Press the arrow to listen to Hillsong sing “Shout Your Fame”.
Scripture And let those who love Your salvation say continually,
“Let God be magnified.” Psalm 70:4
Observation This isn’t about me. That’s an easy sentence to say until our life is on the line, or at least our reputation, our money or our kids are at risk. Then we cry out to God for help as if it is all about us.
There is a prayer so edgy that it gains the attention of heaven. It happens when we step out of the centre and into the periphery and say, “This is not about me. This is about God. How can he solve my problem in a way that glorifies him?” That is a selfless prayer.
I can be either a lens cover or a projector lens. The video projector in our home has a plastic cap to protect the lens. If it is left on to project, there is no image. But when the cover is removed the prism of glass projects an HD image on the screen. When my prayer says in so many words that solving my problem is not about me, then God is magnified through my life. His brillance, colour, movement and life are portrayed for all to see.
Application
I wonder what would happen if I changed the tone of my prayers for help from my best interests to God’s? He must be magnified through my life. This isn’t about me. It is about him.
Prayer Lord, be magnified through Phil McCallum. Use my life as a lens to project your glory bigger. Help me not to get in the way of something brilliant you want to do through me. Amen.
Press the arrow to listen to a heart-warming song about adoption just released by Desperation Band.
Scripture See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! 1 John 3:1
Observation
There are many children who pass by me in public places. I have no urge to talk to them, to drive them to school, to buy them clothes or to take them out for ice cream, because they are not my kids. I feel no responsibility for them because they belong to someone else.
I have had the experience of adoption. Of feeling the heart expand to take responsibility for children that do not belong to me. It was a strange feeling when it came. It was as if my heart stretched an extra size longer, and there was another human being inside of my heart. I love being a father and a foster-father!
How much better it feels to the orphan to be picked out of the line for adoption. It is especially heart-warming for a gangly, pimple-faced teenager who feels too old to be picked. The person in that line-up is me or you. The word adopted means “wanted”. God, who of all human titles has chosen the name “Father”, has chosen to focus all of that loving attention on us.
Application
My adoption is not a fiction; it is a reality. I am loved, cared for, watched over, corrected and supplied because I am a son. Accepting the fact “that is what we are” is one of the most important things we can do as a Christ follower. We must lift it out of dry theology books and make a family portrait with our own picture front and centre.
Prayer Father, let those words roll over my spirit today: “that is what we are!” I want that to take over my thinking and living today. I am a son with all of the trimmings. It does feel good! Amen.
Press the arrow to listen to Kutless sing “Strong Tower”.
Scripture The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him. Nahum 1:7
Observation
God loves saving people so much that he takes special note of those who ask him for help.
We think just the opposite. We imagine that the Lord is easily annoyed and that if we bother him overly much that it will count against us in the future.
But our Father is far kinder than we can imagine. He warms to our dependance on him. He takes special note of those who run into his tower for safety. They are those who are close to his own heart.
Application
The definition of my existence is Philip McCallum, a man being saved. Each day, I need to depend more upon the Lord for salvation. Calling for help will only endear me to him. I live on the 7th floor of a high rise building. At least once a day, I take the stairs instead of the elevator. The stairway reminds me of the Lord’s tower and as I wind up the stairs I imagine myself running into him. “The name of the Lord is a high tower, the righteous run into it and are saved.”
Prayer Father, save me. Let that be my prayer in every moment in every problem.
Scripture Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…. Romans 5:1
Observation
Having a relationship problem is bad, but what is worse is to have someone out of sorts with us but to never know that they are offended. We are blase to their hurt. It pushes us apart, but we don’t know what is wrong.
This is exactly what is between God and us. Without Jesus, no one realizes that God is offended. None have a clue of how deep that damage is. The proof of the pain between us and God comes by the price tag of the clean up of the mess. The repair bill to restore our relationship with God was astronomical. The Father giving his precious Son was more costly than even the Exxon-Valdeze clean up bill.
But the expensive repair of our relationship with God through the death of his only Son shows us another thing. God loves us more than all of the hurt between us. In fact, he wants our thoughts to focus on the enormity of his love for us.
The greatest gift that God can give to us is the gift of peace. The sense that relationship is restored and that we are right with God is enormous reassurance. Just as when a human relationship is fixed up, we can sit with a person and say nothing yet feel everything that is good inside of our hearts. The greatest thing that God has to give to us is the gift of peace. The awkwardness is gone. God accepts us.
Application
I’m not supposed to get used to the peace that God has given to me through Jesus Christ. I’m supposed to live in amazement that I’m forgiven. My tenendency is to get used to the peace of God. I do want to move onto what think must be “higher things”. But there is nothing greater than this. The rift ifs healed. God is at peace with me. This is to keep me amazed forever. I’m always making my Jesus walk more complicated and moving away from simplicity. I must come back to this simple centre: I am at peace with God.
Prayer Father, I choose to dumb down my faith and to live in the centre of peace. Amen.
Scripture Keep me safe, O God, for I have come to you for refuge. Psalm 16:1
Observation
Why is it that the Lord chooses to take care of us in troubled times? For one reason only: simply because we have asked for help. The psalm singer is straightforward: he expects God to rescue him simply because he is ringing the bell at God’s house. That is reason enough.
It is a tradition amongst desert nomads of the Middle East to honor hospitality as the most treasured of gifts. The thirsty desert has forced them to show kindness to any wanderer in need. If a traveler says to a sheik, “I desire the rights of a guest in your tent” that Bedouin must take him in even if he has murdered his own brother. The Lord is our sultan and if we ask for help he has bound himself to grant it to us.
