Deeper Still by phil mccallum

Scripture
When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. John 5:6-7; 14-15

Observation
For some the water has to be just right. They won’t follow the confidence of Jesus unless there are supernatural moments, signs from heaven, or strange coincidences that give them courage to jump in. The man wouldn’t walk until there were bubbles in the water. Some of us won’t walk forward unless we see something extraordinary happen in our ordinary circumstances. We are crippled too.

For some there must be right connections. They depend upon the power of their network to connect them with the right people to put them into the water at just the right time, otherwise they will not walk. But they remain paralyzed because of their address list, because friends lose interest.

For others there must be public approval. When the healed man met men in the temple bonded by group-think he ratted on Jesus. Freedom is threatening to those who listen only to what others think rather than to what Jesus says. When they see one human being roaming free from the leash of their common sense they are quick to handcuff him back into subservience to their crippled view of life. The disabled man had been healed to walk, but sadly he did not follow Jesus. In the end, he became a spiritual handicap because he cowered to the crowd and did not follow Jesus.

Every word that Jesus spoke in the gospels is full of a courage that is out of this world. He wants to do more than just have the crippled walking, he wants them to go beyond and to use that mobility to follow him. Jesus has courage and he wants us to walk in confidence into places we have never walked before. We need to step past our immature need for omens, or our nailbiting over our network of friends or even past the disapproval the small-minded. Jesus heals us to follow him, and follow him we must do.

Application
There are many times I wait for perfect conditions or just the right people or even buy in from conventional wisdom. This is not one of those times. I must arise, roll up my sleeping bag and walk on after Jesus.

Prayer
Father, I sense the water is bubbling today. But I don’t need the bubbling waters for I have Jesus and that is all that I need. Today I chose to follow him. Give me courage and confidence to walk and keep on walking. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Phil Stacey “You’re Not Shaken” as you read today’s devotion about handling confrontational moments.

Scripture
How can Satan drive out Satan? Mark 3:23
Who are my mother and my brothers? Mark 3:33

Observation
Jesus was hit with the old “one two” punch. First came the preachers and next came his mother and brothers. Both thought that Jesus was out of his mind.

Jesus was backed into a corner. He was called a madman and he had no one to defend him. The establishment had turned their backs on him and he had lost the confidence of his own kinsfolk. It would have been easy for Jesus to have become defensive, but he didn’t make himself look pathetic.

Instead, Jesus turned to the power of a question. Questions are like hot water on ice, they melt through hardness with a power stronger than a speaker’s personality but from the weight of the question mark. After a question is asked it will keep on asking in the mind of the opponent. Questions beg to be asked. Once spoken they are sent out the door like child beggars into the street. They won’t relent until satisfied.

Question marks are hungry things.

Application
Jesus is fascinating because he is God showing us how to be a human being. There is a better way than defensiveness. There is a power of a question. If Jesus could defend himself without appearing defensive, even when accused of insanity, and still come out looking wise, then there is in this an example for me to follow today.

Prayer
Father, in the heat of the moment, when this devotional moment is long forgotten, help me to remember and to do what Jesus did and still does. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Mercy Me sing “Finally Home”

Scripture
The righteous will live by their faithfulness to God. Hab 2:4

The Sovereign Lord is my strength!
He makes me as surefooted as a deer,
able to tread upon the heights. Hab 3:`0

Observation
On a morning walk, time froze as a young buck with velvet antlers crossed my path. I was down wind so he didn’t smell me coming. For a moment both of us were surprised to see the other. The moment unthawed and with a pogo bounce, I watched the deer bound up the hillside. Rocks and undergrowth didn’t phase him. He moved with confidence through uncertain terrain.

As he mounted the hill, I thought to myself, “His feet are my feet.” God’s blessing to us is not always that we can conquer troubles but that we can walk over the top of them to a better point of view. Those with the feet of a deer do not need a paved road to reach the summit. The surefooted do not remove boulders; they bounce over them. The path is not on the ground but in their feet. Their ability to navigate four wheel drive country gives them a vista few others will see.

