Christianity or Christ-like living. The choice to just live life as it comes or to establish and persevere in spiritual disciplines will lead to warming the pews or feeding the fire.


To be women of PASSION that love God and serve Him by serving others there are six spiritual disciplines that we must add to our heart’s fire. (We’ll dig deeper in the weeks to come.)


Pray constantly. Make the day-to-day choice to talk and listen to God (1 Thessalonians 5:17).


A is for And,


Study God’s Word. Make the day-to-day choice to read your Bible to learn how God wants you to live (Psalm 119:9).


Serve others. Make the day-to-day choice to serve others no matter what the task (John 13:14-15).

 Interact with God’s people. Make the day-to-day choice to encourage one another in the Lord (Hebrews 10:25).


Open up and talk about God. Make the day-to-day choice to tell people about Jesus’ love (Matthew 28:19-20).


Notice God in the ordinary. Make the day-to-day choice to seek God and to take note of all the tender ways He cares for you (Jeremiah 29:13).


PASSION Step: What PASSION discipline will you choose to establish this week?

We never grow closer to God when we just live life; it takes deliberate pursuit and attentiveness.

Francis Chan

Weekly Devotional - FEED THE FIRE - Devotional May 3, 2010

From Lenae, GEMS Training Manager

FEED THE FIRE

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.

Romans 12:11

 

Although the old saying, “A watched pot never boils” may seem accurate when we’re in a hurry to make pasta for dinner, any pot of water left long enough on the right temperature will eventually boil. It’s not boiling water, but boiling spirits that is contained in God’s command for His children in Romans 12:11, Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. The word fervor comes from the Latin word fervens, which means, “boiling.” To have great spiritual fervor is to have a boiling heart for God!


Boiling hearts chill when we serve God and Money (Matthew 6:24), worry (Matthew 6:25-27), are timid in testifying about our Lord (2 Timothy 1:7-8), participate in godless chatter (2 Timothy 2:16) and foolish and stupid arguments (2 Timothy 2:23), walk in darkness (1 John 1:6), are lukewarm (Revelation 3:15-16), turn away from our first love (Revelation 2:4), and love the ways of the world (2 Timothy 4:10).


Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world – wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important – has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him (1 John 2:15-16, MSG).


Sin isolates us from God and extinguishes flames! To feed the fire of love for God and zeal to serve others we must ruthlessly eliminate sin from our lives. Throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles (Hebrews 12:1), get rid of it (Ephesians 4:31), take it off (Ephesians 4:25), and put it to death (Colossians 3:5). If we become apathetic to sin and get comfortable with the things that God has told us to strip out of our lives there is a consequence for our choice. Those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 5:21).


Although a watched pot will eventually boil, a heart that houses sin won’t. If your heart isn’t boiling, take a look at what’s hindering the heat. What sin has entangled you?


Once we’ve repented of sin, we can persevere in the race that He’s marked out for us (Hebrews 12:1). Keep your spiritual fervor by fixing your eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2) and forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead (Philippians 3:13). With Paul, let’s press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called [us] heavenward in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:14).


PASSION Step: Ask God to reveal any sin that is keeping your heart from boiling with spiritual fervor.

Spirit filled souls are ablaze for God. They love with a love that glows. They serve with a faith that kindles. They serve with a devotion that consumes. They hate sin with fierceness that burns. They rejoice with a joy that radiates. Love is perfected in the fire of God.

Samuel Chadwick