We make these requests of God in times of prayer. That is obvious enough. But there are other prayers we do not know we are even praying that the Lord listens to as well. When we have an idle conversation with a friend and we grumble against the Lord and question his ability to care for us, the Lord hears that. On the other hand, when we are talking with a friend who is skeptical or nervous of God’s ability to provide and we state our confidence in the Lord to care for us even when nothing is evident, the Lord hears that as if it were a prayer.
If we need proof that the Lord listens to our idle conversations, then turn to Malachai 3:14-18
“You have said, ‘What’s the use of serving God? What have we gained by obeying his commands or by trying to show the Lord of Heaven’s Armies that we are sorry for our sins? From now on we will call the arrogant blessed. For those who do evil get rich, and those who dare God to punish them suffer no harm.’â€
Then those who feared the Lord spoke with each other, and the Lord listened to what they said. In his presence, a scroll of remembrance was written to record the names of those who feared him and always thought about the honor of his name.
“They will be my people,†says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “On the day when I act in judgment, they will be my own special treasure. I will spare them as a father spares an obedient child. Then you will again see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.â€
Our private comments are public prayers to the Lord.
Application
So why do I doubt God’s ability to keep me safe and to bring me through to the other side? Because somehow I question if God is really enough, as if he were a blanket too short to cover the bed. We need to get lost in the enormity of the nature and character of God. In my Bible readings today is a passage where God tells Moses what his name is. God doesn’t give a word but a paragraph to state his name:
“Yahweh! The Lord!
The God of compassion and mercy!
I am slow to anger
and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.
I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations.
I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin.
But I do not excuse the guilty.
I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren;
the entire family is affected—
even children in the third and fourth generations.†Exodus 34:6-7
We should not read this paragraph as individual words but as one complete word. This is the name and nature of God. When we come to the Lord for refuge we find a cavernous expanse large enough for us all all of our concerns. He is enough for us.
Prayer Father, in you I take refuge. Hear my prayers in private and in public and demonstrate your ability to save to reveal something of the enormity of your name. Amen.
Scripture
Luke 15:11, “A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate….”
Observation
Those words of Jesus had a familiar ring to the Jews who first heard Jesus speak. It was akin to saying, “Once upon a time there were three bears….” Jesus was borrowing the outline from a very familiar story to his audience: the story of Jacob leaving his father Isaac, stealing an inheritance and opening a wound of sibling rivalry with his brother Esau.
But what Jesus did with the story in fiction is very different from the story in fact. Jacob is supposed to be a symbol of the Jews but Jesus painted him as the immoral son living among Gentiles. That was offensive. Then Jesus made Esau (the man without character who took pagan wives) the symbol of the Jews in their hardness toward the sinners and publicans who were coming to Christ. Both of those parallels were a slap in the face to get his listener’s attention. Jesus’ message is clear: those closest to God can be furthest away from him. We can be lost and not even know it.
But what is most surprising is how Jesus pictured his Father. He was no longer Isaac the lord of the manor who commanded his son to go out and fetch food for him. Jesus did three things that are very unlike how we assume God should behave.
The Father gave(while he was still alive} his entire estate knowing that was the the only way to bring his son home.
The Father ran (at a time when the boss man would never be seen running on the farm} to show how much he forgave.
The Father begged (at a time when panhandling was just for street people) to get his older son to come into the house and reconcile with his brother.
Application
Jesus messed with their perspective of the Father. He does the same with us today. We need a fresh picture of the heavenly Father giving, running and begging. The picture is disturbing because God wants us to come home to him. The Father brings us home by alluring us with his vulnerability. The Father wants me home.
Prayer Father, this perspective of you is almost embarrassing. Why? Because if you not just humble yourself but humiliate yourself to search for me, then your behavior requires me to drop my pride and come running after you. I receive the offense that is woven into this story. I let it change my heart. I come running after you. Amen.
Observation
Twice in this chapter, Jacob calls God by an odd name: The Fear of Isaac. If he used the name twice, then it must have been a name for the Lord that Jacob had heard at home. The man whose name meant “laughter” called God by the name “Fear”.
I wonder if that came from Isaac’s experience as a boy with his father Abraham on the mountain. Isaac was bound like a sacrificial animal on the altar and the knife of his father was ready to slit his throat. Then God stepped in and saved his life. A boy would remember that moment; and a man would never forget it either.
I don’t think the fear that Isaac felt was a fear of harm God could do to him as much as it was a respect of the God who saved him. Abraham, by putting his children on the altar, gave his son a front row seat view of God the nature of God. As a result Isaac knew the Lord personally enough to give him a special name.
Application
Do I fear God enough? This is not a fear of what God could do to harm me, but of what the Lord can do to save me. My life should be toast, but God rescued me from the toaster. That is reason enough to reverence the Lord who can save me. If he saved me then, he will save me now.
Prayer Father, today I need your salvation and I fear you Lord, for you are the one who can save. With you is forgiveness, therefore, you are to be greatly feared. I fear you today, and that causes me to trust you and to love you more. Amen.
I'm Phil McCallum, a husband, father and most of all one of the people Jesus loves. I'm privileged to serve Evergreen Community Church in Bothell, Washington as Senior Pastor where people love enough to believe "it's all about relationships." In 1982 I made a vow to read God's word daily and apply it to life. Each day I write out my reflections. Some days I post those on my blog. It's a little personal but it's my hope it will stir you to go deeper still. Learn how I do my devotions. These are my thoughts and not necessarily those of the ministry I serve. By the way check out the computer study Bible Glo. I highly recommend it.