Application
What keeps the righteous man alive is his record of faithfulness to the Lord. What he sows, he will also reap. As he has been faithful to the Lord, so in turn, in days of need, the Lord will be faithful to him. The greatest investment we can make in our tomorrows is to put one foot in front of the other for today.

Prayer
Father, I have the feet of a deer now help me to use them. I ask not for a better road, but for agility to clamber up to a better point of view. Help me to scamper to the heights and receive the reward of those who take the rugged incline. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Natalie Grant’s song, “Our Hope Endures” while reading where hope comes from.

Scripture

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13

Observation

Where does hope come from? Hope is a fresh scent of good things God is cooking up for us. It is the sun that makes us get out of bed in the morning. It is a song in our mind that wakes us up in the night. Hope is what keeps us looking long after the posse went back home. Hope is what keeps us praying longer than is reasonable.  Hope is not a superfulous, expendable extra in life like the cherry on a sundae. Hope is mission critical.  In the toughest conditions, hope is what makes the difference between those who survive and those who do not

We need hope. But where does hope come from? Thankfully hope does not come from us, but from God. Hope somehow doesn’t feel hopeful when we have to talk ourselves into it. But when hope comes from heaven it enables us to believe more than we could ever do so on our own. Hope is a gift from God that keeps us walking forward when the road runs out.

How do we get new hope? Romans 15:13 is full of exciting possibilities of hope. God’s last name is apparently “hope”. With hope come the children of “joy” and “peace”. Hope can get out of control as it abounds in tough places. Hope is power that comes from the Holy Spirit, a power that others do not have to rise above their circumstances. Hope is totally of God. There is only one word in Romans 15:13 that is up to us as human beings. Our responsibility is “believing”. If we will use faith then God will give us hope.

Application

If I will believe, God will give me more hope. No matter how discouraging the circumstances, there is always something we can believe for, no matter how small. We as Christ followers are to be defined by what we are believing for. We are to live from “faith to faith”. We should be believing for something. Though my nose may be bruised from the crush of doors slammed in my face, yet I will continue to believe. In that resolute faith I will have more hope.

Prayer

Father, today you see what I’m believing for. I pray that you would shovel hope into my life. I need this power of anticipation that the Holy Spirit can give to me. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Michael Card and Phil Keaggy sing “The Poem of Your Life”

Scripture
“Naomi took the baby and cuddled him to her breast. And she cared for him as if he were her own. The neighbor women said, ‘Now at last Naomi has a son again!’ And they named him Obed. He became the father of Jesse and the grandfather of David.” (Ruth 4:16-17).

Observation

God is the author of each life story. That clear from the first biography God ever wrote – the book of Ruth.

Ruth as a book is perfectly balanced.

The introduction and the conclusion have the exact same number of words. The novel starts bitter but ends better.

There are four main sections that pull the reader along.
Each section has an introductory sentence that introduces segment.
Each chapter starts with a problem that is answered and leads to the next problem.

There is balance between selfless Ruth and selfish Orpah and between selfless Boaz and the selfish relative.

The story starts with a picture of Naomi an empty a widow with two dead sons.
The fairy-tale ends with a picture of Naomi now filled with a baby in her arms.

And in the first biography in the Bible everyone lives happily ever after in the end.

Why is the book of Ruth so perfect? Ruth is not beautiful just because the writer spun a good tale but because the Lord was the author of her life. The book of Ruth is beautiful because Naomi had a God-written life. The book is a masterpiece because there was a master-plot planned by the Master Himself. Remember, God is the best selling author of all time.

Every human life is like a story. Some are tragedies. However, lives given to God are stories authored by the Almighty Himself. If my life is in Jesus then my life is a story written by God. No matter the character, the plot, the scenery, every life-tale under God’s control ends better than it began.

Some like Naomi want to stop reading the story of their lives too soon. At the start of the book Naomi tried to stop the story of her life. When her husband and sons died she thought her story had come to an end. But it was really the beginning of a brand new story.

Application

My life is like a book, being written by God every day. It all takes longer than I think it should sometimes. Writers are notoriously slow. I heard James Mitchner wrote just 3 pages a day. God takes his time working out the plot of our lives.

Our lives are like a book, a plot written day by day. Many pages are senseless. Some seem to have temporary purpose only to be lost in the next chapter. But Jesus is the author skilled at turning bad beginnings into better endings.

In all of the Bible, any human life participating with the Lord has ended better than it began. Jesus wants to dip his pen into my life to inscribe his eternal purposes. My choice is, will I scrawl an autobiography, with each chapter written by me, struggling to find meaning. Or will I let Jesus story blend with my own story so that I can inscribe eternal purposes?

Prayer

Father, here’s a pen, here’s my life, please write your story all over me. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Chris Tomlin sing Amazing Grace while you read today’s devotion.

Scripture
“Sir,” Gideon replied, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?

Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!” Judges 6:13-14

Observation
The greatest obstacle to answered prayer can be me. The problem is not with God. He wants to rescue. The problem instead is with my skewed view of reality.

Gideon had a head problem. He had a faultless chain of logic that was totally wrong but made perfect sense. Bad things were happening, therefore he assumed that God was against his people. The difficulty of his logic was that it exonerated Gideon from attempting anything to challenge the status quo. He felt perfectly justified to hide like a fugitive in his own land, choking on chaff dust, because God was against them all.

We too block answers to prayer when we see God as the source of our problems instead of the beginning of our solutions. If we think life’s problems are God’s fault why try to change things?

There is a higher, heavenly perspective that the angel brought into Gideon’s life. This heavenly logic is like a gust of fresh air in a stuffy room. Here’s the new logic: assess your personal strengths and use them and God will use you. The presence of potential in Gideon’s life was proof that God was with him. He later proved himself as a leader, strategist and warrior. Once unpackaged the problem was solved.

Application
Answers to prayer require as much a change in my heart as in God’s heart. We must exchange faulty thinking for fresh perspective. Instead of asking, “What does God have against me” we should instead ask, “What do I have going for me?” The answer to prayer is not external, it is internal. Inside of me God has placed the potential for the answer. I have to change my outlook so God can use what he has given me to change the world around me.

Prayer
Father, give me a clearer and clearer understanding of what you have invested into my life so that you can work through my life. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to this worship song while reading this devotion.

Matthew West “You Are Everything” 

Scripture
Rather, cling tightly to the Lord your God as you have done until now. For the Lord has driven out great and powerful nations for you, and no one has yet been able to defeat you. Each one of you will put to flight a thousand of the enemy, for the Lord your God fights for you, just as he has promised. So be very careful to love the Lord your God. Joshua 23:8-11

Observation
Soldiers should love their General. It is not enough just to obey him. Warriors must love their commanding officer so that their heart is fully engaged.

The General, of course, is the Lord, the recruits naturally are us and the war is life around us as we now find it. For men, it’s great to have Joshua in the Bible. Let the girls have Ruth; Joshua is a boys book of heroes and blood baths. In this book men learn how to follow God.

But the description of trekking after Jesus doesn’t sound very masculine. We are told to cling to God. That sounds weak and dependent until we understand the strength of the Lord. Our heavenly Father is so strong and caring that it is safe for a man to be weak in his presence. There is no where else that it is safe for men to be weak except in the presence of God. He will never abuse our vulnerability instead he will always use it.

Application
God is the one who can drive out nations, send a legion running and help us to face another day. All of that strength can be ours if we will do but one thing: love him violently. The word “cling” also means to run in pursuit of the Lord and never letting go. If we are allowed as men to do any strong thing it is to lay down every ambition we have and to run hard after God. In desperation is true power.

Prayer
Father, today I cling to you because all of this comes from you and not from me. Amen.

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